A Soft Reminder About Spelling the Sponsor's Name Correctly in a Roadtest Review

I think this topic is more important for people who record video recordings since in last year there were several videos instead of written RoadTest. Fixing pronunciation of vendor name in video is much more complicated to fix than in written text.

Good point. But it's a problem in both. 

That is pretty sloppy. I totally get that some people might not be the greatest at spelling, but what company is going to want a road test done with their name spelled incorrectly? If your application is sloppy (or last minute) is really implies that your road test is going to be sloppy (or last minute).

I find the same with CVs (résumés for those in the US) when someone applying for a job. I've seen some shockers. I'd be happy to employ a coder who doesn't have the best language skills - or may even be dyslexic. I wouldn't employ someone who couldn't be bothered to at least spell check their CV or get a friend to proof read it.

On the subject of pronunciation, back when I did the RTM3004 road test I made a point of checking the spelling and pronunciation of Rohde and Schwarz. The "Rohde" bit wasn't pronounced how I expected it to be - much more like "roadie" than "road", and definitely not spelled or pronounced like the US "Rhode Island".

FWIW, I worked at R&S for a couple of years.

Even their employees had trouble with pronunciation.

For example, while a few would say "Road-ee," most (and anyone in Munich) would use the correct "Road-Ah" pronunciation.

Of course, most people did not pronounce Schwarz correctly either ;).

I think some people don't have a clue that misspelling names is looked down upon.

Misspelling people's names, for instance - is often considered offensive, and one should correct it at the earliest possible time, along with an apology usually!

Similarly, when one is reviewing an org's 'baby' effectively, they have spent years designing and delivering it; getting the name wrong is unacceptable and probably affects search result rankings dramatically too.

I find it offensive just reading badly misspelled stuff : ) since as you say, it's not a question of skills. It is a question of caring about the reader a little bit and to that end, clicking a spellchecker button or looking up a name.

I really like Grammarly. It is free to add to the web browser and is quick and unintrusive to use, either on the fly or afterward. I like to review with it in a couple of passes since it can pick up new issues on the second iteration.

There is a paid option too, but (in my opinion) that's not worth it since the basic free Grammarly does so much already. The paid option sometimes rearranges long sentences but doesn't seem to add much more.

There's also a Microsoft Editor plugin for browsers. I've only recently tried that. Perhaps one day, it might replace Grammarly for me, but not yet.

Eventually, I'm sure we will all rely on AI to put our thoughts together and articulate and spell correctly. Then it will start inserting deliberate errors to fool us the machines are not taking over : ( 

Screenshot of what it looked like with the above text before corrections:

And this is after a couple of passes:

(Anything remaining in blue or red, is stuff I where I felt my version was more appropriate than the suggestions from the tool; it might be grammatically inaccurate, but I preferred it in those places).

I studied some R&S videos just so I could get the pronunciation right in my road test video. I still made a bit if a mess of it, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

The secret (as I understand it; I'm not German!) is that German words are literally pronounced as they are written. However, I believe we are so used to pronouncing English words with so many preconditions on the sounds based on characters surrounding letters, that it feels unnatural to speak the real sounds of the letters. By coincidence I listened to my 4-year-old niece phonetically say all the alphabet today, it was a nice reminder of how the letters are supposed to sound.

A bit off-topic ... but I trust what I hear in webinars from the German team :). "Ro-dah" is what I'm hearing there. I've heard both "road", and "roadie" as well, which does irk me. Although that being said, where I am ... I do get strange looks from people when I say "Ro-dah and Schwarz". I guess my colleagues just expected it to be pronounced like "road" and they think I'm a bit of a clod or being a bit poncy ...

I will admit to catching myself making the occasional typo ... but I hope I didn't do anything silly ...

- Gough.

I made some mistakes in singular/plural of the name, sometimes, I also used sort names. Then some Capital/small letter errors.

I was always bad in spellings even with my mother tong. 

But I think that's okay?

i.e.

Nordic Semiconductor --> Nordic Semiconductors

Nordic Semiconductor --> Nordic Semi.

Nordic Semiconductor --> nordic Semiconductors

Nordic Semiconductor --> Nordic semiconductors