13.6.03

At last, rubbishEnglish has a result! I was rummaging around the Public Records Office web site this morning and the following copy of an email I sent to them lets you know what I found. I am delighted to say that if you go to that page now you will see that the error has been corrected. On this page, at the point at which you suggest forms of identification for presentation at the PRO you include the phrase 'drivers licence'. There are two mistakes here that you will want to correct. Firstly, in this context, drivers is possessive and should be written driver's. Secondly, and much more importantly, the UK has a system of driving licences and it is the USA that has a system of drivers' licences. Please change the phrase to read 'driving licence' and you will solve both of the problems that I have highlighted in one fell swoop. DW Here's a fascinating thing, though. When you look at that page at the PRO you might realise the uncertainties of modern life. The Domesday Book to which that page refers is now over 920 years old and we can still read it, see it, copy it ... the laser disks that were produced in the mid 1980s have already had to be rescued as the pace of technological change almost meant that they were lost in an obsolete technology. Paper and parchment can survive thousands of years even when it is mistreated. Laser disks can survive millennia no doubt but reading them in a thousand years will definitely be a massive problem. Think of the Rosetta Stone, too, and how that has proven to be both primitive and advanced at one and the same time! DW

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