What's a Vegatable?

O dear, and numeracy as well, I'm not a bright spark, well, i can count to 20 but i have to take my shoes and socks off first

 

That's what I was thinking of, and especially that an organisation such as The RHS should be able to spell vegetable.

An old favourite is enviromental environmental and a quick google shows the Cairngorms National Park Authority (surprised they didn't spell it Cairngorns like what many organisations do), Leeds/Bradford International Airport, Doves Farm, The Oxford Health Alliance, etc. can't get it right.

 

I'm in despair at this downslide in written English. I make errors but not out of laziness. We have a duty to protect our language from decline.
Jenny

 

I used to write specifications and draft contract documents where the wrong word/use of punctuation could have severe financial implications. 3 bathrooms in a garage - amazing!

 

Trouble is Scrungee, today's kids wouldn't see the howler there. They would automatically accept that it means a 3 bed house with a bathroom.
It wouldn't take much to confuse them though would it....

 

I agree personal errors are the way we are, but business errors, especially with spell checkers in most software is unforgivable. You do have to remember to change most spell checkers to British English, even if you have purchased in the UK, as seems to me most are set to US English, and we all know how wrong that is ( ).

My biggest fear is on Numeracy, you see it every day. Go to the pub, buy 1 pint of beer or whatever, server cannot tell you how much before tapping into the till, say it is £3.20, you hand over a Fiver, they have to go to the till, enter how much you gave and then see how much change to give. Fair do's, they have nothing to work out as such, apart from how to give you your change, then, they seem to stand there perplexed. It seems to me, that they cannot fathom how to give you £1.80 change, the £1, is simple enough, that is the gold coloured one (ha ha, the word coloured shows up as a spelling error), now how to make 80 pence from the silver and bronze ones..... duh!

The same can be said of supermarkets, till staff seem frightened when presented with cash and not a card.

Shocking, and PLEASE do not get me started on percentages and fractions, and they are so easy now in a decimal world ( OK, the US still use US Imperial, but they always have been awkward so-and-so's )

As I type this, my mind thinks, hey hang on a minute, but you will spell check this...... yep because I can, but I could also write this out with a pen, pencil or chalk and show that I am also human and prone to speling mistakes, I could then, take each paragraph, add up the number of words in each, add all those totals together, thus giving me the total number of words I have written, without the need for a calculator or the need to write it down.

I appreciate some people can struggle with, either one or both, Literacy and Numeracy, and I feel for them, BUT, basics are basics, and in today's world there is no excuse for not having a basic understanding of Literacy and Numeracy, we have tutors who can teach us almost anything, but, sadly, it seems to me that most attention is on skills other than those of the ability to read, write, add up and take away.

I have taken up way too much of your time so will leave it at that. RANT OVER.

I mean no offence to anyone here or wherever, just my humble opinion.

 

There seems to be a certain amount of surprise among many commentators at one of the findings of the OECD study:

This comes as no surprise to me at all. During the past couple of years I've been involved in looking at CVs prior to arranging interviews for our summer help at work.
On each occasion there was generally a marked difference in the quality of spelling and grammar used by candidates in these different age groups.

Those submitted by candidates in the older age group were usually far more accurate and
coherent than those submitted by the younger applicants.

This disparity is often also apparent when actually working alongside people from the different age groups. The younger ones often seem to be lacking in basic skills such as clear verbal communication and simple mental arithmetic, skills which were commonplace and essential when I left school.

 

Could not have put it any better myself.

 

But even in the US they know how to spell v.e.g.e.t.a.b.l.e.

 

OMG, just how bad can it get?

Breaking news http://uk.news.yahoo.com/vatican-withdraws-medals-misspelled-jesus-145109966.html

 

Jenny

 

You beat me to it