#A570
13 messages in this thread
I rang a retailer today and they said their are expecting supplies of
the A570 any day now. By the way do ICPUG translate your articles
from american english to english english so we can understand them.
If you are not a member of ICPUG (and I suspect you are not, else you
would have the journal and could read those articles), you should
join! THey are a really neat group of people. They have lots of fun,
and many of them are extremely knowledgeable – and helpful.
As for the articles, I fear that they do not trust my spelling at all.
They don't often change the sentence structure, but they are forever
sticking extra letters into perfectly good words like 'color' and
rearranging the letters in other quite understandable words like
'meter.'
I have not learned to say 'learnt' and I'm not very comfortable with
'whilst.' They even take out the second space that I automatically
put after every period. (My high school typing teacher was really
insistent on those two spaces, and I'll never forget anything she
taught me.)
While I was in England, I went to one of the proofreading sessions for
the journal. I was not asked to help with the spelling, yet I think
I found more spelling errors than anyone else, even if they DID
insist on checking every word I questioned with their own
dictionaries.
I'll be interested to know when they actually start selling the A570 and
what they charge for it. Of course, since it only works with the 500, I
could not use one if I had it.
FWIW, I had the "two spaces" thing drilled into me in typing class
too. Then when I became an editor I was told only one space for
typesetting. It didn't take very long to make the transition; though
I would still put two in if I was using a typewriter. It's important
cause typewriters are (or were) monospaced. The extra space helps to
signal a new sentence. But with proportional spacing, the extra space
is just a non-informative character. 🙂 One of the first things I do
with an article is to strip out those extra spaces.
I know – that's what the editors do with everything I write, too, Malcolm.
Maybe it's because I've had this habit longer than you have?
Betty
I seem to recall having to take out double-spaces-after-punctuation in
nearly all articles I ever had in Transactor … I never noticed if you did
though, since I had a macro which I invoked immediately I loaded a document
which just whizzed through and stripped them out 🙂
I have a typing book here which goes even further … three spaces after
full stops, two after colons and one after commas and semi-colons. Yuch!
Mike (Whapping from the UK)
Ouch!! We never did THAT much spacing here. One space after punctuation
within a sentence, and two spaces between sentences.
Incidentally, is it really acceptable writing in the UK to string two
sentences together with a comma? I see it done all the time, and it is
just not permitted here. Our grammar teachers scream "run-on sentence" and
get very rough with the red pencils.
Betty
Stringing two sentences together with a comma? No, it's not really
allowable, although it does depend on how it is done. Do you have an
example of what you mean?
I can't say the phrase `run-on' sentence means much to me, although I think
I know what you mean.
Mike (Whapping from the UK)
I had problems keeping my red pencil off the articles I was proofreading at
Tim's house.
BTW, would it surprise you to learn that I caught several misspellings that
had escaped Tim, Joe, John, and Janet? And my spelling agreed with Joe's
Scion spelling checker, too! Felt rather good after all the ribbing I've
taken about my spelling of good American words like 'color.'
I'll watch for an example and send it along for you.
Betty
No, it wouldn't surprise me that you spotted the spelling errors 🙂 Well
done!
I guess some of the examples you're talking about should be in the latest
newsletter, so I'll take a look tonight.
Mike (Whapping from the UK)
Sorry I have taken so long to reply but I have been busy for the last few
days. I have been a member of ICPUG for about six years and I find your
articles in the journal very interesting. As far as the A570 goes I have
rang several retailers and they are all expecting delivery in two to three
weeks. The price quoted is 259 to 299 English pounds. Based on past
experience I would expect them to have the A570 in about six to eight
weeks. BTW I have always used one space after a full stop.
Allan from the UK – via Whap!
Oh, Allan – the things that do change in my articles between my computer
and Tim's!! All of my neat double spaces come out, extra 'u's get added to
lots of words, my 'er's get changed to 're's, and sometimes those [ED
comment] things get added. I went to an editing session during my recent
trip to England, and had a great time spotting THEIR spelling mistakes. I
thought it was my turn! (ICPUG is a great bunch of people, and I do most
thoroughly enjoy my association with them.)
I think it interesting that the A570 still has not been released, since
they had indicated that they had a sales goal to reach by the end of June.
They may have to push *awfully* hard to reach it if they don't get the
equipment into the shops pretty soon. Thanks for the news, and please keep
us posted.
Oh – according to my latest news from England, Commodore announced at the
MultiMedia show last week that CDTV now is available with 2M RAM and a 40M
hard disk. I suspect they are ready to launch a big campaign admitting
that CDTV is really an Amiga with added capabilities.
Betty
Betty, if you're using WordPerfect, and you write for English journals, you
might think of getting an English spellchecker. I was lucky. When I first
bought WP, it came with an American Spellchecker. Than, an update came
with the English Spellchecker, and, finally, I ordered one for French. I
have all three in my WP dictionary and just switch back and forth,
depending on which publication I'm writing for. (I've also got
American-English and French in ProWrite and Excellence, but, to my
knowledge, neither of these have an English-English available.) (Now, if
only we could get these dictionaries for Final Copy, we'd be all set.)
– Nancy D. Lorieau
– Whapping from Sunny Edmonton, AB, Canada
That's a good idea, Nancy. Not that my editor has seemed to mind
'correcting' my spelling, but I do get a lot of ribbing about it. Of
course, I accuse them of accepting run-on sentences that would be
disallowed here, too.
Betty