Boring day today. Went to work, but the Internet and our phones were down so didn't have much to do. I had to resort to hand writing some project material, and I have to say it's very different to writing on a computer. Much more static, without those little serendipitous typos that sometimes make a weird kind of sense. Also quite hard to get a sense of flow with the writing; you end up considering what you're saying too much. I love the cut and paste, the delete and backspace functions of computer writing; you can see at a glance what works and what doesn't, chop and hack and change things around. It has a speed more akin to the speed of thought than hand writing. You can "lure it back to cancel half a line" quickly and easily. The only danger is that some deathless prose gem may be obliterated forever by a careless movement, but at least the delete button is a long way away from the main keyboard.
Looking at the City Council's job advertisements, I saw this one for a Category Analyst. I know what a category is, and I know what an analyst does, so I could be one, right?
Q. So what do I have to do then, in the course of my daily work?
A. "As Category Analyst, you will enable more effective delivery of procurement activities through the insight and support of, pertinent, key data sets leading to better, more informed, decision making, lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the Council always being a 'smart buyer'. This includes leading and delivering work streams centred on building subject matter expertise, robust data analytics and market analysis, and targeted procurement and spend performance reporting. Your activity will inform the development of category procurement strategies influencing the entire end to end procurement process enabling the Council to best target services and product, supply and demand."
Ummm, WHAT? I thought I was an educated, literate person, but this just stumps me. They must run these job descriptions through a special computer programme designed to write in code. I think it means "you will find out what we need and try to buy it more cheaply". (The commas between of and pertinent and pertinent and key data sets are superfluous for a start). It could be used as a high school english exam question - "Describe your understanding of the following passage"...
Perhaps I could get a job writing plain English job descriptions.
There is a crying need for plain (and consequently intelligible) English in so many areas...
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