From our readers
This is just a sample of bad, silly, or plain unintelligible examples of English sent to the Newsletter by our readers. If you have come across anything suitable, send it to the Newsletter Editor.
Many thanks to you for sending me some of your observations. Let's start
with this one from Helen:
Time for an afternoon rant. Below is an email sent to the support guys at my husband's company. I find it so sad that someone can leave the British education system with such a poor grasp of written English. Of course we all make mistakes, particularly when writing hurried emails but this is terrible. Something is going seriously wrong somewhere along the line. I don't know much about the national curriculum these days but I'm very worried that enough importance isn't put on basic literacy. I wonder how many business hours are wasted each year due to emails like this.
Hi Dan
wood Green have a problem ordering before and if they put the
stock right size and put to order 1 of them and post and deliver the
problem fix now if they end period the stock goes back 1* each.
I have attact the wood green venue1 file
If you dont understand please phone
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The state of education is the subject of Alan's e-mail:
My wife Heather, then the Matron of a nursing home, was trying yet again to teach a particular care assistant the technique for getting a patient out of bed.
Heather: 'I told you, you have to start by putting the chair at right angles to the bed!';
Care assistant: 'But I can never remember which is me left and which is me right!'
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I have more than once seen job advertisements for an 'Ex-patriot', although I don't know who would want a treasonable employee, but my favourite was still a small ad for camera enthusiasts offering a 'Why Dangle Lens'.
Moral: don't dictate your advertisements over the telephone.
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From a non-ISTC technical author (identifying details removed):
Why has this man not become a technical author? Our noblerofession needs people who can turn out dislocated gibberish of this quality and get paid £35 per hour for doing so.
You think I'm exaggerating? Over the past two decades I've been required more times than I can remember to sit down and try to render such drivel into intelligible English (...'a light edit' as it used to be called at (name of company removed), which was usually rather like sprinkling icing sugar on a dog turd). And perpetrated not by engineers, mark you, which might have been excusable, but by self-styled 'documentation professionals' who had often been paid more per hour than I was getting. One of my particular favourites was at (name of company removed) in 1995 where I was given an afternoon to edit a manual which contained in one place a single unpunctuated sentence 59 words long in which the verb 'to connect' and the nouns 'connector', 'connection' and 'connectivity' occurred no less than 15 times. I walked over to the boss-editor and pointed it out to him, remarking that you couldn't possibly learn to write like that; you have to be born that way. He stared at me in bewilderment and asked what was wrong with it? It later transpired that he had written it.
It was quite an eye-opener to me working in later years in Sweden and Norway to find that most Scandinavian engineers write better English than most English technical authors. As for English engineers, forget it: a semi-trained bonobo would do better.
Anyway, look on the bright side: we're now quite plainly into the age of post-literacy so it doesn't really matter. If everyone's got a particular disease then it isn't really a disease any longer. If you see what I mean...
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And finally, I cannot vouch for the following, but they might be examples from our future leaders, allegedly collated from GCSE exams.
GEOGRAPHY
Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q. Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants
like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends
to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature
abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
SOCIOLOGY
Q: What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
A: If you are buying a house, they will insist you are well endowed.
Q: In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A: Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election.
Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
BIOLOGY
Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes?
A: Premature death.
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A. Keep it in the cow. [He got an A!]
Q: How are the main parts of the body categorised? (e.g. abdomen.)
A: The body is consisted into three parts - the brainium, the borax and
the abdominal cavity. The branium contains the brain, the borax contains
the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels A,
E, I, O & U.
Q: What is the Fibula?
A: A small lie.
Q: What does 'varicose' mean?
A: Nearby.
Q: What is the most common form of birth control?
A: Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium.
Q: Give the meaning of the term 'Caesarean Section.'
A: The caesarean section is a district in Rome.
Q: What is a seizure?
A: A Roman emperor.
Q: What is a terminal illness?
A: When you are sick at the airport.
Q: Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
A: Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas.
ENGLISH
Q: Use the word 'judicious' in a sentence to show you understand
its meaning.
A: Hands that judicious can be soft as your face.
Q: What does the word 'benign' mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.
TECHNOLOGY
Q: What is a turbine?
A: Something an Arab wears on his head. |
