World Cup 2010 tickets - First phase draw starts today!
Tickets from the first phase ballot will be drawn from the FIFA hat today. All successful applicants will recieve notification within 3 working days by email. If you’re not one of the lucky people this time you can always apply in the second phase of ticketing starting on May 4th, 2009. However, unlike the first phase, the second phase will be on a first come first served basis so you’d better have quick fingers and your credit card at the ready on the stroke of midnight to stand a chance of getting the tickets you’re after. There’s also a 3rd, 4th and 5th phase of ticket sales with the latter being conducted at the point of sale. This will only happen with any remaining seat still unsold after the first 4 phases so more than likely it’ll be the expensive tickets for the ‘not so great’ games!. You can read more on the Fifa.com website. AND remember to add your property to onelocation if you haven’t already. There’s a few more free places left and in about 3 days thousands of lucky ticket winners will start scouring South Africa for World Cup Accommodation.
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Good post Steve, I’ll be mentioning it on my SAReunited blog and reference your post.
Amanda, Founder SAReunited
I cannot assume that soccer fans have no interest in understanding language.
It is a pity that no one edited Steve’s post. It contains one rather glaring spelling mistake, at least eight grammatical errors (more than one repeated several times) and an American date format.
While I offer my apologies for being somewhat pedantic, these errors spoil an otherwise great post.
How are we to teach our children to speak or, for that matter, to maintain our own standards of language, when society’s command of language leaves so much to be desired; when the media bombards us incessantly, with inferior standards of language that bear little or no resemblance to that which their schools attempt to instil in them?
Thanks for your comment and apologies for the numerous grammatical errors. Having read the post again I agree that it was difficult to read and rather jumbled in it’s presentation. The time sensitive nature of the article meant that I didn’t have time to edit it myself and, without the luxury of an editor, it hit the stands in a very raw form. This sometimes happens in the fast and furious world of journalism and I can only apologize once again. (btw the American spellings and date format is a curse of the modern day computer which auto-corrects using it’s default American dictionary!).
Regards, Steve
Thank you Steve. I understand what you mean on both counts. This comment stretched rather a lot, so read what you will. I almost regret producing it.
Fast and Furious Journalism – Is there a solution?
I can’t solve the problem presented by your fast and furious journalism, except to suggest that you work on developing the habit of doing it correctly the first time. A little extra time spent up front (even seconds) may save much time spent correcting errors later or may prevent the embarrassment of not correcting.
American Defaults – There Is a Solution
Any document processing system worth its salt, will provide a selection of dictionaries and an auto-correction facility that features both optional application and the option to reverse a specific application when it occurs.
The UK or, nowadays, even the SA English Dictionary may be acquired by default or at worst, purchased separately.
The Microsoft Windows operating systems provide an array of national standard defaults, so the first step to sorting out currency symbols, date formats, etc, is to choose the correct option at installation. If this was not done by the IT people, individual users usually have an option to amend the choice and even to tweak the set by amending individual options. For example, any given currency symbol may be replaced by another such as an R for Rand, a decimal may be a comma or a stop, large numbers may be divided by spaces, commas or other characters, negative numbers may be reflected in a variety of ways, date formats are infinitely variable, and the list goes on. The great benefit with Microsoft is the Windows defaults that are automatically carried over to the text editing (MS-WORD) and spreadsheet (MS-Excel) applications.
The Longer Story
If you don’t have the necessary control of your own computer environment, often the case when you’re on a network and have backroom boys who are either ignorant or also so rushed off their feet that they become recklessly negligent, you may be frustrated to the point that you just accept that it is out of your hands.
Of course, this issue differs from your ‘fast and furious’ scenario in one important respect. Although computerised or electronic storage and retrieval systems may hamper it, your journalism is read and discarded to disappear into history. The wrong dictionary and grammar checker stay with us, causing new problems on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, grammar and style checkers are extremely useful to users who understand the grammar, but often dangerous in the hands of learners, a subject I’ll not pursue at this point except to say that users are reminded of options, but must make their own choices and deal with suggestions that are not necessarily valid.
When those setting up an environment, use American defaults or fail to educate their users, neither being ignorant nor attempting to save time are acceptable excuses.
I have experience of a local organisation that has used the US Dictionary for many years in its production of all official documents. Some users ignore the dictionary, often with the obvious consequences; others fail by correcting spelling that was NOT incorrect in the first place. Only a few know when to ignore America’s invalid suggestions for correction. When I refused to accept the situation and insisted on replacement of the US dictionary, an IT individual eventually went to the trouble of providing the UK Dictionary, one of several included by default with the software, which dictionary he made available only to me.
All he should have done, was change the default at the time of installing the software. To add insult to injury, the next time the software was upgraded, my UK Dictionary disappeared again. Of course, if the CEO or one or two departmental heads had had any concern for the image presented to the general public, this would not have been condoned.
On revisiting the whole argument in the new environment, I discovered that the UK Dictionary had been loaded and I was able to amend my default. It seems that no one was informed of the improvement; the correct tool was available, but not in use.
Where dates are concerned, the formats typically in use are ddmmyy or mmddyy (American), and at one stage the SA Government tried for various valid reasons, to introduce yyyymmdd. The lazy decided to use yymmdd instead. The ambiguity in a date such as 05/07/03 is only removed by consistent use of the format yyyymmdd, since to the best of my knowledge, no idiot has ever introduced yyyyddmm – not officially – which would confuse the issue again and oblige us to retain the 4-digit year and express the month in text rather than numbers.
Using the above example, 05/07/03 may be interpreted as 5th July 2003 (ddmmyy), May 7th 2003 (mmddyy) or 2005 July 3rd (yymmdd). Close enough? I don’t think so. Using yyyymmdd removes the confusion as 2005/07/03 can only represent 2005 July 3rd. Since yyyyddmm is not a format in use, 2005 7th March is a non-starter.
In closing, I note that some clever dick introduced ccyy (presumably century,year) to the mix; I’ve seen this format used by otherwise reputable international companies on documents requiring completion. Since we’re now in the 21st century, this year would be reflected as 2109, using this format. Just think what fun we could have with Mcdy (millennium, century, decade, year). Today would be 3119/04/18 and who knows how one would solve the 10th year of the 10th decade of the 10th century of any millennium.
Before you ask, I’ll answer. Yes! The celebrations as we entered the new millennium were not even like a damp squib compared with those that took place a year early, when we entered the last year of the 2nd or old millennium, and 1999 made way for 2000.
I’m afraid that when I have two apples, one is the first and the other is the second; they are not the zeroeth and the first. The same applies to years. There is no year zero, just as there are no century zero, month zero or day zero. If that were so April would have been month 3 and the 18th, day 17. Why confuse the identification of a specific period or set of periods with a duration, in which case something that lasted for 8 seconds could rightly be said to have lasted zero years, months, days, hours and minutes, and eight seconds.
Regards, Charles.