Regular Spelling
Thoughts on language and more

Busy

Haven't had time today or yesterday to work on a new entry, so I thought I'd just put a quick summary instead.

Yesterday I was in training until late in the night, and because I started later I went and saw Hot Fuzz earlier in the day. Today I've got family in town for my sister's graduation tomorrow, so I was out to dinner all night. I have been working for the last week on an update to the story hosted on Pokegym, which I plan on having ready and updated on Tuesday, coinciding with the release of When They Cry ~ Higurashi on DVD that day, as I found a way of using that location as the setting for that update. After that I'll talk some about writing styles, and start bringing my other works over from the AnacondaSoftware site to here (a place better suited towards my own personal writing).

If I get the chance, I'll probably make an entry tomorrow about spelling mistakes, as that's what I've got in my mind right now. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care about spelling things in casual chatting, particularly about correcting errors caused by hitting the wrong keys. So I'll collect those that I do throughout tomorrow, and give some further commentary about them and my way of typing.

Thu, 31 May 2007 18:00:00 -0500

42% Of Scrabble Tiles For A Reason

Nw in my jb I wrk wth rcrds, rcrds tht r crticl nd ncssry fr dcmntng actns. nd ths rcrds hv to be ntrd in in a tm-crtcl fshn, as it's a cll evrnmnt nd so thr's 1 cll aftr nthr cnstntly.

As sch, smtms ppl wll abbrvt crtn thngs. Crtn thngs cn b abbrvtd, lke th wrd "cstmr". As lng as ths abbrvtns r kpt in a unfrm, nd cnsstnt mnnr, thn thngs wll b jst fn. Hwvr, whn smn dcds thy nd 2 strt mkng up thr own abbrvtns, is whn prblms strt to occr.

Abbrvtng sm rndm wrd tht nbdy ls abbrvts cn cas cnfsn nd dsmbgtn. Abbrvtng mltipl wrds cn cas ggrvtn, whn u hv to st thr nd try to fgr out wht's bng sd. Hwvr, n ll css, an abbrvtn shld stll fllw crtn rls abt abbrvtng. Jst tkng out ll of th vwls frm a wrd, is nt abbrvtng, ll it ds is mk it gly nd hrd to rd.

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Now, for those who are having trouble reading the above stupid, here's the article with it's vowels:

Now in my job I work with records, records that are critical and necessary for documenting actions. And those records have to be entered in in a time-critical fashion, as it's a call environment and so there's one call after another constantly.

As such, sometimes people will abbreviate certain things. Certain things can be abbreviated, like the word "customer". As long as these abbreviations are kept in a uniform, and consistent manner, then things will be just fine. However, when someone decides they need to start making up their own abbreviations, is when problems start to occur.

Abbreviating some random word that nobody else abbreviates can cause confusion and disambiguation. Abbreviating multiple words can cause aggravation, when you have to sit there and try to figure out what's being said. However, in all cases, an abbreviation should still follow certain rules about abbreviating. Just taking out all of the vowels from a word, is not abbreviating, all it does is make it ugly and hard to read.

See the difference? And, there's a couple spots in the top where my removal of vowels is inconsistent, taking one out in a word then deciding to leave that vowel in the next time that word has come up. I did that on purpose, because I have seen that. Honest to goodness, people, take some freaking typing lessons if you can't type very fast!

Tue, 29 May 2007 15:00:00 -0500

Geek's a Verb?

So, being that its Memorial Day, its kinda slow around work. Not as slow as say Thanksgiving or Christmas would be, but it is slower than usual. That's giving people a lot of waiting time, which most of them are filling with just reading stuff on the internet.

Overhearing someone talk to one of the supervisors, he basically summed up his boredom with the phrase "I'm being paid to geek!"

To geek? A verb?

Let's try and find a verb form.

First, from Merriam-Webster's site:
geek. noun
1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake

Umm.... lets not make that word a verb for this sentence...

2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked

Sounds like a word that could be used, but we're talking in a room of "intellectual" technicians, so that doesn't fit either.

3 : an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity

There's our word, but it's still in a noun form. No verb form from Webster, let's see what Dictionary.com has to say.

