LET'S COMMUNICATE
Agriculture Communication Newsletter
December 2002, No. 84

CONTENTS

CAMPUS AG E-MAIL LIST
DOCUMENT CONVERSION
WRITE THE RIGHT WORD
THINK ABOUT IT

CAMPUS AG E-MAIL LIST

A new Majordomo list containing e-mail addresses for all (or at least most) "ag" people on campus was recently created. It is intended to be an NDSU-campus-only companion to the 'all-ag' list. The list is automatically updated every hour by combining the unique e-mail addresses from the 'campus,' 'expcampus' and 'coa- fac' lists.

The name of the list is 'campus-ag@ndsuext.nodak.edu .'

Roger Egeberg

DOCUMENT CONVERSION

Switching documents from one word processor to another is not always that easy. Many formatting commands don't carry over to another program when you save the document in a different format.

Try saving the document in Rich Text Format (RTF) using the word processing program the document was created in, then opening the RTF document in the word processing program you want to use it in. The RTF specification uses the ANSI, PC-8, Macintosh and IBM PC character sets. It defines control words and symbols that serve as "common denominator" formatting commands.

When saving a file in the Rich Text Format, the file is processed by an RTF writer that converts the word processor's markup to the RTF language. Many computer programs have the "Save as RTF" feature.

Word Processor Brand X
File-Open document.xyz
File-Save As .rtf (Rich Text) document.rtf

Word Processor Brand Y
File-Open document.rtf
File-Save As default file type (.wpd or .doc)

Dave Rice

WRITE THE RIGHT WORD

Here are a few errors spotted in newspapers recently.

* "Neither Erickson nor Genoch were wearing seat belts."

The two names don't make a compound subject for the sentence. Instead they are alternate subjects and require a verb that agrees with the nearer subject. So... "Neither Erickson nor Genoch was wearing a seat belt" or "Neither Erickson nor his children were wearing seat belts."

* "It's a right of passage."

Not right -- wrong... or rite. A rite is an event marking an important stage in someone's life. So... "It's a rite of passage."

* "Waterford is proud of their veterans."

Waterford is a retirement community, not a person. So... "Waterford is proud of its veterans" or "Waterford residents are proud of their veterans."

THINK ABOUT IT

Busy people (and aren't we all!) want their information as short, sweet and to the point as possible. Make your New Year's resolution to write concisely. Write, then edit it down. Delete words and phrases that don't add to the message. Have someone else read it to cut out more excess.

As American humor author Jacob Braude said,

"If a thing goes without saying, let it."

Here's another New Year's resolution. Don't let your computer think for you. It can't. Here's why.

Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it I am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect awl the weigh My chequer tolled me sew.