Title your work

 Dear artists,

Title your work.

None of this Untitled 1 and Untitled 2 nonsense. If you are an artist, and this is a work of art, then it deserves a name and you should name it.

If you don't title your work it shows a distinct lack of emotional engagement with this thing that you have produced - heck, it shows something of a lack of intellectual engagement with it as well. You are an artist, not an artisan. You are "creating art", not making a cabinet. Heck, sometimes even cabinets get names, if they're fancy enough. Title your art.

People need to be able to talk about what you've created - they need to mention it too each other. Without the words to discuss things with each other, they lose meaning. They stop existing, just a little bit. If you were making a cabinet, they'd say "the cabinet in the lounge room". But you are making art. You are making something that is, let's face it, useless. It serves no purpose, apart from engaging people's minds. If they have no words for it... 

Well, it becomes useless, nondescript, purposeless and barely existent.

Sure, they could say "the artwork in the lounge room", but, then, it really does render your work no more special than the average cabinet.

Or, they'll make up their own ways to talk about it.

There is a work of art in my work place. It is called Untitled, but we never call it that. Most of us have our own names for this work. That might sound like something an artist might aspire to - to inspire people to engage with the art so well that they name it themselves, based on what the art means to them.

Some people might work that way, but they are quite possibly the exception, rather than the rule. Most people will just call it what it "kind of looks like".

This nameless artwork is a plinth topped with two half-spheres held together with a curved bar. I call it "the Prince Albert" - and I'm not talking about the person. Everyone in the office has heard me call it that at least once, and there's a good chance it will be known as "the Prince Albert" long after I leave. It has no other name, and I refuse to call it "Untitled". That's not a name. As far as I'm concerned it's a bigger insult than "the Prince Albert".

Would the artist care if they knew exactly what I have named their art? What right do they have to care? They didn't care about it enough to name it themselves.

Dear artists, title your work.

"You deserve it"

I personally hate ads that have the hook "you deserve it" or "because you're worth it" or "you've earned it." Whenever I hear or read an ad that goes with that approach, I always want to ask:

"Really? What did I do to deserve that?"

What could I possibly have done to deserve a lipstick? Or a car? Was it something I did or something I said? (And, if I do "deserve" it, why do I still have to pay for it?)

Any gamer will be able to tell you that you earn something by doing something. No one gets the prize by doing nothing in particular.

It's even more depressing when you get some of the creepier ads on web pages trying to tell you you've "earned" something or "deserve" something. Some time ago, an ad on a page I was using told me I "deserved" a sexy Russian bride. I really want to know what I did to deserve that, and how I can avoid doing it again.

And yet, when you look at a lot of what people say these days (especially when interacting with businesses and services), it seems we've come to believe we deserve a lot of things. I personally blame the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

We invented this idea called "Rights" - this belief that we are entitled to something because we live and are human. This is all well and good, and I'm not saying for a moment that we shouldn't have rights - but I think we need to remember from time to time that they don't actually exist and we aren't actually entitled to them. We made them up, and we give them to each other because we choose to.

"Rights" aren't naturally our due, and we aren't automatically entitled to them, as much as we might think we are.

There's no tangible thing that makes it necessary to give someone a fair trial. It's a lovely idea and I'm glad we've decided that it is necessary, but any dictatorship will be able to show you that it's entirely arbitrary.

In our lovely, non-dictatorship society, we're so used to having "Rights" that we start feeling entitled to things that were never in any charter. This spills over into our interactions with each other and our society, and then advertisers come along and fuel our sense of entitlement even more...

And I think it would do us all some good every now and then to stop and realise "Nobody owes me anything - if I haven't done something to earn it, then I don't deserve it."

We need to do this because it's very hard for gratitude and entitlement to fit in the same space in our heads. When we feel we are owed something - that we're just worth it - we don't realise how wonderful it is to be able to have these things at all.

No, I don't deserve a lipstick. And isn't it fantastic that I have enough disposable income to be able to buy something so completely pointless?* 

No, I'm not entitled to "good service" from the person serving me, so if I get anything above and beyond "adequate service" I should enjoy it as the gift that it is.

How much of what upsets us in our interactions with other people and organisations comes from a subconscious belief that we were owed something better, and we "deserve" to have something we don't have?

