Language

Last week's assignment was an assessment of a company's use of software. The goal was to solve their biggest problems and identify efficiencies they could realize through better use of available features in the product.

Naturally, I found a plethora of opportunities for improvement. That's not particularly unusual, because most companies don't deign to use their software consultants in a way that brings them true value; their attitude is usually, "Just give us a couple of weeks training, and we'll take it from there, thanks." The decision-making process most favored is generally known as "penny-wise, pound foolish".

I wrote a 30-page tome with all my findings and solutions, and shared it with the client group. I also shared it with the managers at the software company, suggesting that they have an opportunity to do some more business with this client.

The funny part of the story is that the software company manager sent me an email. The report was "OK". Actually, it was better than anything anybody else at the company ever created, but "OK" will do. I laughed when I read her feedback that notified me of a "typo". My "typo" was the use of "en masse" in a phrase, related to an alternative method for entry of data. Apparently she is unfamiliar with the common usage of "en masse". Do you suppose she missed the fact that Microsoft Word didn't even give it the red underline?

It's not all that unusual to get asked what I meant by a word or phrase. Perhaps it is a fault of mine to sometimes exploit an extended vocabulary in expressing myself. I truly never use vocabulary to impress; I merely choose the words I feel best fit the message. It's funny when someone tells me a perfectly appropriate word or phrase is a typo.

Not to pick on this individual, in fact, you should have seen what I saw back when I was myself a manager for the software company. Part of my role back then was to review reports created by consultants, mainly to keep up with what was happening in the various projects. They were mostly awful. Most of these folks couldn't pass a Freshman Composition class. Freshman in High School. That is, depending on what high schools are teaching these days - you never know. I often found myself wondering, while reading a particularly poor example of a consultant status report, how in the world this consultant actually graduated from a real university. Maybe I should send the consultant's alma mater English department a copy of one of their status reports, along with a letter asking whether this was a representative writing example of their university graduates.

Some of them couldn't put a coherent sentence together if their job depended on it. And they're professional, highly-paid consultants? So glad I'm not responsible for that anymore.

Wouldn't it be nice if the average person had at least enough education to be able to express themself in a reasonably coherent sentence? With at least most words spelled correctly?

Recalling Professor Henry Higgins about the English language; "In America, they haven't spoken it in years."