Author: Kirk

“Battery” vs. “Cell”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Versus

I thought of these two nouns recently when I had to refill a flashlight.

Problem:
One of these in everyday speech is often misidentified as the other in discussions related to electricity.

Explanation:
In electrical terms,

  • a “battery” is an electrically connected combination of two or more “cells”;
  • a “cell” is something that converts chemical energy into electrical energy, usually via an electrolyte and two substances with different conductivities.

A “cell” typically has an electromotive force of about 1.5 volts.

In contrast, a “battery” has an electromotive force that equals 1.5 volts times the number of cells in the battery.

For example, the PP3 battery, which is commonly called a “9-volt battery” and truly is a “battery”, has an electromotive force of 9 volts because it comprises six “cells” within its case.

As another example, if you put four “D” cells in a flashlight, you have a six-volt battery in the flashlight.

In other words, although many dictionaries indicate that one of the definitions of “battery” is “cell”,

  • this refers to everyday speech,
  • this is not the primary definition, and
  • this is technically incorrect.

Solution:
When it comes to electricity, use “cell” for the “AA”, “AAA”, “C”, and “D” units that can be bought in stores, and use “battery” to refer to a connected set of these units or to refer to the 9-volt, “PP3” unit popularly used in smoke detectors, alarm clocks, etc.

“TOGO”

Adjectives, Devolution toward Simpler, Hyphens, Nouns

I saw this on a restaurant receipt.

Problem:
A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
I ordered some “take-out” food from a restaurant a couple of evenings ago.

While I was waiting for my order to be prepared, I studied the receipt.

Printed in all capital letters in the middle of it was “TOGO” — spelled T-O-G-O.

Beyond the ridiculousness of using all capital letters given the mixed-case font used throughout the receipt, the designer of the receipt surely did not mean to refer to the African country officially known as the Togolese Republic.

No, the designer was trying to indicate that the order was a take-out order — that the order was “to-go” — spelled T-O-HYPHEN-G-O.

The format of the receipt was more than four characters wide, so the omission of the hyphen between “TO” and “GO” could not be blamed on lack of space.

I believe that the omission of the hyphen is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the hyphen than to include it.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “to-go orders” — using T-O-HYPHEN-G-O — 332,000 matches
  • “togo orders” — using T-O-G-O — 3,390 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 97.9-to-1, which is very good.

I still have to wonder whether the restaurant receipt designer has even heard of the country of Togo. Perhaps if he or she had, then the need for the hyphen would have been more obvious.

Solution:
“TO-GO”

Changing One’s Accent, #2

Foreign Languages, Outsider's Perspective

I once had a job assignment to monitor customers’ calls to troubleshooting agents.

The agents had to help customers with questions and problems with a combination of communication and entertainment services.

The goals of the call monitoring were to determine how well customers were being served, to identify agents who should be coached on their techniques, and to identify possible improvements to support applications and processes.

The native language of most of the customers, all of whom were in the United States of America, was English.

Spanish, however, clearly was the native language of some customers. These customers had limited or less-than-fluent skills with English, which they spoke with their native accent — for example, from Mexico.

One of my peers had visited a call center in Wisconsin, where none of the agents spoke Spanish.

Listening to calls and watching agents in action, she observed how they handled calls from customers whose first language was Spanish.

What she learned was a bit surprising but also made sense.

The agents who established the best rapport and communication with Spanish-as-first-language customers changed their accents to those of their customers.

Some might call this patronizing — or matronizing — but it makes sense to me.

Because the callers were hearing English spoken in the way that they spoke it, they understood the agents better.

What is your favorite story about changing one’s accent? Let me know!