I learned about “content farms” from NPR.
“Content farms pay people almost no money to turn out very mediocre content that can serve up very cheap ads.” This generates hits for advertisers, when search engines find matches with low value or little real information – just filler pulled together in minutes.
Recently, Google made changes to try to filter these sites out.
The here is the full (short) transcript: Google Tweaks Algorithm To Spot ‘Content Farms’
I learned that, here in the U.S. of A., periods and commas generally go inside quotation marks when they run into each other. I also learned that the misuse of this order of things causes physical pain to my sister, so I won’t be getting that wrong again any time soon!
Hey, what would I know? I was a computer science major and although my friends (yeah, you know who you are) made great use of my gorgeous baby blue electric typewriter that my dad bought me for college, I calculated that I typed about six pages during that time. I’m pretty sure that none of them contained quotation marks.
BTW this rule made no sense to me until I found out how it came to be! This is from the Grammar Guide of the Capital Community College Foundation:
There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. The following explanation comes from the“Frequently Asked Questions” file of alt.english.usage: “In the days when printing used raised bits of metal, “.” and “,” were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a ‘”‘ on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using ‘.”‘ and ‘,”‘ rather than ‘”.’ and ‘”,’, regardless of logic.” This seems to be an argument to return to something more logical, but there is little impetus to do so within the United States.
From the same site: “In the United Kingdom, Canada, and islands under the influence of British education, punctuation around quotation marks is more apt to follow logic.” <– for Lava
Do you get confused about which one to use? e or a?
I learned to picture an envelope to remember that stationery is the writing paper.
I dare you to forget it now!
P.S. Crane & Co, the company that makes stationery, says that in the 1700’s there was just the one word.
Thanks to my colleague, John, I learned how to spell kibosh. I guess I had never seen it in writing. I’m not sure how I thought it was spelled, but it wasn’t this. You?
Here is a very long discussion of the origin of the word. putting the kibosh on it
My friend Mark says that is what McIntyre means. The Mc or Mac is son of. And the rest is carpenter.
I have learned that “refractory tumor” means a cancer that has never gone away.
I learned something that really surprised me: Petite and Misses sizes are different shapes, not just different lengths, as I have always believed. I found myself between two sizes in pants, let’s just call them x Petite and y Petite. OK? Thanks. And the very-helpful salesperson at Coldwater Creek suggested that I get size x not-Petite, which she calls “Missy”. How can that be, I wondered? But she explained that the proportions are different all around.
So I bought them and had them hemmed (I have learned that we have a great tailor in Goffstown, at the organic cleaners!) and now I have some nice new pants that fit beautifully! (in the smaller size, to boot, as x < y)
I was surprised to learn that I have an incoming call on my Comcast phone line, the phone number and a name are displayed on my TV!
I have had said phone line for 2.5 years, but I use it in the day, for work, so I never had a chance to see this happen, until Vicki called me after hours.
Who knew? Did you?
Today I learned what a Clerk of the Works is.
While manning the I.T. phones in the Command Center for Dana-Farber’s move-in to the new Yawkey building, I met a man, sitting next to me and manning the Facility phones. His job is Clerk of the Works for the construction project. I had never heard of this. Have you?
From Wikipedia:
The clerk of the works or clerk of works (often abbreviated CoW) is a person employed by the architect or client on a construction site. The role is primarily to represent the interests of the client in regard to ensuring the quality of both materials and workmanship are in accordance with the design information such as specification and engineering drawings, in addition to recognized quality standard
I have learned, again and again and again, that I love working at home.
I do love going into the office, seeing my friends and colleagues, and having that in-person connection during meetings. I also like the Big City and much of the commute. It’s still a kick to work in Boston.
But it’s hard to beat the added value of the extra five to six hours I get in my day when I work from home. Between the extra I can put in at work and the extra I can keep, it feels like winning an extra day in my day!
Jane's Lessons Learned 