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We run a website that teaches readers how to write better, how to deal with complicated Grammer issues, as well as how to write letters, resumes, etc.

Not people who specialise in spolling then.

19 thoughts on “Good start”

  1. Day one at Slough Grammar School, and Mr Wall the Latin master spotted the address label on my satchel: on it my mother, who had left school at 14 and was brimming with pride that her son had passed his 11-plus, had carefully written my name, and underneath it the words SLOUGH GRAMMER SCHOOL, then sealed it with sellotape.

    “How do you spell ‘grammar’?” asked Mr Wall.
    “With an ‘a’, sir.”
    “Then write it out correctly fifty times: ‘Slough Grammar School’.”
    “But I never wrote it, sir. It was me mum.”
    “And a further fifty lines: ‘I must not seek to deflect my own responsibilities onto others’.”

  2. This may be a similar technique as the Nigerian 419 scammers use. Bad riting and gramar to filter out the wise so as to be able to concentrate on the mugs.

  3. Bloke in North Dorset

    philip,

    The Freakonomics guys refer to it as the self weeding garden. It’s quite old now, in internet terms, but if you haven’t come a Ross it look it up, their podcast on the subject is quite fascinating. You’ll learn it was rational for a rock band to demanded M&Ms in their changing rooms with a certain colour taken out and other wierd examples.

  4. The M&Ms story is entertaining but too clever by half. Venues have limited staff and it is more important to check the fire extinguishers than the sweeties, I think.

  5. @philip
    As far as I’m aware the reason for the M&M’s with no brown ones (?) in the contract was to ensure that the contract was being read. And the sort of people don’t read contracts are the same sort of people don’t read H&S regulations about adequate fire extinguishers.

  6. Whether or not the spolling misteak was intended or not, it’s got them some free publicity. If you believe all publicity is good publicity, they’re ahead.

  7. Bloke in North Dorset

    bis has it right. And they aren’t the sort of people who will have the instructions on how to set up their elaborate set correctly, which would have been very dangerous.

  8. You keep producing job offers like this Tim. They all have one thing in common. The skills required are hardly in short supply. There must be a vast surplus of people with nonsense qualifications like “Master’s/ Bachelor’s Degree in English or a related field. “. They’re 10 a penny.They’re just not something is going to get anyone employment. So anyone wanting to set up the proposed business would already know people who qualify. Why are they advertising?
    My guess is that they’re basically scams. Get somebody to produce the product & then try & make money out of selling it. You could run something like this, an hour a day, from you’re armchair. I very much doubt anyone would be receiving 50 bucks for 1000 words.
    You want to make money, never try to do what you enjoy doing. There’s going to be endless other people enjoy doing it too, trying to do the same. Look around for what people actually want & learn how to supply it. If it’s unpleasant to do, you’ll probably make money in direct proportion to how unpleasant it is.

  9. That’s how I made money. I have a talent for design. But I didn’t ponce around in a designer suit trying to sell designs. Any idiot can do that. I went & learned how to do the dirty hard difficult bit of turning designs into reality. Then sold the package.

  10. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Yes. A good deal of “send £10 to this address to find out how to make money!” about this.

    But there are a bajillion writing things out there that border on cons without being overtly such. My favourite are the various correspondence courses with a “money back if you don’t earn your course fees from writing during the course” guarantee.

    Of course the courses are so long and convoluted that no one will ever actually complete them. Like card collecting most people never get beyond the first packet. Of course, anyone who does manage to complete the course without earning their course fees back really ought to take the hint.

  11. “You’ll learn it was rational for a rock band to demanded M&Ms in their changing rooms with a certain colour taken out”

    The band was Van Halen. And indeed it was lead singer David Lee Roth’s way of ensuring every word of their contract with the venue had been read. The venues they performed in were rarely designed with the massive amounts of staging, sound equipment and lighting which the band brought with them in mind. If brown M&Ms were found, it alerted the band to insist on a detailed inspection of the set up at the venue for safety reasons before they would go on stage.

  12. “send £10 to this address to find out how to make money!”

    Never ceases to amaze how successful those are, and how embittered the “victims” become upon receiving what they paid for. Maybe there’s a market for counselling.

  13. Expecting money for very little effort is really a variation on the con game.
    And there’s no-one easier to con than someone thinks they’re working a con.
    Which is why God put so many on the planet. Gracias Dio!

  14. “send £10 to this address to find out how to make money!”

    Ha. As horny teenagers my friend and i sent off for a bottle of “pheromones” from an ad in the back pages of a special interest magazine. The proof that convinced us to invest was that in tests conducted in dentists’ waiting rooms females were 80 p.c. more likely to choose the seat sprayed with the product. Ha, great scam. Pheromones colourless and odourless. It took years to slowly dawn on me it had been just water all along.

  15. Now here’s a thing, HB. My ex used to do a very french thing. Dip a finger her lady garden & rub a bit behind each ear. And it does indeed work. Do the bisous thing (three, two a la espanol is only pour la grande-mere) & it’d make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Pheromones of course.
    So you may have had the free solution available in your shreddies all along. Although you’d want something clean & fresh. Not the residue of a couple of days of unwashed second hand beer.

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