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Literacy

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    Literacy

    What's the standard of written English like at your ClientCo? And what do you do with communications that are so badly phrased as to be ambiguous or almost incomprehensible? I am thinking of this kind of thing:

    This in first place should not be used by any other project team except the admin but due to the other way where many are using it for which tracking of the changelings happening in XXXX server is difficult.
    Say what? Not talking about chatty informal mails (or bulletin board posts ;-), but design documents, formal policy announcements, technical communications and so forth. Personally, if I cannot make sense of a text, I either bin it or rewrite in clear language and return. When it comes up later I point out that pidgin is no language in which to conduct business.

    Of course the real mystery is how someone who, if they were a native school-leaver applying for a post and demonstrated this level of literacy would not even get an interview, came to be employed in the first place.
    My subconscious is annoying. It's got a mind of its own.

    #2
    Not illiterate, but was vaguely amused when this message popped up on my screen this morning:

    Your copy of System Update needs to be updated. Click OK to begin updating System Update.

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      #3
      Pretty damn good seeing as they're all German. The only crap written English here is me
      Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

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        #4
        Originally posted by mudskipper View Post
        Not illiterate, but was vaguely amused when this message popped up on my screen this morning:
        you realise that is an auto generated sentence created as below :

        Your copy of <program> needs to be updated. Click OK to begin updating <program>.
        Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

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          #5
          Pretty damn good seeing as they're all German. The only crap written English here is me
          Yep. Europeans in general seem to put us to shame. Worked on a multination project once where the technical lead was German, but had no English, and I have negligible German. The Dutch PM was tri-lingual at least and used to drop in and out of Dutch, English and German like she was a native speaker of each...
          My subconscious is annoying. It's got a mind of its own.

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            #6
            Originally posted by vetran View Post
            you realise that is an auto generated sentence created as below :

            Your copy of <program> needs to be updated. Click OK to begin updating <program>.
            I do. But it still amused me.

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              #7
              Originally posted by pjclarke View Post
              Of course the real mystery is how someone who, if they were a native school-leaver applying for a post and demonstrated this level of literacy would not even get an interview, came to be employed in the first place.
              WTF are you on about?

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                #8
                Originally posted by pjclarke View Post
                Of course the real mystery is how someone who, if they were a native school-leaver applying for a post and demonstrated this level of literacy would not even get an interview, came to be employed in the first place.
                Oracle will snap them up.
                Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by pjclarke View Post
                  Yep. Europeans in general seem to put us to shame. Worked on a multination project once where the technical lead was German, but had no English, and I have negligible German. The Dutch PM was tri-lingual at least and used to drop in and out of Dutch, English and German like she was a native speaker of each...
                  So you mean the Dutch put Germany and England to shame?

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Old Greg View Post
                    WTF are you on about?
                    Are you being ironic? I am surprised by the apparent double standard that communication skills in general and written English in particular are said to be a key element of employability- which I agree with; we regularly get some Captain of industry bemoaning the falling standards in this area and basic numeracy amongst school leavers, and even graduates, while at the same time an increasing proportion of the people I work with at ClientCos are colleagues who don't have English as their first language and whose poor communication skills you would think would render them unemployable. These people seem to get a free pass. I don't get it and I was just wondering what others thought.
                    My subconscious is annoying. It's got a mind of its own.

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