How much happier would we be if we expected less and appreciated more of what we get out of life?

*And if I don't have the disposable income, then I really don't deserve it.

I wrote to you

I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who reply to my emails by asking me to call them.

If I had the time or inclination to talk to you on the phone, I would have called you in the first place.  Since I have contacted you in writing, it would be logical to assume that I would like to continue this conversation in writing until such a time as it becomes necessary or prudent to change to a different medium.

Generally speaking, the people I've encountered who do this "thank you for contacting us by email, now please call me on this number to continue the conversation" thing were either over the age of 50 (particularly men) or salespeople.

I'm not sure why this is.

Those of us in our 30s and under are used to communicating by writing.  We spend most of our days exchanging text-messages and email, so it's a medium we feel quite "at home" in.

I suppose "gentlemen of a certain age" spent most of their lives in business communicating by the telephone, so they feel most "at home" using that medium.

This is somewhat ironic, when you think about it.  Technology has taken us from a society where most communication (apart from actually talking to a person in the same room) occurred in writing, to a society where we could talk over great distances, to a point where writing is now more convenient than talking, again.

Communicating by text or email gives the correspondents a chance to reply to each other when they have time to think about it, so they can scatter the conversation throughout the day instead of having to nail down a particular time in order to communicate synchronously.

I think Gen Ys, in particular, like having this level of control over the conversation (even if they don't actually give as much thought to their replies as they ought to).  Communicating by phone just seems awkward and energy sapping.

Also, I wonder if there is an element of status involved.  When communicating by email, you are polite (or, at least, you should be), but not deferential.  It's sort of a status-lite zone.  Verbal communication, on the other hand, brings with it a whole raft of behavioural expectations that seem like more trouble than they're worth.

So, I think "old dudes" like communicating by phone rather than email because the phone was the key communication tool when they were in their prime, and they feel most in control in that space.

As for salespeople?

I think it's easier to take control of a conversation if it is happening in real time.  When you are trying to sell someone something, the last thing you want to do is give them time to think about it.

It backfires, though.  Those of us who are text-centric feel uncomfortable talking on the phone, and we avoid it if we can.

Personally, the minute someone says "I got your email, call me," I want to say "No, because I wrote to you."

If you don't want to reply to an email, don't give an email address.  See how that works out for you in this 21st century world...

No Apostrophes for You!

Okay, I give in.

I've just seen too much, and I realise this problem cannot be fixed, so it must be removed.

People can't deal with apostrophes.  They just can't.  Oh, sure, some of us can - and we are so very hung-up about it - but the general population of the English speaking world just can't wrap their heads around them.

Specifically, they don't know when not to use them.

I grow weary of all of the signs and assignments I have seen where people clearly don't know when they should or should not put an apostrophe before an s.  Some times they neglect to use one when they should us it, but most of the time they use one when they shouldn't.

And, as a final straw, last night I saw a sign (that had been photocopied multiple times and plastered all over a particular space) that spelled "your" (as in "your cooperation is appreciated") as "you'r"

You'r.

This must stop.

The way I say it, there are two options:  we can either continue to give people an opportunity to fail, and then continue to get annoyed with them when they get it wrong...

Or we can take away the apostrophes.

You can't stuff up apostrophes if you just don't use them.

This is language and spelling reform - and I know English speakers in general are against it.  They like to believe their language is perfect and unspoiled - born that way and never changing (thus ensuring that all of the many constant changes that occur in our language happen completely by accident, rather than design).

But the fact of the matter is that sometimes we have to stand up and say "You know what?  This word would make more sense if we stopped spelling it with that letter/punctuation mark/whatever".

The Americans did it with their Webster's Dictionary.  They managed to lose a bunch of silent letters and use z instead of s when the sound called for it.

It must become standard and normal for apostrophes to simply not appear in texts.  Those of us who still insist on spelling things according to the traditional British model are probably anal retentive enough to know what apostrophes are for, so there will be no approbation against people who chose to continue using them (although the wrath of a thousand pedants will fall upon the heads of those who continue to use them incorrectly - myself, unfortunately, one of the people who know better but still trip up occasionally).

But the rest of the world should be able to breathe easy, knowing that they will never get it wrong if they simply never use them.

