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An addendum or two
This topic raises a question about common usage.
In my world, an addendum, like an appendix, is a supplement to a book. Publications may conclude with several of these add-ons but not usually in combination. So what is acceptable usage when a book contains more than one addendum or appendix – Addenda? Appendices?
Conversationally, this sounds pretentious if not passé. It took a short twenty years for appendixes to become the preferred term. Updating the style guide neither hastens a term’s use nor demise.
I turn to Merriam-Webster for guidance. The dictionary recognizes the use of addendums but keeps silent on whether that form is correct. Answers.com says addendums is an acceptable plural.
These days when I hear appendices and especially indices the words ring like nails on a blackboard. (Does anyone even know what a blackboard is?) Addendums will become generally accepted no doubt. A living language gets tweaked every day.
Look who’s talking
Want to compose your documents by voice instead of by keystrokes?
Mom probably never thought that her advice to ‘think before you speak’ applied to technical speaking, but today, that’s all you really need to do to use dictation software.
Current systems are so reliable that even a child’s voice can serve as a suitable input. Not that you’d want baby Kaylie dictating court proceedings, but it’s technologically possible. If you were going to choose Kaylie’s voice, the setup might look something like this:
Benevolent types only
Fortunately, two decades of steady improvements have untethered the technical speaker from desktops in quiet rooms. You could say that technical speaking is as easy as chattering on a cel phone – if you know exactly what you’re about to say.
Here’s what New York Times columnist David Pogue writes—er speaks—about the latest dictation software.
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.
Pomp and Circumstance
<Insert your institute of higher learning here.>
Commencement speakers are honoured and humbled to be here this day. Gathered guests are thanked for their supporting role. The speaker fervently relates the mechanism by which she/he overcame personal obstacles (while you ponder your own not-so-different circumstance). The encouraging family member, insightful teacher, and/or divine being are acknowledged. Family and friends couldn’t be more proud. The day is filled with photos, embraces and unbridled optimism.
All graduations are pretty much the same – cheering sections, flowers, unpredictable weather, caps and gowns.
On this day we repeatedly tell grads to believe they can do anything they set their sights on. But belief is not enough. We must also remind them to have a plan to make it so.
Mission Operations Report
This month marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission. Whether you watched the PBS documentary or the Hollywood version, the story was gripping. Yet, the life-saving manual seemed easy enough to use. Nothing fancy. The neatly typed document included handmade graphs, penciled in symbols, and annotations by James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise. The crew journeyed to the moon, almost, and back using less computing power than an iPhone. The 345 page Mission Operations Report compiles reports from a dozen mission officers.
Daylight saving
It’s that time again. Time to skip east by one time zone in search of saving daylight hours. Alaska (daylight) Time becomes British Columbia’s Pacific (standard) Time. Each successive time zone changes the clock by one hour, until Newfoundland Time.
Here, it’s offset by a half hour. So neighbouring Atlantic Time broadcasters tell listeners to stay tuned for the news at 6:00, 6:30 in Newfoundland.
Funny thing about time zones, when you include all the offsets like Newfoundland Time, they add up to more than 24 – and that’s a lot of daylight hours partially saved.
Welcome World
Typically before a hockey game, you’ll see transit buses destined for “Go Canucks”. In the run up to the 2010 Winter Olympics buses changed the route to “Welcome World”. Canada did a pretty good job getting the word out worldwide. With Olympic-size crowds to be welcomed, businesses and schools flexed their hours and some locals left town.
The blue and green, sea and sky motif is the theme of Vancouver 2010. The signage is as familiar as an umbrella – just totally unexpected a half a world away.
But there at the Canadian Embassy in Hanoi was the familiar signage, welcoming visitors like me.
Stop the bus!
Happy 2,010!
Happy new year, and now the great debate begins… How to say the next decade. Words from the last decade got sorted out. It wasn’t the more familiar sounding “nine-one-one” that stuck but rather “nine-eleven”. I don’t recall a debate about calling the 2000-2009 period the ‘oughts’. Is that even how you say it?
Two things are for certain; the year 2000 happened with nary a Y2K glitch, and the XXI Olympic Winter Games are called the 2010 Winter Olympics. Psst, just say ‘twenty-ten’ and everyone will catch on.
Time to renew
Kiss this decade goodbye.
It was a tough year whether you worked or not. iTunes, for one, has not seen much spending from this customer. But I’m less worried about Apple. On the other hand the professional society I belong to went splaaat. A financial shortfall almost closed the doors.
Chapter members heard countless pleas to financially assist the society and responded with a.) ways to keep the society afloat, and b.) reasons to cut bait.
Canadian STC chapters get fewer benefits – no discounted insurance programs, no salary survey covering this country, no directorship, and lots fewer Canadian job postings. We are losing our pass-through dividend and probably lots of members too due to the dues increase.
More money for fewer services. I’ve gone back and forth – to fish or cut bait.
Traditions and resolutions get the better of me. I’m reviving our 1990′s practice of ringing in the new with a cup of warm sake.
And I’ll renew my STC membership for 2010 for the price of three artists complete sets on iTunes.
Happy New Year’s Day.
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Another day, another money
That was the translation offered by an Asian gentleman as I paid for a bus pass. I had to know if the same symbol represented both money and dollars.
Another day, another money
They appeared to be different enough but conceptually the idiom worked. Learning the global language of money one idiom at a time. Next up:
- sixty-four-thousand-dollar question
- phony as a three-dollar bill
- day late and a dollar short
- bet dollars to donuts