On Words and Business

As someone with an masters degree in library science, I’d expect myself to be better at classifying things. And as the internet first started becoming a big thing, I was very annoyed at the lack of standardization and classification for websites and other content. Intellectually, I understood the challenges, but not in practice.

I still wish that it could be different. For example, every time I see a movie preview, when the movie has a website and they go through all sorts of URL contortions to make the name memorable and meaningful, I think all movies sites should just be name-of-the-movie.mov. Same for tv shows, although I do applaud Tuvalu’s creativity in creating a market for its top-level domain.

Then we come to blogging. Once I started this blog, the whole idea of classifying the content boggled my mind. Now, were there an existing classification system I could employ, I’d've been all over that. Instead, I had to decide the categories and how to allocate them. Suddenly, that intellectual understanding of the challenges of classifying web content became visceral.

I still wish it were different. But since I can’t even figure out the best way for this little blog, I can’t complain too loudly about everyone else.

Those of us trained to write on typewriters have a habit of adding two spaces at the end of sentences. This isn’t necessary in the digital realm, as this post on the Made to Stick blog reminds us. Well, reminds those of us who learned that way. I suspect the current generations don’t even know about this archaic habit.

Speaking of writing on typewriters (which is how I typed all my high school papers)…

Do you remember the fun of trying to figure out how much space to leave at the bottom of the page for footnotes? And praying that the teacher would accept endnotes instead? The utter pain of trying to use correction fluid without ruining your paper? And how very badly you didn’t want to have to edit or rewrite the paper, which would mean starting all of this over again?

And I was lucky enough to have an electronic typewriter at my disposal. I wonder what it was like on a manual.

Not sure. But it’s as good a month as any.

Business books are big these days. And there are certainly many to choose from. So, if you’re looking for advice on what to read and why…FlyingSolo offers some insight.

Happy reading!