re: writing. tangentially related... because i tend to see good writing as mostly dependent on someone doing lots of reading of good writing. if you don't read much, you're generally not much of a writer. other people are simply blocked when it comes to writing. a guy at work said something about hating to write and not being able to write.
when i read his wiki entries, i realized that, yeah, he must have some sort of block. he just can't write. he's neither dumb nor ignorant, by any means. he went to some military school where rich kids generally go. that's all i know about his educational background. some people just have a physical inability to write.
but as for reading: for two days, i've been trying to figure out why people at work are interpreting a contract as saying that the company basically owns everything they've ever created, before and during employment, including things done on their own time with their own resources.
i just sat down and reread the contract with an eye toward figuring why people think that and i realized why. People are seeing a sentence that joins three clauses with an *and* between each and reading it as if it joins the clauses with an *or*.
it says something like: you must provide the company with an exhibit list (A) that contains all inventions, original works, etc which belong to you, and which relate to Company's business, and which are not assigned to Company.
In other words, items in exhibit A must meet all three conditions to be included in the list.
If it read *or* (instead of *and*) it would be a whole 'nother kettle of fish, of course. And right now, under the influence of several very vocal people, nearly everyone's become convinced that the "or" interpretation is the correct one.
Funny thing is, if this were written in code, with conditional if statements, it might actually make sense to them. HA!
hmmmm. a whole sub-speciality in IP law: people who translate contracts into pseudo-code so coderz can understand it. ho ho.
anyway, our culture doesn't encourage reading and what people mostly read isn't especially good writing, i don't think.
i have noticed in corporate america, amongst managerial types, this interesting tendency to try to come off as a *srs ritr* (lolcat for serious writer). What it comes off as is little boys struttin' 'round in their big boy pants, chest puffed out, tryin' t'imitate grown ups.
the marketing types are often better writers, sad to say.
Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)