Posts filed in ‘multiple meanings’
Breaking tables and other nondestructive tips
Broken tables. Frozen panes. Split screens. This is not debris from a crime spree. These are names of techniques used to manage documents.
To carry forward the heading of a table that’s flowed on to the next page, apply the word processing command to repeat the table heading.
Similarly, to cement the heading of a spreadsheet row and still be able to read row 100, apply the spreadsheet command to freeze rows.
Moving right along, to view and compare two areas of the same document, use the split screen tool.
And finally, to prevent someone else from messing with your workbook, use protection.
I’m not making up these names.
Comma me this
Hearing that educated women have fewer healthier children seems questionable sure, but the reporter understood the subject’s context. This Q&A is from an article in Rotman Magazine, an interview with economist, Michael Spence.
Q Why is it so important for developing countries to focus on educating young girls and integrating them into the labour force as a way to break intergenerational cycles of poverty:
A Educated women have fewer, healthier children; they have them later in life…
The comma means ‘and’; fewer and healthier children, no question.
Report style v Q&A style
The Global Health Council addresses the same subject in a report on Girls’ Education: A Self-Sustaining Investment in Children’s and Women’s Health.
Educated girls:
- Delay marriage and first pregnancy
- Have fewer low-birthweight babies and healthier newborns
- Have smaller families
Same issue. Different presentation style. Know the context. Say it right.
OMG! Badger State tourism up
Last month I ragged on South Carolina. Today it’s Wisconsin’s turn. Lots of free advertising boosted the Badger State’s tourism industry last year. Apparently, the abbreviation of Wisconsin state’s tourism group had been interjected into lots of text messages. So why are they changing their name?
Wisconsin Tourism Federation
Speaking of ragging, shouldn’t abbreviations be gender-tested, especially when begotten from IT? Some years ago I had to break it to an engineer that his acronym for a Product Management System was already taken. Yup, the PMS.
Jeez!
Saved by the rules, bothered by the exceptions
File this under know your audience. A classmate asked for help to understand an excerpt from the rules of professional conduct.
An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with potentially conflicting interests in an immigration matter, save after adequate disclosure to and with the consent of the parties, and shall not act or continue to act in a matter when there is or is likely to be a conflict of interest.
The word save can be used as a verb, noun, preposition, and conjunction. Save used as literary term is out of context when found in policies and procedures writing. Don’t do it. Constructed as such, it’s not immediately evident that an exception follows the rule.
In the context of writing policy you want to deconstruct it something like this.
Rule: An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with…
Exception: Only after adequate disclosure to…
February update: The U.S. “brain-dead immigration system” is more reason to come to Canada. Read the article.
Cross-border negotiations — table it
“I bring something to the table!”
This term ‘table’ has been bugging me since moving to Canada. Apparently, here, ‘to table‘ something means to formally propose or offer a topic for discussion. For example, the condo association tabled the discussion on landscaping. After the agenda items were covered they initiated a discussion so residents could gripe about dead shrubbery.
Whoa!
In the US you’d say ‘let’s table it’ to mean postponing any discussion or consideration of a motion or thing.
Knowing this difference is helpful before tabling anything with Americans and Canadians present.
Threading
Threading has more than one meaning and I was curious why the neighbourhood manicurists advertise ‘threading’.
My new hairstylist informed me that threading refers to an eyebrow treatment. I envisioned a steady hand painlessly sewing threads to the skin. A sparse brow nicely filled. Oh no, she corrected. Threading trims the brow by removing a row at a time. According to her client with the best-looking brows the technique involves a flying thread, strong teeth, and head/hand coordination. Now I wanted threading and everything I wanted to know was answered quite thoroughly in this online guide.