| General Non-Fiction posted June 3, 2020 |
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I am not always sure what I write or wrote
Seeing Eye to Eye
by Lobber
In 1983 a major company hired me as Executive Secretary. A previous boss praised my eye for details.
I arrived with a mug of coffee in hand. I sat down at my new computer and decided to introduce myself to the Board. I wanted my memo to be short and precise.
My personal printer whirled as it delivered my “Bcc” copy.
My eyes froze in horror as I read the following:
Hell to All,
My coffee landed on the carpet.
In a mere second the omission of a letter “o” belied my reputation as the right man fir the job.
True Story Flash contest entry
In 1983 a major company hired me as Executive Secretary. A previous boss praised my eye for details.
I arrived with a mug of coffee in hand. I sat down at my new computer and decided to introduce myself to the Board. I wanted my memo to be short and precise.
My personal printer whirled as it delivered my “Bcc” copy.
My eyes froze in horror as I read the following:
Hell to All,
My coffee landed on the carpet.
In a mere second the omission of a letter “o” belied my reputation as the right man fir the job.
In the mid 21st century very few men were hired as a secretary. Acclaimed novelist Joseph Finder captures this phenomenon in an article he wrote for The New York Times Magazine in 1987. Finder writes about why he failed as a male secretary:
For the grooves are too deep. The word secretary is, after all, derived from ''secret.'' Secretaries are entrusted with vulnerabilities and flaws and idiosyncrasies, with the bad grammar, lousy spelling and petty evasions of their bosses (whether male or female). They are, by the nature of their work, subordinate, supportive and nurturing. They are, therefore, by our sexual typecasting, female.
I am not sure things have changed that much since 1987.
- Lobber
=====
Here are [some] costly typos that give phrase - economy of words - new meaning.
. . . NASA AND ITS MISSING HYPHEN
The damage: $80 million
Hyphens do not usually score high on the list of most important punctuation. But a single dash led to absolute failure for NASA in 1962 in the case of Mariner 1, America and its first interplanetary probe. The mission was simple: get up close and personal with close neighbor Venus. But a single missing hyphen in the coding used to set trajectory and speed caused the craft to explode just minutes after takeoff.
2001: A Space Odyssey novelist Arthur C. Clarke called it the most expensive hyphen in history.
. . .
Humans and computers do not always play well together. In 2006, New York City comptroller William Thompson admitted that a typo - an extra letter, to be precise - caused its accounting software to misinterpret a document, leading the city and its Department of Education to double its transportation spending (shelling out $2.8 million instead of $1.4 million). . . .
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/49935/10-very-costly-typos
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. For the grooves are too deep. The word secretary is, after all, derived from ''secret.'' Secretaries are entrusted with vulnerabilities and flaws and idiosyncrasies, with the bad grammar, lousy spelling and petty evasions of their bosses (whether male or female). They are, by the nature of their work, subordinate, supportive and nurturing. They are, therefore, by our sexual typecasting, female.
I am not sure things have changed that much since 1987.
- Lobber
=====
Here are [some] costly typos that give phrase - economy of words - new meaning.
. . . NASA AND ITS MISSING HYPHEN
The damage: $80 million
Hyphens do not usually score high on the list of most important punctuation. But a single dash led to absolute failure for NASA in 1962 in the case of Mariner 1, America and its first interplanetary probe. The mission was simple: get up close and personal with close neighbor Venus. But a single missing hyphen in the coding used to set trajectory and speed caused the craft to explode just minutes after takeoff.
2001: A Space Odyssey novelist Arthur C. Clarke called it the most expensive hyphen in history.
. . .
Humans and computers do not always play well together. In 2006, New York City comptroller William Thompson admitted that a typo - an extra letter, to be precise - caused its accounting software to misinterpret a document, leading the city and its Department of Education to double its transportation spending (shelling out $2.8 million instead of $1.4 million). . . .
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/49935/10-very-costly-typos
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