070314 Rubric or RTFQ

By March 7, 2014 zBlog Archives

070314The best advice a teacher can give students preparing for exams is “read the question”. However, we don’t always heed that advice ourselves and seeing the word rubric pop into my in-box, I didn’t actually click any further. If I had done, I would have discovered this morning that it means ‘A direction in a liturgical book as to how a church service should be conducted, traditionally written or printed in red ink’ (OED) and not simply ‘an instruction’, as I had always thought. So this notice doesn’t actually meet the criteria of a rubric – it has nothing to do with religion, it doesn’t introduce an exam paper, it’s not in red nor is it the heading of a legal code, although it certainly has a legal basis, so I think we can say it displays traits of rubricism. I was particularly fascinated by this sign, simply because of what it has replaced. A few weeks ago, I nearly bashed my head on a bin that had appeared, at (my) head height, on this lamp-post overnight. It had a strange dog picture on it, but it wasn’t clear whether it was for the disposal of dog waste, for the disposal of all other rubbish except dog waste or even for the disposal of miniature dogs. Whatever it was for, it – and the many other like it that sprang up in the borough – was definitely a hazard. I was obviously not alone in my thinking, for as if by magic, as of this morning, they have all gone. Good to know that our rates money isn’t going to waste:-S

Day #66 of a 365 project, where the daily pic is informed by the OED word of the day.