Great return on delegation

I was at a workshop on Friday last week and one of the presenters was talking about making the best use of your time.  His suggestion was scheduling 90 minutes, in 3 separate sessions, with specific goals to achieve during each session, when you are at your best and can work without interruption.  Sound advice but not advice that is followed very often.

He urged us to concentrate on doing those things that only "you", as the business owner and main driving force, can do.  He advocated off-loading all the things that someone else can do to someone else, preferably a person with the specific skills to do those tasks more easily and quicker than you can.  To answer the inevitable response - I can't afford to do that - he said that was RUBBISH (his caps) and that you would gain between 3 and 10 times the revenue you spend to do this.  Quite a return.  I nearly cheered!

This is the first time I have come across a specific cost/benefit statement for delegating your routine work whilst you get on with the really important process of building your business and illustrates the real difference between working in your business and working on your business.  I'm sure the thinking is based on the extra time you will have available if you are not slogging away, thinking how busy you are, but actually not making any progress at all.

I guess I'm biased because my business is based on relieving people of their routine and time-consuming tasks but, even so, I'm trying to put his 90 minute suggestions in place.

The apostrophe's death sentence and reprieve

Fun and games in the press this week because a council in Devon decided, in the small print of a report, to remove "all punctuation, including apostrophes" in the naming of streets, ostensibly to avoid confusion.

The Times went into battle with a leading article, reproduced below, headed "Punctuation's Perplexities".  This explains in great detail why the apostrophe is such a useful little mark and why it is worth mastering its use.  The attention seems to have had the desired effect and Mid Devon Council announced yesterday that they had had a change of heart.  The headmaster of a local preparatory school commented "What hope would we have in teaching children punctuation if it has been removed from society and all of the road signs?".  Exactly!

"Punctuation's Perplexities

'The rules governing this vexing little mark are evidently hard to master,' wrote Kingsley Amis about the apostrophe, 'and if you have any trouble with them or it after the age of 14 or so, the chances are that you will always be liable to error in the matter.'
That reasoning appears to have occurred also to the Mid Devon District Council. But the inference that the council has drawn from it would have provoked a visceral response from the celebrated author and professional curmudgeon. Apostrophes have progressively fallen into disuse in Mid-Devonian street names. They are now to be banished altogether, to 'avoid potential confusion'.
The council does not say what the confusion consists in or who risks suffering it, but the proposed remedy is surely intended to be helpful. Any residents who have not yet mastered the conventions of English punctuation will be spared the effort of wondering what these are and the inconvenience of learning them.
Except, of course, they won’t. Beyond the borders of Mid Devon, and in newspapers and other publications that intrude within them, the apostrophe will remain in use. Its great virtue as a mark of punctuation is that it aids clarity and dispels confusion. It signals the omission of a letter, or the quality of possession and (if so) whether the possession is held singly or plurally. It enables the reader to tell apart a plural and a genitive. The residents of Mid Devon should have the uncontested right to share those benefits, which are enjoyed by the rest of the English-speaking world.
For example, in the town of Newton Abbott, in Devon, lies Bakers View. It is not “Baker’s” View, even though it is named for a man called Baker. This is Sir Samuel Baker, the Victorian explorer and naturalist, who worked to suppress the slave trade in Southern Sudan. In omitting the apostrophe, the council has already ensured that Baker’s name will diminish into unmerited obscurity.
The punctilious urge to tidy up the language by excising apostrophes from proper names is admittedly found outside Devon and it appears to be spreading. But there are good reasons for avoiding that temptation.
Waterstone’s, the bookseller, changed its name last year to Waterstones. Its declared aim in doing so was to shift the emphasis from its founder to its branches and employees. That is a benign intention. It would, however, have been better advanced, especially in the case of a company whose business is the written word, by adopting the name Waterstones’.
Shifting the position of the apostrophe would have conveyed the desired message clearly. The apostrophe is a punctuation mark that drives out ambiguity. It allows the reader to tell immediately if a word or name is a singular possessive (“Baker’s View”), a plural possessive (“Bakers’ View”) or a plural noun followed by a verb (“Bakers View”).
The apostrophe occupies a small space in print or on signs but performs an invaluable role by its presence, position or absence. There is no more versatile, precise and economical mark in the language. Writers who use it accurately can be sure of being understood. Those who use it heedlessly or dispense with it will, contrary to the aims of Mid Devon’s municipal authorities, provoke disarray where they intend only neatness and comprehension. Mark it well."

