I have a situation at work where one of our Apprentices does a job, a part of which entails her being able to file things alphabetically
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Is it that she doesn't know the order of the letters (in which case I second fififolle's suggestion about an alphabet song, but I'm afraid they're all for children, and an adult might not take it well), or that she doesn't get doing the first letter, then moving to the second letter and making sure that is in order, then the third?
Going letter-by-letter may seem obvious to us, but it's not necessarily so. For a long time, medieval word-lists were alphabetized by the leading letter only, so one would have a random assortment of A words, followed by a random assortment of B words, and so on. Some people would go two or even three letters in, but they wouldn't just keep going letter by letter as we do. There's also the question of alphabetical by letter, or alphabetical by word-does one stop with titles when one gets to the end of the first word and then put it before another word that's longer? Does "Letter to a friend" come before "Lettering for idiots"? If one does alpha by letter, it's after; if alpha by word, it's before.
Simple instructions here; it looks like they were written for adults. She can't be the only one in this position.
I have managed to take her through this. It seemed to go quite well. There were a few blips, and I've not yet had the opportunity to to let her have another go, but I think things are looking up.
Going letter-by-letter may seem obvious to us, but it's not necessarily so. For a long time, medieval word-lists were alphabetized by the leading letter only, so one would have a random assortment of A words, followed by a random assortment of B words, and so on. Some people would go two or even three letters in, but they wouldn't just keep going letter by letter as we do. There's also the question of alphabetical by letter, or alphabetical by word-does one stop with titles when one gets to the end of the first word and then put it before another word that's longer? Does "Letter to a friend" come before "Lettering for idiots"? If one does alpha by letter, it's after; if alpha by word, it's before.
Simple instructions here; it looks like they were written for adults. She can't be the only one in this position.
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Those instructions are good! It seems so simple, but when it is something you yourself do automatically, it's not always obvious what you're doing.
Fortunately, it's names we're deaing with, so spacing isn't a problem.
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