staff - colloquial or not?
KS
Thanks,
Kamil
Alan Jones
"KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrote in message news:d7h4n7$mq5$1...@nemesis.news.tpi.pl...
> Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way colloquial?
Standard in BrE.
Alan Jones
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>
>"KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrote in message news:d7h4n7$mq5$1...@nemesis.news.tpi.pl...
>
>> Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way colloquial?
>
>
>Standard in BrE.
In AmE, too.
--
Charles Riggs
KS
Uzytkownik "Charles Riggs" <chriggs@éircom.net> napisal w wiadomosci
news:i3bo91lracuuv0dqq...@4ax.com...
Thank you guys! I thought so, but I decided to ask native speakers just to
be on the safe side.
One of our clients thinks she knows English better than native speakers of
English ;-)
Cheers,
Kamil
Ross Howard
I think it's probably worth mentioning that "staff" may only be
synonymous with "personnel" in the context of private-enterprise
office workers. For example, would we say the local sewage-treatment
plant was staffed by "staff"? I'm not sure we would, unless we
specified the "office staff" to distinguisgh them from the workers in
the wellies with the rakes.
--
Ross Howard
Ross Howard
wrought:
Wait. It's more complicated than that. The "staff" of a school
includes the teachers, definitely, and they don't work in offices
(let's say "indoors" then), but does it include the caretaker or the
groundsman? Wouldn't they be just "employees" of the school, unless
qualified as the "maintenance staff" or something?
--
Ross Howard
CyberCypher
> Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrought:
>>"KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrought:
>>>Uzytkownik "Charles Riggs" wrote:
>>>>"Alan Jones" <a...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> >"KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrote
>>>> >
>>>> >> colloquial?
>>>> >
>>>> >Standard in BrE.
>>>>
>>>> In AmE, too.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Thank you guys! I thought so, but I decided to ask native
>>>speakers just to be on the safe side.
>>>One of our clients thinks she knows English better than native
>>>speakers of English ;-)
>>
>>I think it's probably worth mentioning that "staff" may only be
>>synonymous with "personnel" in the context of private-enterprise
>>office workers. For example, would we say the local
>>sewage-treatment plant was staffed by "staff"? I'm not sure we
>>would, unless we specified the "office staff" to distinguisgh them
>>from the workers in the wellies with the rakes.
>
> Wait. It's more complicated than that. The "staff" of a school
> includes the teachers, definitely, and they don't work in offices
> (let's say "indoors" then), but does it include the caretaker or
> the groundsman? Wouldn't they be just "employees" of the school,
> unless qualified as the "maintenance staff" or something?
While it's true that the word "staff" is standard in both BrE and
AmE, the way it is used in places outside the US and UK and its
affiliates is often not idiomatic for native anglophones. Managers
often talk about "my staff", and sometimes native anglophones say
things like "He's on (the) staff" to mean that he's a full-time
employee, but I know that in Taiwan and Japan, almost nobody has any
idea of when to use "staff" instead of "personnel" instead of
"employee" instead of "staff". They think that *"He's a staff" is
English in the same way that "He's an employee" is. They don't know
when to pair "member" with "staff": "He's a staff member" or "He's a
member of the staff" or "He's one of the (office) staff" are all
fine, and they're all idiomatic.
The problem with "staff" is how one uses it and in what sentence one
uses it, not whether one can use it to mean "employee(s)" or
"personnel".
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.
the Omrud
>
> Uzytkownik "Charles Riggs" <chriggs@éircom.net> napisal w wiadomosci
> news:i3bo91lracuuv0dqq...@4ax.com...
> > On Tue, 31 May 2005 08:56:04 GMT, "Alan Jones" <a...@blueyonder.co.uk>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >"KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrote in message
> > > news:d7h4n7$mq5$1...@nemesis.news.tpi.pl...
> > >
> > >> Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way colloquial?
> > >
> > >
> > >Standard in BrE.
> >
> > In AmE, too.
> >
>
> Thank you guys! I thought so, but I decided to ask native speakers just to
> be on the safe side.
> One of our clients thinks she knows English better than native speakers of
> English ;-)
> Cheers,
It's also a convenient word in its verb form (staffed), to avoid the
previous use of "manned" which can be thought to exclude women.
Since it's a perfectly respectable word, this doesn't seem forced in
any way.
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the
Bob Cunningham
<cyber...@19--16-25-13-01-03.com> said:
[...]
> The problem with "staff" is how one uses it and in what sentence one
> uses it, not whether one can use it to mean "employee(s)" or
> "personnel".
Overheard in a local mom 'n' pop bookstore, where the pop
was seated at a desk having a phone conversation while the
mom was running around the store frantically looking for a
requested book:
I have my entire staff looking for it.
(True story.)
