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I can never get over how often and serious employers are about asking if you know how to use MS Office, and to rate yourself at it. I'm not talking 20k a year jobs either. I'm talking jobs in the 50's and 60k's that require a degree. I mean if you can't figure out how to do email, spreadsheets, and word documents, then you have issues. Especially if you graduated college! I thought those were the first programs you are taught in college. How do you even graduate college without knowing these programs?
These programs didn't even exist when many of us were in college, so expecting everyone currently in the workforce to have learned them then is ridiculous. For example, Microsoft didn't roll out Office in any form until three years after I got my degree.
Also, as I understand it they aren't taught in college today as some kind of blanket requirement either. You might find the occasional seminar course on some particular portion of Office, but I don't think I've ever seen a course catalogue listing for a semester-long course on how to use the entire suite. Not that there really should be, as it wouldn't take a semester anyway. That said, I know a lot of people who can't really find their way around MS Office, or even a computer itself, effectively. (I'm often the person they call for help, because I'm fortunate enough to have top-notch PC skills. And I'm self-taught!)
Finally, there is a far cry between having noodled around with Office just enough to write a term paper in Word and achieving true mastery of the entire suite. Not to mention that once you master the whole suite, you still have to keep up with the changes wrought by each new version.
Who knows. People can't seem to grasp the difference between lose and loose or advice and advise, either. Or mute or moot. I see "mute points" a lot on City-Data.
If you get frustrated, just join us on the "I can't take it anymore" thread on the Writing forum.
Or affect and effect!!
Thanks, I will! I have gone over to that board to read occasionally! Also love "Grammarly" and "The Grammar Police" on Facebook.
Without help???? There is MORE help available now (Google/spellchecker) than there ever was then. Back then we had to know how to spell. We didn't have spellcheck as a crutch. We had to know the proper terminology. We didn't have Google. YES reporters wrote correct copy then. I have friends who are reporters and I was a journalism major myself at one time. Don't give me that crap. It's not true. Yes, there was a copy editor. But I GUARANTEE you that the stuff that went to the copy editor did not have the mistakes in it that I see published today. Ever hear of PROOFREADING? I could have written mistake-free articles then, and I could do it today.
The bottom line is we were better educated. We knew how to spell and we knew grammar and we knew the difference between "in view of" and "in lieu of" and all other kinds of things that people apparently don't know anymore.
Computers aren't the needed help. There's so many fewer people per page of text these days. And the people they do have are much more junior than they used to have as there's not nearly as much money in it. You see the same thing in the copy editing of books.
The things they make mistakes on are common knowledge things. I don't care how junior I was, I would have gotten those things right. And computers ARE the needed help if you aren't sure which term is correct. We would have used a dictionary. It's just laziness or ignorance that causes the mistakes I see. Either they didn't bother to look it up to see which word was correct, or they were too dumb to know they were using an incorrect word.
Don't make a bunch of mistakes that prove you are illiterate, while explaining how dumb people don't know who to use MS Office, and no Grammar Nazi will point out your mistakes.
Don't make a bunch of mistakes that prove you are illiterate, while explaining how dumb people don't know who to use MS Office, and no Grammar Nazi will point out your mistakes.
Hahahaha, that's why we have our special place where we go and make fun of the people who can't be bothered to spell or write correctly. It's not good form to point it out in the threads, and the people who can't be bothered don't want to be corrected because if they cared in the first place, they would have checked what they wrote before they posted it. Or, as has been pointed out, they are too stupid to realize what they wrote makes no sense.
The things they make mistakes on are common knowledge things. I don't care how junior I was, I would have gotten those things right. And computers ARE the needed help if you aren't sure which term is correct. We would have used a dictionary. It's just laziness or ignorance that causes the mistakes I see. Either they didn't bother to look it up to see which word was correct, or they were too dumb to know they were using an incorrect word.
Or they are doing the jobs that would have been done by three different people a few decades ago. Or they're tired from two jobs because nobody pays enough money to support a family on one job anymore. Everybody stopped spending on staff and then acts surprised that things don't function as well as they used to.
I find that much more likely than the idea that your generation is the first one that is exactly right when it comes to bitching about how the kids today just not as good as the ones back when.
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There is MORE help available now (Google/spellchecker) than there ever was then. Back then we had to know how to spell. We didn't have spellcheck as a crutch. We had to know the proper terminology. We didn't have Google. YES reporters wrote correct copy then. I have friends who are reporters and I was a journalism major myself at one time. Don't give me that crap. It's not true. Yes, there was a copy editor. But I GUARANTEE you that the stuff that went to the copy editor did not have the mistakes in it that I see published today. Ever hear of PROOFREADING? I could have written mistake-free articles then, and I could do it today. 
