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Post by postscript on Feb 17, 2007 16:15:37 GMT
Copied from the Info Centre at 16:10 GMT: Good to see George Martin looking in! Roger What you could also have added in was that we were at 132. I've been keeping quiet in case any comment proved to be a Jonah one but I was delighted when we made new ground and moved on from the 120s where we seemed to be sticking to the 130s where I hope we don't stick too long before its 140s etc!. Peter S.
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Post by jons on Feb 19, 2007 16:06:01 GMT
Thats given me another idea for my 'Hayley Fiction' thread - Blackadder! Hayley would have to go back in time somehow, though!
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Post by jons on Feb 19, 2007 16:28:11 GMT
Glad you appreciated my chortle, Jon S. Rather like the early days of stereo. Was the train supposed to travel left to right or right to left? If the sound is coming from between the speakers does that mean its perfect stereo but stopped at the station or its still only mono? Peter S. Peter S. I've put a joke about that in the Ronnie Corbett monologue. I'll post it tomorrow.
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Post by jons on Feb 19, 2007 16:38:26 GMT
I'm even getting the word 'mixed' mixed up!
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Post by postscript on Feb 19, 2007 17:07:58 GMT
I occasionally forget, when I do a quick one line or two response, to use the Spellcheck. Usually I use it when there is more than one paragraph. It helps to keep things tidy, as long as one remembers it is US-orientated!. May I remind everyone it is there and helps to keep things neat and tidy?
I do appreciate, that like all spell-checkers, a spell-check alone won't highlight the wrong word if that's what a mispell creates.
Peter S.
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Post by jons on Feb 19, 2007 17:14:48 GMT
I use Firefox as my browser, which has a spell checker built in! On any forum it automatically highlights words that have been miss spelt. It doesn't correct grammar however!
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Post by comet on Feb 19, 2007 17:36:23 GMT
Hi Folks Many years ago I used to set lead type on a setting stick which we would check it in a mirror (because type was reversed so it would print to the paper) before the type was moved to a "CHASE". letters like bpdq would easily be misplaced in cases causing spelling mistakes. The real SPELL CHECK would take place after a proof print was taken which would then be handed around to be checked by each person in the workshop. This whole process often took HALF A DAY. The only problem is you read what you want to read and errors still got through to the final print. We do take for granted what we have access to today comet
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Dave
Administrator
HWI Admin
Posts: 7,689
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Post by Dave on Feb 19, 2007 18:05:39 GMT
I'm even getting the word 'mixed' mixed up! Missed and mixed messed up? Try and say that quickly, three times! Dave
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Post by jons on Feb 20, 2007 14:35:50 GMT
Here's my modern day Ronnie Corbett monologue then. I suppose it helps if you could picture him saying it. You could try running it though a speech synthesizer, but that would probably only work if Professor Stephan Hawkings did any funny monologues!
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Post by jons on Feb 20, 2007 14:41:08 GMT
Ronnie Corbett's Modern day monologueI’m in quite a happy mood today, because the BBC controller has finally given in to my demands for a new chair. I kept pulling at his trouser leg until he gave up! He has finally realised how small I am - but beautifully formed if I say so myself! Anyway the old chair was too big for my bottom, although the chair I had before that was so big you could have fit me and Brian Blessed in it…. in which case it would have been a dialogue and not a monologue. And that was before Digital TV, so I guess you could have called it an analogue monologue! But I have always had trouble finding furniture that is small enough to be comfortable. I wish I could find some for my home. I mean, yesterday I got lost down the back of the sofa! I had to wait for my wife to come home to rescue me, and all I had for company was the remote control - which must of slipped down there a couple of days earlier. Well that and a piece of leftover pizza, which tasted quite delicious actually. But I should get on with the joke now, which I can now do without constantly fidgeting in the chair. Has you can see, it is an incredibly small chair, made from the latest in Nano-Technology. I’m not telling the whole truth though, because this is actually the second incredibly small chair that’s been given to me. The first one went walkies………. A technician stole it for his daughters doll’s house! To bring me in line with the naughties, as this decade is now known as, the joke may be a little sexist. Unfortunately that is how most jokes are going these days. I don’t want to give the punch line away early but there is a rumour going around that Britney Spears heard my joke the other day which was why she shaved all her hair off! Now she’s selling it for a million dollars! I wonder how much I would get for my chest hair? Two pence probably! Ha ha ha ha ha, no I will get on with the joke. There was these two guys who are your typical modern men - into Top Gear and FHM. That’s ‘For Him Magazine’ for the uninitiated - a magazine that is obviously out of my reach on the newsagent shelves. Not that’s its on the top shelf, its on the middle one, but I can’t reach that either. I have to ask someone to lift me up so I can get it. Usually I’m so embarrassed that I grab a copy of ‘Cross-Stitch Weekly’ instead! But on with the joke - The two guys are out in the snow….. Before I go on I remember my wife complaining that it didn’t snow last Christmas, and I’m glad too because I really don’t like the stuff. I remember a few decades ago one Christmas when snow completely covered the whole of the UK. It was so cold that as soon as I stepped out the house icicles start forming on my spectacles. Try saying that when you’ve had a few drinks! But you couldn’t see for the white stuff. It snowed so much in fact that Santa Claus thought he’d got back to the North Pole, but was actually in Croydon. He asked me where all the other elves were! The cheek! Anyway these two guys were building a snow man. Don’t ask me why. I think the only ice these guys are used too is what cools their beers! But there were bored and the pubs were shut - well technically they weren’t, but with eight foot of snow it was impossible to get through them. I can tell you, when having to drive through eight foot of that stuff, its snow joke! Ha ha ha…… my jokes are getting so bad that my last audience had to be hypnotised by Paul McKenna to make them laugh at the right moment. They just ignored the laughter and applaud signs that were being held up. These two guys, then, were building snowmen, but actually being the lads that they are, were building snowwomen; all they had to do was slap two more lumps of snow in the appropriate places! One of the guys however started to hollow out the head of his snowwoman. The other guy asked “Why are you doing that?” So the guy said “Because mine is going to be a blonde snowwoman!”.
