It's been a long time since I wrote anything in this forum. It is probably time for me to punch in and declare I am still alive!

Today's topic is "crossing the t's and dotting the i's"

My ex-boss, Shane, likes to use this phrase. Shane is an excellent boss. He is knowledgable, methodological, competence (very), fair and very friendly. Above all, he is also quite meticulous.

Whenever he assigned a job to me, he would finished the assignment briefing with "make sure that the i's are dotted and t's are crossed".

What he meant was "make sure that you check your work thoroughly so that every little details are 100% completed".

Think about it, an "i" without the dot is not an "i"; similarly a "t" without a horinzontal line (not crossed) is not "t"

I learned a lot from Shane. A simple phrase that contributed to one successful project after another. I hope it would benefit you as well.

cool.... it is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and your boss is dociousaliexpiisticfragilcalirupes too.

原帖由 FelixOng 于 2008-7-18 13:38 发表
It's been a long time since I wrote anything in this forum. It is probably time for me to punch in and declare I am still alive!

Today's topic is "crossing the t's and dotting the i's"

My ex-bos ...

That's a good expression. When you are asked to do something, you are expected to carry it out to a completion. Of course, completion means different things for different people. For a lot of people, leaving t's uncrossed and i's undotted is OK. They may be very talented. However, if they are in the corporate world, chances are that they will languish in the lower level of the corporate ladders complaining that their talents are not recognized. For those fresh out of college, this is especially important to recognize.

Agreed. While I fresh out from college and entered my first company, my nice boss watched my every email and correted in red or blue and sent back to me. Sometimes he even gathered us to teach some new expressions and words on board, like a tutor. I am grateful for that not only the knowledge but also the attitude being attributed a lot to my career life. One of my former colleagues joked figuratively like that, ''Email sent out is just like the water poured out.' That is true. If you wrote something wrong even simply in grammar or tone and that made the impression of you into 'often make mistakes', the business partner who received would think you are not professional, and that would affect the image of your company. Even worse, the head quarter would doubt your ability for this job, and that would be embarrassed to know that they show and laugh at your mistakes around the whole office outta there. But unfortunately, eveyone would meet that at least one or twice or more since they newly work..