Dear All,

I realise that this may be off-topic, but please bare with me.

I am a final year student, reading history at the University of York. As
part of my degree I am currently researching a dissertation on "Public
attitudes to the decommissioning of London's Trams".

Whilst a good proportion of my research rests on primary and secondary
material at institutions such as London's Transport Museum, the National
Tramway Museum and the National Railway Museum - I am also keen to
intergrate real experiences into my writing.

I have, therefore, produced a questionnaire aimed at people who lived or
worked in London during the 1930s, 1940s or early 1950s and who remember
riding on trams, or noticed their demise. I am particularly interested in
hearing individuals' own reasons for the closure of tramways (ie: as
different from the "official" reason) - although any memories of trams
running on the streets of London will be very much appreciated.

I would be grateful if those interested in taking part could visit:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rsj100/trams/

and follow the links to the questionnaire. I have provided it in several
different formats in the hope that it will be accessible to all, although
anybody encountering problems accessing it should email me at


Even if you are too young to remember the trams or their closure, you may no
somebody who is old enough. In this case I would be grateful if you could
print the questionnaire and pass it on to them.

Finally, I should stress that any personal information will be used
anonymously for the purposes of writing the dissertation, and will not under
any circumstances be revealed to anybody else.

Thank you very much for reading this email - I look forward to receiving
some completed questionnaires.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Johnson
Student
University of York

P.S. I realise that some people consider such requests to be SPAM - however,
I hope you will be able to forgive me for the sake of this project.

Johnson Family wrote to uk.transport.london on Fri, 8 Oct 2004:

Dear All,

I realise that this may be off-topic, but please bare with me.


Me, I shall keep my clothes on at all times, I think....

My daughter did that unit, too.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 26 September 2004

"Johnson Family" wrote in message
...
I realise that this may be off-topic, but please bare with me.

I am a final year student, reading history at the University of York. As
part of my degree I am currently researching a dissertation on "Public
attitudes to the decommissioning of London's Trams".

Whilst a good proportion of my research rests on primary and secondary
material at institutions such as London's Transport Museum, the National
Tramway Museum and the National Railway Museum - I am also keen to
intergrate real experiences into my writing.

I have, therefore, produced a questionnaire aimed at people who lived or
worked in London during the 1930s, 1940s or early 1950s and who remember
riding on trams, or noticed their demise. I am particularly interested in
hearing individuals' own reasons for the closure of tramways (ie: as
different from the "official" reason) - although any memories of trams
running on the streets of London will be very much appreciated.

I would be grateful if those interested in taking part could visit:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rsj100/trams/

and follow the links to the questionnaire. I have provided it in several
different formats in the hope that it will be accessible to all, although
anybody encountering problems accessing it should email me at


Even if you are too young to remember the trams or their closure, you may
no
somebody who is old enough. In this case I would be grateful if you could
print the questionnaire and pass it on to them.

Finally, I should stress that any personal information will be used
anonymously for the purposes of writing the dissertation, and will not
under
any circumstances be revealed to anybody else.

Thank you very much for reading this email - I look forward to receiving
some completed questionnaires.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Johnson
Student
University of York

P.S. I realise that some people consider such requests to be SPAM -
however,
I hope you will be able to forgive me for the sake of this project.

Is this a spoof ? Do university students in their final year really make
such elementary spelling mistakes in what are otherwise well constructed
messages ? If the excuse is that he's on a technical course he should have
heard of spell-checkers. /PEDANT (My excuse for bad spelling is that I
have worn the letters of several of the keys on m,y keyboard or that the
ghost of the Gendarme from 'Allo, 'Allo is haunting my computer.
--
Cheerz,
Baz

"Johnson Family" wrote in message
...
SNIP, SNIP, SNIP, etc.,
Robert Johnson
Student
University of York

P.S. I realise that some people consider such requests to be SPAM -
however,
I hope you will be able to forgive me for the sake of this project.