Lecturers should do their own assignments

The more I re-engage with education as a student, the more I realise lecturers really need to stop marking assignments until they've actually tried doing those assignments themselves.

I recently had an assignment (an annotated bibliography) graded and given back to me, and for pretty much everyone of my lecturer's comments I had the following response¹:

"Yes, I know, I thought of that, too - but there was this word limit, you see, and I couldn't fit that in without leaving something else out."

I played it out fairly evenly across the board - I left some things out of one entry and left different things out of another.  She noticed every single oversight.

I have a feeling that, had she had to do that assignment within those limitations, she would have missed out on important pieces of information as well.

But, as she was marking the assignment, not writing it, she was in a position to see the limitations in my answer, rather than the limitations imposed by the question.

At least the question was a reasonable assessment task to begin with.

At the reference desk of an academic library, I often see students come for help trying to answer really, really stupid assignment questions.  A surprisingly large part of my job involves helping students compensate for bad assessment design.

There should be a rule somewhere that states a lecturer cannot set an assignment for students until after he or she has satisfactorily completed it him/herself.


1. Not that I actually "responded".  Giving feedback on an assessment piece or its mark isn't done - although I'm sure there's something to be gained from it.

What is education worth?

Many years ago, for a relatively brief period of time, the Australian government decided that a tertiary education was so vital for the development of our country's economy and industry that they would foot the bill.  All Australians (depending, of course, on whether they met the entry criteria) could receive free university education.

This had a lasting effect on the country's psyche, and we (as a nation) are now convinced that university degrees should be free.  The entire concept of paying for an education is an anathema to the Australian people.

Now, we couldn't actually sustain the free university scheme.  We eventually had to create a Higher Education Loans Scheme to make sure people could attend university without paying up-front, but would need to pay the costs of the education off later, when they were earning a wage and could afford such things.

This was considered something of an affront by many Australians.  Every change, price increase or additional expense associated with getting a degree is considered an affront by many Australians.

But why do we think an education is something we shouldn't pay for?  Do we think the educators, administrators and support staff don't deserve to be paid for their time and expertise?  Is there anything else of any real value that we think should just be handed to us?

The true value of a thing is the amount we are willing to pay for it.  And in Australia, it seems we would rather not pay anything for a university education at all.  So how much do we value it?

And why do we think an education is something we don't pay for?  Is the entire university system supposed to operate on a budget of air and magic?

It's not free.  If we expect the government to pay for our education, then we are expecting the taxpayers to pay for it.  Why should all of those kids doing apprenticeships to learn how to be boilermakers and electricians pay for someone else to do a Bachelor of Arts?

The Australian Defence Forces have an interesting arrangement.  They will pay for your degree, but then you need to work for them for the next few years to justify their costs.  What if the government offered a similar deal?  They cover the costs of your degree, but then you work for them (in the job and location where they most need you) for a number of years to make it worth their while - and, by extension, make it worth the while of the community whose taxes made your education possible.

If you don't want to work for the government, then you can pay for your own education - if you think a tertiary education is worth having.

There are many people in Australia who would be affronted by that idea, just as they are affronted by the idea that one would expect them to pay a cent for their education - either now or in the future.  But if it is worth having, then it's worth working for or paying for.

If you really want a free education, one completely funded by the government and the taxpayers of Australia, then find your local library and start reading.

Word: Curses...

I would just like to say:

Darn you, Microsoft Word! Darn you to Heck!

May whoever changed your flaming bullet function so that it will not easily convert to a multilevel list after having been started as a single level list find the glue on his best pair of shoes is failing.

I do not want to re-write my list! I admit I wasn't paying attention when I first began this bullet point fiasco, but my needs are not exorbitant. All I want is to be able to change the list level based on my tab movements. All I want is to be able to highlight my current list and change the type of bullets from single level to multi-level so that such a thing may happen.

Why can this not be done? The old Word used to do it. Open Office does it with ease. Why am I doomed to manually push each new level to the point I desire without using my handy keyboard short cuts?

While I'm at it, may whoever changed the menus so that keyboard shortcuts I know and love are not longer logically related to the functions I desire find they left their favourite pen in their pocket when they did the washing.

It's not efficient, people! It's just not.