Re: Job Offer

On Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:23:42 -0400, Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On 3/15/2025 9:28 AM, AMuzi wrote:

On 3/14/2025 10:02 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

>

If my department hiring committee were looking for a full time
professor, or if I were hiring a part timer, we'd reject anyone whose
communications included words like "elszwhere" or "arroused" or
"jnterviewing" OR "mowt orf."

>
After all, there is nothing more important than correct spelling on a
newsgroup.

>
Most of us here handle that with barely a thought.
>
John is always misspelling "college" as "collage" (which is an artwork
assembled from parts) and I've seen many people confuse "loose" and
"lose", but their mistakes are a tiny fraction of yours.
>
It makes a person wonder whether you have very low standards, or
whether you're incapable of normal accuracy. Either possibility is
probably fatal for a job application.
>
We'll see, I guess. Let us know when you're _actually_ working and
getting paid by this company. If you don't, we can discuss whether the
"offer" was only as real as the dent in your top tube, or whether they
ultimately rejected you.
>

 
While I do notice usage, grammar and spelling (I read the newspaper pen
in hand) such as errant or superfluous apostrophes, who/whom, the all
too common 'indexes' for 'indices' and so on, drawing attention to
others' writing eccentricities is usually picayune and borders on snarky.
 
Except when there's some shared humor to be found!

>
I almost always ignore misspellings here. It does require a bit of self
control, because my work history makes the "correction" reflex strong.
Part of my job was to correct and grade student work, and I corrected
_all_ of it. Even for a solution to a mathematical problem, if a student
misspelled a word, I'd circle it.
>
Note that I've never bothered to correct John's "collage" even though he
spells it that way every time.
>
Vaguely related: Among the private emails Jobst and I traded, there were
two times he offered me advice on English sentence structure, when he
thought I could have expressed myself better. I was, shall we say, bemused.

Years ago, a woman read one of my books, or at least part of one. She
claimed to be a professional developmental/content editor and wanted
permission to copy several pages of that book and edit if for free.
Presumably to convince me to hire her  At that point the book had been
proofread and didn't need a proofreader/copy editor.

He version added tons of what I call garbage content, including way
too many descriptions of places and characters.

I wasn't going to hire her anyway....

I want my stories to move fast. I do my best to follow Hemingway's
advice...

....leave out unnecessary words and leave out information that the
reader can figure out for themselves.

--
C'est bon
Soloman