I’m a keyboard outputer...,

[Silverobama]

Someone told me she is working in a state-owned enterprise. I asked her the question:

-What’s your job mainly about?

And she said:

-I’m a keyboard outputer and I type around 50,000 words per day. Most of which are reports, it’s quite monotonous.

Is my italic sentence good? The intended meaning is: This person needs to type around 50,000 words every day and the typing is about different kinds of reports. She thinks her job is boring.

 

[Rover_KE]

Where did you find the word ‘outputer’?

 

[Silverobama]

Where did you find the word ‘outputer’?

I made it up. I think output is a word and output means to create things so I added an "er" to make it a noun.

 

[SoothingDave]

Somebody entering words into a computer via a keyboard is doing input, not output.

 

[emsr2d2]

Someone told me she is working in/at/for a state-owned enterprise. I asked her the question: "What’s your job mainly about?"

Your question isn't natural. Try "What does your job mainly entail?"

And She said replied "I’m a keyboard outputer I do data entry and I type around 50,000 words per day, most of which are reports. It’s quite monotonous."

See above. You're still getting quite a lot of comma splices. You really need to work on that!

Is my italic sentence good? The intended meaning is I want it to mean no colon here that this person needs to type around 50,000 words every day and the typing is about different kinds of reports. She thinks her job is boring.

With regard to the underlined part, are you sure that the words she types are about reports, or do you mean that she's typing up reports?

 

[Silverobama]

You're still getting quite a lot of comma splices. You really need to work on that!

To be honest, I've been really careful when typing but I don't know why there are still so many mistakes!!! I wonder if there's an article about "comma splices" so that I can read it carefully to avoid all those problems? I do listen to you and teechar (who first told me the problems of comma splices).

With regard to the underlined part, are you sure that the words she types are about reports, or do you mean that she's typing up reports?

Her job is like, say, her boss gives her a document, and she types all the words on words without changing them.

 

[probus]

In the mainframe era we used to call such work data entry and the people doing it data entry operators, but I haven't encountered those terms more recently, since the advent of the personal computer revolution.

 

[emsr2d2]

To be honest, I've been really careful when typing but I don't know why there are still so many mistakes!!! I wonder if there's an article about "comma splices" so that I can read it carefully to avoid all those problems? I do listen to you and teechar (who first told me the problems of comma splices).

Try THIS.

Her job is like, say, For example, her boss gives her a document, and she types all the words on words without changing them.

See above. What does the underlined part mean? It doesn't make sense.
Does he give her a handwritten document and she copies it exactly onto the computer? If so, she would have been called a "copy typist" a couple of decades ago. It might still be "data entry" work. What is her actual job title?

 

[Silverobama]

She doesn't have a job title, I suppose. She said what she needs to do every day is to type. For example, she got a printed document and she needed to type those words on Word. Sorry, I remember I did check the spellings. I think "keyboard operator" is okay.

 

[dunchee]

One of the jobs my brother did ten or so years ago was data entry (here in Massachusetts). Out of curiosity, I googled "monster.com data entry". Yup, data entry jobs are still around.

 

[emsr2d2]

She doesn't have a job title, I suppose. She said what she needs to do every day is to type. For example, she got gets a printed document and she needed needs to type those words onto a Word document. Sorry, I remember I did check the spellings. I think "keyboard operator" is okay.

Everyone has a job title! How on earth could she have applied for the job if it wasn't called anything? Maybe the next time you talk to her, you could ask her.

I'm sorry to keep banging on about the logic of all of this but it still makes no sense. If she's given a printed document, then someone has clearly already typed it out, probably using Microsoft Word. What on earth is the point of her just typing it all out again as another Word document?

"Keyboard operator" sounds like one of those fancy terms people used to make up to make their job sound more exciting than it was, when in fact they were typists (or pianists!)

 

[Silverobama]

She does have a job title and I'll ask her next time. It was at a Cantonese club so we were chatting in Cantonese. However, her Cantonese wasn't good so she was a bit shy to speak more.

Sicne she told me she's working in a state-own company, I suppose the documents or reports she needs to type are "first-hand". Anyway, I'll ask her about this next time. Again, I'm grateful for your corrections. They are in my notebooks and many students and friends of mine like them.