BEWARE !! I went on to this guy's site to fill in his questionnaire only to
find lots more strange spellings. I went to the page where the responses
could allegedly be filled in, only to find that the areas where answers were
to be entered were coloured yellow but nothing showed when I tried to type
into them and the instructions were to save the page to my hard drive. NO
!!!
It may not be spam but I smell a possible virus.
Baz

"Johnson Family" wrote in message


snip load of stuff

Yours faithfully,

Robert Johnson
Student

Robert I think you are suffering from a bit of newbie-itis, great idea
but the people you need to talk to don't use the internet and your form
doesn't print.

The people I know who were around at the time loved the trams because
they could get from Old Kent Road to Brentford for 2p as a child (or
whatever it was) but hated them as adults because they were
bone-rattlers.



--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Marratxi wrote:
"Johnson Family" wrote in message
...
SNIP, SNIP, SNIP, etc.,
Robert Johnson
Student
University of York

P.S. I realise that some people consider such requests to be SPAM
- however, I hope you will be able to forgive me for the sake of
this project.

BEWARE !! I went on to this guy's site to fill in his questionnaire
only to find lots more strange spellings. I went to the page where
the responses could allegedly be filled in, only to find that the
areas where answers were to be entered were coloured yellow but
nothing showed when I tried to type into them and the instructions
were to save the page to my hard drive. NO !!!
It may not be spam but I smell a possible virus.

No, it's a cock-up, not a conspiracy. The form is a Word document which
is locked for editing, so you can't enter anything into it. He has no
mechanism for accepting the form directly from your browser, so he asks
you to print it or mail it, not realising that you can't type anything
into it. Also, the frames version has a bad URL , so you can't even see
the form by that route.

The strange spellings are probably the result of the appalling quality
of English teaching over the past decade or two. Spell-checkers don't
actually help if you type bare instead of bear, but should pick up
intergrate instead of integrate. The problem is that students in any
subject other than English are not penalised for poor language skills,
so they never have an incentive to improve those skills.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

In message , Richard J.
writes

The problem is that students in any subject other than English are not
penalised for poor language skills, so they never have an incentive to
improve those skills.

At A level, marks are allocated for SPG (Spelling, Punctuation and
Grammar) in all papers involving prose answers, whatever the subject.
This has been the case for many years. I don't think the problem is lack
of incentive so much as lack of ability.

I don't know what universities do these days, since it is some years
since I last taught at that level.
--
Paul Terry

Paul Terry wrote:
In message , Richard
J. writes

The problem is that students in any subject other than English are
not penalised for poor language skills, so they never have an
incentive to improve those skills.

At A level, marks are allocated for SPG (Spelling, Punctuation and
Grammar) in all papers involving prose answers, whatever the
subject. This has been the case for many years.

That directly contradicts a report I saw recently in The Times which
quoted an A-level examiner as saying he was under strict instructions
*not* to penalise even gross errors of spelling such as "he would of"
instead of "he would have".
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Richard J." wrote the following in:


Paul Terry wrote:
In message , Richard
J. writes

The problem is that students in any subject other than English are
not penalised for poor language skills, so they never have an
incentive to improve those skills.

At A level, marks are allocated for SPG (Spelling, Punctuation and
Grammar) in all papers involving prose answers, whatever the
subject. This has been the case for many years.

That directly contradicts a report I saw recently in The Times which
quoted an A-level examiner as saying he was under strict instructions
*not* to penalise even gross errors of spelling such as "he would of"
instead of "he would have".

A level (and I believe GCSE) papers do have marks set aside for
spelling, punctuation and grammar. It's a very small percentage of the
total though. What the examiner probably meant is that if someone
writes "he would of" and the meaning of the sentence is clear (and
deserving of a mark), they should receive marks for their answer. They
would probably still lose marks for SPG.

--
message by the incredible Robin May.
"The British don't like successful people" - said by British failures

Who is Abi Titmuss? What is she? Why is she famous?
http://robinmay.fotopic.net

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 22:30:21 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:



The strange spellings are probably the result of the appalling quality
of English teaching over the past decade or two.

Evidence? Or just slagging off a profession for fun?

Get back to your Daily Mail!