The nouns are pretty much the same as on Merriam-Webster, but Dictionary.com does have a verb form for us to work with:

tr.v. geeked, geek·ing, geeks - To excite emotionally

So he's getting paid to, uhh, get exited emotionally?

I dont think thats what he was trying to say.

Mon, 28 May 2007 10:00:00 -0500

That's My Name

About a month or so I had to replace my car. Not like it was a big expense, I was rear-ended last November with my previous car, and it was declared totaled by the insurance company of the guy who hit me. They sent me the check and it was done, but I was still driving it around so didn't do anything with it yet, wasn't imperative that I go out and replace it at the time.

Then it died up in Idaho while my mother borrowed it for a trip. That made it pretty imperative at that point.

So I found a car, a 1995 Mercury Sable that was pretty much the exact price as the insurance payout. My previous car was a 1991 Sable, so I knew how the car handled and was pretty pleased. This new Sable required some additional work, particularly a part in the transmission and the speedometer needle in the instrument panel had a problem, which would make the needle bounce around. Two separate problems, two separate behaviors, and both had to be replaced. After that repair was said and done, some other minor things started magically working, like my right break light when the headlights were turned off and my emergency flashers, neither of which worked when I got it.

I didn't particularly know when the last regular maintenance was done on it, however. So I decided to take it to Jiffy Lube today to get the oil changed and the other things checked, so I could start keeping track of things for a maintenance schedule.

I go there, they start working on my car and one of them starts entering information about me into their database. My name and address, the make, model, and year of the car, and mileage.

He starts with my last name. Now my last name is spelled "Cheney", and pronounced "Chaney". Because of that, it's often spelled wrong, though not so much since Bush and Cheney went into office, since the same pronunciation is true for Dick Cheney's name. I've just gotten used to spelling it after giving it though, leaving him no room for ambiguity.

Next he moves to my first name. I give it to him, and watch him type in "Danial"

Danial?

I've never even seen that spelling before. "Daniel" is a really common name. In fact there are at least 6 Daniel's at my work, 3 of which, including me, all sit within a relatively close area, making it difficult to get the right person to respond if you just call out "Daniel". But I've never seen the name Danial in people I knew, or other people's records. So, where did he get Danial?

I corrected him, he corrected the spelling and finished entering the information. I go back to waiting for them to finish, then when they're done go pay. Everything is done, and I leave.

My name's Daniel, not Denial.

Sat, 26 May 2007 11:00:00 -0500

Regular Spelling Dot Com

So here it is, RegularSpelling.com. This is my personal blog, and I'm going to comment on language here. Not just English, and not just human languages either.

A little about myself. I work in a call center, doing tech support. Involved in this is of course notation of calls, and in there I see some unusual slaughterings of the English language. I also hear some interesting things said vocally. In addition, I also moderate a fairly large tech forum, and belong to various other forums of varying purpose. Through this, I see other unusual things, from people not bothered to spell or write properly, and people who's native language is different than the language they're typing, causing some oddities caused by the difference in grammatical structure. As a hobby, I like to write, and I'm an independent Web/Graphic Designer and Software Developer specializing in video game development. I also study linguistic elements as a hobby.

I think I'll start out this blog by explaining the name of this site.

This morning, as I was signing in, a co-worker was directing a person over the phone to a website. I don't even remember what the site was at this point. Apparently this person wasn't sure how to spell the website. So, this co-worker reassured the person that there wasn't any unusual spellings, or hyphens in the domain name or anything. He did it with the following phrasing:

" (so and so site) dot com. Regular Spelling
dot com"

Are we really to a point of degeneration where everything needs to be spelled out? Do we just expect things to be not spelled correctly, so never assume that it's spelled exactly the way it is supposed to be spelled?

A couple other of the people who start at the same time as me and I laughed at this concept, "RegularSpelling.com", especially when our jobs involved seeing everything but "regular spelling" for things. A quick check of domain availability, for humors sake, revealed that there was no such site as "RegularSpelling.com".

And I promptly decided to change that, leading to what you find here.

Fri, 25 May 2007 16:00:00 -0500