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xenithIt's funny the things you take for granted.
A couple of weeks ago, I was going through some old sales registers the other day, noting down the years they covered. By "old" I mean pre-computer and written by hand. Often by a hand that didn't seem to care if anyone else could read it.
This could mean finding the date was tricky at times. Sometimes it was written neatly at the top of the page. Sometimes it was written in full. But there were too many volumes where you had to search many pages to find a date. Being a record of sales, most of the numbers were actually monetary amounts, in pounds, shilling & pence being the form / /
So, you sort of develop a mental filter that is triggered only by numbers in a recognised date format i.e. ##.#.## (two digits, one digit, two digits) where the last two digits don't change much.
Works quite well. You just overlook anything that is ##.##.### or ##/###/# or #.#.######
Up until the point where you notice a series a numbers in the form ##.##.### e.g.
25.3.918
26.3.918
28.3.918
3.4.918
4.4.918
Three digit years. That sort of destroyed the mental filter I was using. The other day I was trying to look for dates and got confused because there were too many numbers to sort through :\
Interesting though, to stumble across these little things.
A couple of weeks ago, I was going through some old sales registers the other day, noting down the years they covered. By "old" I mean pre-computer and written by hand. Often by a hand that didn't seem to care if anyone else could read it.
This could mean finding the date was tricky at times. Sometimes it was written neatly at the top of the page. Sometimes it was written in full. But there were too many volumes where you had to search many pages to find a date. Being a record of sales, most of the numbers were actually monetary amounts, in pounds, shilling & pence being the form / /
So, you sort of develop a mental filter that is triggered only by numbers in a recognised date format i.e. ##.#.## (two digits, one digit, two digits) where the last two digits don't change much.
Works quite well. You just overlook anything that is ##.##.### or ##/###/# or #.#.######
Up until the point where you notice a series a numbers in the form ##.##.### e.g.
25.3.918
26.3.918
28.3.918
3.4.918
4.4.918
Three digit years. That sort of destroyed the mental filter I was using. The other day I was trying to look for dates and got confused because there were too many numbers to sort through :\
Interesting though, to stumble across these little things.
