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Guest Posted 23 years ago
Grammar
Has anyone else noticed this recently? Settle our argument!
My wife was filling out a job application recently, and used the phrase:
"I spent time in the [whatever] unit, working to Joe Blogs."
I picked her up on it, saying that I didn't think "working to [name]" was correct, but that she could use "working to support Joe Blogs", "reporting to Joe Blogs" or even "working under Joe Blogs" (although that has connotations she'd rather avoid!).
She has just forwarded me an email from her channel controller (she works for a TV company) which uses the same phrase, and is obviously feeling pretty smug about it...
Is this something anyone else has come across? I have just done a quick Google search of the phrase "working to John" and have only found a couple of pages that use this phrase in that way.
Does anyone have any comments?
"I spent time in the [whatever] unit, working to Joe Blogs."
I picked her up on it, saying that I didn't think "working to [name]" was correct, but that she could use "working to support Joe Blogs", "reporting to Joe Blogs" or even "working under Joe Blogs" (although that has connotations she'd rather avoid!).
She has just forwarded me an email from her channel controller (she works for a TV company) which uses the same phrase, and is obviously feeling pretty smug about it...
Is this something anyone else has come across? I have just done a quick Google search of the phrase "working to John" and have only found a couple of pages that use this phrase in that way.
Does anyone have any comments?
Top answer
Sounds terrible! Never heard of it; wouldn't dream of using it!
- Sounds terrible!
- Never heard of it; wouldn't dream of using it!
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4 Answers
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Sounds terrible! Never heard of it; wouldn't dream of using it!
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I agree, it's worthy of ridicule.
Someone else making the same mistake doesn't make it correct. It takes millions of people to transform an error into accepted usage.
You could suggest: "working with Joe Blogs". Just change "to" to "with" and now instead of saying that she was his subordinate incorrectly, she's saying that she was his colleague correctly. Doubleplusgood!
Someone else making the same mistake doesn't make it correct. It takes millions of people to transform an error into accepted usage.
You could suggest: "working with Joe Blogs". Just change "to" to "with" and now instead of saying that she was his subordinate incorrectly, she's saying that she was his colleague correctly. Doubleplusgood!
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Everyone else is right. It doesn't sound normal. Maybe the person that wrote it was typing in such a hurry that he/she didn't have to check what was written. It happens sometimes but it doesn't make it correct.
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