A teacher in need of an education?

Did you see the letter published in the paper this week from a parent?  This comment was apparently written in a primary school child's book by the class teacher: "You could of wrote more".

I despair of our education system that allows the appointment of a teacher with such a poor grasp of basic grammar.  There are plenty of people around who misunderstand what is being said and then write 'of' instead of 'have', but they shouldn't be teaching children. 

And how can they possibly teach English to children if they don't know the correct tense to use?

Unbelievable.

Event organisation - it looks easy

Organising an event looks easy and, if it’s done right, it should do.  Unfortunately many people find that, when they come to do it themselves, it is anything but.  There are always lots of details, any one of which can bring the project into difficulty and which can make the event look “amateur”.  If you want your conference, product launch, customer thank-you or whatever else you have in mind, to go smoothly there are some basics you need to get right.

When it comes to organising an event, of whatever kind, it’s important to start at the end.  When is it to be held?  Does that leave enough time to prepare everything?  Are there any fixed points that cannot be changed?  Sometimes it’s the time of year, sometimes an actual date, that is important.  Other things, like Bank Holidays, may influence the best time for your event and they need to be established before booking a venue.

When deciding on a venue it’s important to realise what the pitfalls are.  I once had to set up an event where access for the stand equipment was so poor that large pieces of metal equipment had to be negotiated around glass-walled corridors.  Another had a huge pillar in a room which was hosting a seminar, which meant that the seating arrangement was almost impossible to sort out.  Needless to say, I had not booked nor seen the venues beforehand!

Depending on the venue, some will insist you use their caterers, or include support you don’t need, and charge by the delegate, when you may not know how many people you will have attending.  It’s important to have a spreadsheet which covers all the items you have to spend money on, so that you can see if you are keeping within your budget.

Spellchecker failure

Newspapers long ago dispensed with proofreaders, having decided that spellchecker would do the job for them.  Unfortunately spellchecker does not pick up words that are actually spelt correctly, but the wrong word in the context.

Two found in the same article in the Sunday Times this week:

With the excellence of his performance against Scotland we now that it was not ideas, but gas.

Farrell Jr is already an infinite superior Union player to his father.

In the second case infinite should be infinitely.

Mistakes like this fall into the category of letters left out to form a completely new word:

her becomes he, then becomes the, bonny becomes bony, scar becomes car.

These are very difficult mistakes to pick up.  The thing is, when a reader comes across this kind of thing in your promotional material he or she is likely to pause, to try and make out what the word should be, or perhaps completely misunderstand what you are trying to say.  Worst of all, they may just abandon reading at that point.

Why Does Proofreading Matter?

Proofreading matters because mistakes in your promotional material, including your website, detract from your message and can confuse the reader so that they don't understand what you are saying.  If they don't understand they probably won't engage with you.  Which means no sales.

This particularly applies to non-native English speakers who find our complicated language hard enough and are less likely to pick up the gist of your message.

It's so easy to make a mistake.  We all do it.  But it's really hard to check your own work.  You know what you intended to say and read the script as if that's exactly what you wrote.  Another pair of eyes is needed to bring a fresh look to your work.

Many's the time when I've come across a website full of mistakes but when I try to contact the company it appears that they've stopped trading.  Cause and effect?

A good example of a sentence meaning something completely different from that intended by the writer is the following - and it wouldn't have been picked up spellchecker.

From the BBC Sport website this morning:

"Murray is pulling out some of his tricks now, fainting to go down the line, then flicking crosscourt at the last minute."

Feinting was the word he needed.