Just one job

bydavebux

1.7K followers

2 months ago

Have you ever wondered just what the heck happened, when someone had just one job to do, just one, a task thast will only take five minutes and thousands of people do it every day – and for some reason, this person fails.

How often do you yourself fall at the first easy hurdle, and we’ve all had bad hurdle days.

I’ve known painters paint the doors green when they should have been blue. I’ve seen carpenter’s fasten doors upside down and electricians wire a plug the wrong way round, but let's just stick with names. Here’s the story …

STEP 1

I’m thinking about my dad, a new father going to register the birth of his first born – me.

It was tradition in my family that the first-born son had two given names. Let’s just say name A and name B.

Name A would always be your father’s given name and name B would be the name by which you were known. So your birth certificate would say A and B, but you were known as B and A

So, my father was registered as Frederick Ronald, but he was always known as Ronald Frederick.

His father, my grandfather, was registered as William Frederick, but called Frederick William.

My great grandfather was Charles William but answered to William Charles

And so on for many previous generations.

Don’t ask, I don’t know why. I’ve asked and never found out why they did it this way.

Anyway, my dear old dad was dispatched off to the register office to get me certified. (I need certifying). He arrived, having repeated my name endless times on the way. Ronald David, Ronald David, Ronald David. Eventually his turn came to sit in front of the registrar.

And what will you call the child … David Ronald. And the certificate was duly endorsed.

This new proud father rushed back to the hospital and showed my mother and grandmother the birth certificate, I was officially a person.

Agggghhhh. What have you done …..

Too late, my name was the right way round, I was a David Ronald, which is the wrong way according to family tradition.

STEP 2

Then you can have two spellings with the same pronunciation …

Derek or Deryk - Stephen or Steven - Claire or Clair and so on

STEP 3

This one’s a mess.

I was teaching a class of electrician’s and went through the usual start of course form filling on the first day, - name, date of birth, address etc.

Checking the forms, one chap had obviously made a mistake with his name. How do you pronounce your name I asked. He told me – Stuart

And how do you spell it. STAURT he replied. What! I’ve never seen that before.

It’s a long story and here it is.

Born in the local hospital, his mother and father agreed to call him Stuart, as per normal spelling.

Off he goes to the registrar’s offices and on the way meets a friend. Come and have a whisky to bless the baby’s head he says, just one quick one.

There is no such thing as a quick one when it comes to alcohol. Two hours later he emerges from the pub and staggers up the road to register the birth.

The registrar asks him how he is spelling the babies name as it can be spelt Stuart or Stewart.

In a drunken stupor, he announces S T A U R T, and that was it. Job done!

Stuart, sorry, Staurt, and the rest of his family went through his whole life not knowing about the spelling mistake until he needed a passport for a school trip and the error was discovered, too late.

Rather than be ridiculed at school, his class mates thought it was a cool way to spell his name, so he continued to use the name Staurt for ever more. Luckily for him it all worked out ok, but there must be lots of occasions when a simple error like this can be disastrous. I wonder who else has a spelling tale to tell.

And the moral of all this, and I remind myself often …

Get your facts right – it will matter one day.

And I’ve noticed a big growth in bad spelling on websites and blogs over the last few years. One bad spelling, hmm ok. Two bad spellings in the same article and I’m already losing interest. If I’m going to spend money, I want to spend it with the website that has the better grammar and spelling, wouldn’t you, so if you want to keep your readers attention, get it right.

Happy spelling

Bux