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Post by jons on Feb 20, 2007 14:42:39 GMT
Do you think Ronnie would use something like that nowadays?
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Post by postscript on Feb 21, 2007 18:59:00 GMT
Well, well, Comet. A fellow printer! School Press self-taught at 13, or a professional journeyman? You are quite right about 'reading what you expect to see rather than what is there' but a mirror! Come, come! Surely you acquired the ability to read the type backwards upside down right to left as easily as the printed version?! Did you ever set in Latin? I once did front page plus three pages, size 10 x 8, double columned text in 10pt Verona Roman. We had only sufficient founder's type to set one page at a time, then diss (distribute) the type back into the case to set the next page! Much later on (one of my last projects, which I finally had to axe through family problems but thoroughly enjoyed while it lasted) was lecturing at Loughborough University students on a mixed media course. I always started with the lay of the case as an introduction to set width and why simply changing the type-face, not the size could add or reduce the number of pages a book made. Because of the way my contribution interacted across several degree courses I would sometimes have a tutorial of half-a-dozen and some times a lecture room of 30 odd. Every tutor has his own way of checking who's gone to sleep on him. One of my ways was while explaining how Upper case (Caps) and Lowercase came into being the seemingly haphazard way in which the lower case letters were laid our was in fact carefully designed and planned. 'Whereas the 24 capital letters of the alphabet were simply laid out A-Z. All 24 letters of the alphabet.' In a class of 30 2 people might interrupt me. 'Don't you mean 26?' The real reason so many did not query me, was not actually because they were asleep but because I often taught first-year, first degree students fresh out of school 6th forms who hadn't yet got the hang, or the nerve, to query a lecturer. I would then tease them a little to see who had the nerve to argue with me, me insisting there were only 24 letters in the alphabet and they, somewhat bemused but unused to arguing with a lecturer, persisted there were 26 but gradually losing their confidence! Then I would point out that printing was a scary invention, was under the control of the Church, so the first documents printed were Church documents and the Church used Latin, which has only 24 characters. When they started setting in English U and J got stuck in an odd corner of the Upper case box, their position varying according to 'house' tradition, which neatly led me into talking about the concept of publisher's 'house style'. Even in the 21st century referring back half-a-millennium is a good introduction to understanding type, layout and readability! Bell's gone, lecture over! And I must leave now to reconnect hopefully only later on this evening with my friend's computer in their house, having fed both the dog cat and then me, with supper Peter S.
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Post by postscript on Feb 21, 2007 19:49:43 GMT
I use Firefox as my browser, which has a spell checker built in! On any forum it automatically highlights words that have been miss spelt. It doesn't correct grammar however! Which is why in my longer posts (who asked if there are any short ones? ) I write in Word but then Word and I occasionally have differences of opinion over grammar. That difference is what a lot of people forget when they adhere to Word's suggestions, a thing called 'style'. In the end, all of these electronic devices can be but a highlighter of possible contentions. The best of writers are simply themselves and use the simplest of aids for the simplest of possible errors. The rest you have to think through and pay attention! Peter S.
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Post by postscript on Feb 21, 2007 19:54:51 GMT
But one response to that Dave :rollin or if I had time toi find it, which I would have preferred, the elongating leg! Peter S.
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Post by postscript on Feb 21, 2007 21:02:48 GMT
Now this is really where I make a monkey of myself.
I like the lead-in Jon S, very Ronnie Corbett, but I don't understand the joke! :2fun: But a lovely lead-in nonetheless! This, after all, is the joke, the lead-in? Peter S.
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