Intergral garages and dinning rooms

[Dave M]

I've no intention yet of moving home, but I do like to look through the details of house for sale. Perhaps just to wind myself up with the poor standard of grammar and spelling?

There's only so many things the agents can say about ordinary houses - so wouldn't you think they could spell them! It's amazing how often we see intergral garage, accomodation, dinning room, comprising of and so on, with contorted logic, too: would you really want a house where the first sentence of the description says (in full) A deceptively-spacious semi comprising of an entrance porch, wide hall and downstairs cloakroom? (What, no mention of kitchen, lounge, bedrooms, garage, etc??)

All this was just brought to mind yesterday, when I noticed that my out-laws' little Grundig radio (from the 80s, when Grundig radios were still admirable things) said, in small lettering on the dial panel: INTERGRATED CIRCUIT.

[SusanB]

Dave,
I notice you edited your above post about the errors in house descriptions. What mistake did you make, that you decided to remove before we saw it?

[Tone]

> INTERGRATED CIRCUIT<

That's the way. Chop it up and bury it inside the box!

Tone

[Geoff]

A new shop called Small Change opened in a neighbouring suburb recently. It occupies a huge, factory-like floor space and sells a very wide range of goods at very low prices (hence the name Small Change). When you enter the place and look around, it's hard to miss the rather large sign over the furniture section at the back that reads:

DINNING SUITES

[Pete]

Aug 11, 2008 22:08:05 GMT Geoff said:

A new shop called Small Change opened in a neighbouring suburb recently. It occupies a huge, factory-like floor space and sells a very wide range of goods at very low prices (hence the name Small Change). When you enter the place and look around, it's hard to miss the rather large sign over the furniture section at the back that reads:

DINNING SUITES

When I was growing up, this would have been an appropriate name for the furniture in the children's playroom, whence emanated an awful din much of the time!

[Vadim]

Aug 12, 2008 6:42:50 GMT Pete said:

When I was growing up, this would have been an appropriate name for the furniture in the children's playroom, whence emanated an awful din much of the time!

The use of "whence" has me thrown here, Pete. I know, obviously, that it must be correct (as you're rarely wrong) but could I have a translation/explanation, as I rather like the use.

[Pete]

This should help: dictionary.reference.com/browse/whence .

I generally use it in the sense of "from where". I also object to people saying "from whence", which I see as a tautology.

I hope that helps.

[Pete]

Almost forgot: an associated form is "hence", meaning "from here". For example, "Get thee hence, foul demon!"

dictionary.reference.com/browse/hence

[Dave M]

> What mistake did you make, that you decided to remove before we saw it? <

I've no idea! I make lots of mistakes in drafting something (there's still one in there saying "house" where I meant "houses"), but I prefer the final product to be as correct as I can make it.

I've no objection to people writing "dinning" or "intergrated" at first, but I do object to having to read such things in the formally published version. In the case of estate agents, the regular mistakes are in words which feature in nearly every sale - a quick-reference list of forty-or-so common errors would sort it!

[Twoddle]

I think it's a great shame that whence and hence, together with whither and hither, have fallen into disuse. Why do we now use two words ("from where", "to here" etc.) when one sufficed?

[Dave M]

Aug 12, 2008 10:08:19 GMT Twoddle said:

I think it's a great shame that whence and hence, together with whither and hither, have fallen into disuse. Why do we now use two words ("from where", "to here" etc.) when one sufficed?

Well, let's see:

I think - one word in Latin
it is - one word in Latin
a great shame - two words in Latin
that - not bothered with in Latin
.
.
.
together with - hell, that can be one word in English!

I guess it's just what sounds right. I quite like "whence", when I can use it smoothly - but "whence did you get that?" just doesn't sound right!

[Verbivore]

Dave M:

I've been aware for some time of the abysmal orthography in real estate adverts - even though those are not my usual reading choice.

A couple of months ago I conducted an in-house training course for local estate agent employees who wanted to be able to compile their own advert layouts in Adobe InDesign (the publishing industry standard).

(A couple of the agents wanted to know why they couldn't use MS Publisher! It might have suited their penchant for excessive decoration - ewww! - but I know of no printer in Oz who will accept a Publisher file because those files are just so poorly coded, and are, like most things Microsux, compliant with no industry standards except MS's own in-house ones).

When I asked why they wanted to make their own ad layouts when the local newspaper was quite capable of providing the service (and had done so for years), the answer was not "to save money" but "to have greater control of the content and design".

I should have known then and there to decline the contract, as there's nothing more frustrating to a professional layout technician than seeing what disasters can be produced by slightly informed amateurs. But the Benz fleet needed the money, so I took on the project - and suffered throughout the whole 12 sessions.

It seems that one of the gripes of the agents was the poor spelling in the newspaper-compiled adverts. Having observed that the occurrence of solecisms in real estate ads was disproportionately high compared with the rest of the newspaper content, I suspected the fault lay with the people who submitted the advert copy.

My suspicions proved to be correct.

The agent-trainees were generally incapable of distinguishing between border and boarder (so kept writing about properties near the "state boarder"!); "gently slopping blocks" (sloping!); acerage (acreage); and one that particularly amused me - a description of a farm with lots of man-made water storage as being "well damned" (dam well it was!).

It was all I could do to maintain decorum; I had a hard time trying to neither laugh nor cry too often each session.

When it came to the design aspects, I really had to hold back. The trainees were like children who'd just discovered crayons and wanted to use every colour, weight, and shape imaginable (and some that weren't!).

Aaarrrggghhh!

Of the 15 who started the course, only nine were left by session seven; seven completed the course, and one of those had a reasonable eye for appropriate design and, as a bonus, was more or less literate.

I have been following the "trained" agents' layouts and write-ups in the newspaper's real estate supplements and expect that before long the job will revert to the newspaper's layout staff - or it might even come my way (though I'm not keen - real estate is an industry I hold in very low regard).

My conclusion is that, unlike Aussie cab drivers, our real estate agents are not over-educated.

[Vadim]

Aug 12, 2008 10:08:19 GMT Twoddle said:

I think it's a great shame that whence and hence, together with whither and hither, have fallen into disuse. Why do we now use two words ("from where", "to here" etc.) when one sufficed?

The trouble is, I find, that If I (at 27) used any of the words you describe, Twoddle, that I would be laughed at and mocked. I would be classed as a know-it-all, or someone who thought they were better than the audience listening to those said words. It's a real shame, but I'm afraid it's a fact. I rarely talk with such tongues to my "usual" crowd. I'm glad however, that the posters on here use this language because I enjoy it's use.

[Dave M]

> I enjoy it's use <

Smack! ;D

[Vadim]

Aug 12, 2008 12:40:00 GMT Dave M said:

> I enjoy it's use <

Smack! ;D

Ouch! Will the beholder please pass the sackcloth.