John Dean
Depends entirely on how you use it. Give us a usage in context.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Don Aitken
wrote:
I think they are all staff, but the distinction you mention was once
usual in all areas of employment. One group were paid monthly by
cheque, received a "salary" and were "staff". The other were paid
weekly (or even daily) in cash, received "wages", and were "workman"
or "employees" or "servants". The distinction was a matter of law;
until 1963 it was illegal to pay the weekly wages of a workman in any
other form than cash. It survived longest in the names of the relevant
unions: Transport Salaried Staffs Association vs. Amalgamated Society
of Railway Servants (later National Untion of Railwaysmen) but is now,
I think, entirely dead.
This was British practice; I don't know if such a distinction was ever
made in AmE.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
rban...@shaw.ca
wrote:
>On Tue, 31 May 2005 11:40:17 +0200, Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com>
Injinneers, lad. Not keeping up wit' unions?
Areff
> I think it's probably worth mentioning that "staff" may only be
> synonymous with "personnel" in the context of private-enterprise
> office workers. For example, would we say the local sewage-treatment
> plant was staffed by "staff"? I'm not sure we would, unless we
> specified the "office staff" to distinguisgh them from the workers in
> the wellies with the rakes.
Same applies to AmE, except that I see no reason why public-sector office
workers wouldn't use "staff" here. Liebs would know.
Robert Lieblich
Sorry, guys, all we use these days is HR ("human resources").
Well, not totally true. I work in a Government law office, and we
distinguish between "lawyers" and "staff" (short for "support
staff"). The "lawyers" are not part of the "staff."
I have no idea what this signifies, but it do be the truth.
--
Bob Lieblich
Not staff
Skitt
I did encounter two different meanings of "staff engineer" in my career. In
most places the position of Staff Engineer is a lofty one, but not at the
outfit where I had the title. There it meant just an engineer of the staff,
just like everyone else. It looked good on my resume, though. Can one be
punished for using capitalization to ones advantage? It didn't make any
difference in my career anyway.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Steve Hayes
>Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way colloquial?
What do you mean by "colloquial"?
In military usage, I believe staff are higher up than personnel, and not
directly in the line of fire.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Joe Fineman
> On Tue, 31 May 2005 09:40:34 +0200, "KS" <k...@ks.pll> wrote:
>
>>Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way colloquial?
>
> What do you mean by "colloquial"?
>
> In military usage, I believe staff are higher up than personnel, and
> not directly in the line of fire.
Staff officers are those whose whose job is to advise & assist the
commanding officer (general etc.) rather than to receive & execute
orders from above. This usage has also been adopted in business
administration.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: The ability to enjoy oneself at a low level of competence is :||
||: a precious resource for happiness. :||
John Dawkins
Robert Lieblich <robert....@verizon.net> wrote:
Where I work we have Faculty and Staff (=clerical staff). Exception: In
lists of courses to be offered (next term, for example), if a faculty
memebr has not yet been assigned to teach the course, the space that
would be occupied by her (or his) name is taken up by "Staff".
--
J.
Laura F. Spira
At Oxford Brookes we're all staff - the employment handbook refers to
senior staff, academic staff, lecturing staff, research staff,
administrative staff, secretarial staff and support staff.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Django Cat
But be careful of a mistake many non-native speakers make, talking
about 'a staff' to mean a single person; if you want to say that it
has to be 'a member of staff'.
DC
Skitt
> "KS" wrote:
>> "Charles Riggs" napisal:
>>> "Alan Jones" wrote:
>>>> "KS" wrote:
>>>>> Hi! Is the word 'staff' (meaning 'personnel') in any way
>>>>> colloquial?
>>>>
>>>> Standard in BrE.
>>>
>>> In AmE, too.
>>
>> Thank you guys! I thought so, but I decided to ask native speakers
>> just to be on the safe side.
>> One of our clients thinks she knows English better than native
>> speakers of English ;-)
>> Cheers,
>
> But be careful of a mistake many non-native speakers make, talking
> about 'a staff' to mean a single person; if you want to say that it
> has to be 'a member of staff'.
I don't know about the UK, but in AmE a person can be staff to someone.
Anyway, M-W Online has for "staff":
[...]
5 plural staffs
a : the officers chiefly responsible for the internal operations of an
institution or business
b : a group of officers appointed to assist a civil executive or commanding
officer
c : military or naval officers not eligible for operational command
d : the personnel who assist a director in carrying out an assigned task
e plural staff : a member of a staff
See 5e.
Robert Bannister
Are you sure, either of you, that the proper English word hasn't been
ousted by that ugly "human resources"?
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
and support staff.
>
No doubt a wooden object for the infirm.
--
Rob Bannister
Linz
"Laura F. Spira" <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d7l6te$ji6$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
Yup, it's the same here at The University of Manchester. We do use the
phrase "HR" but it's used to refer solely to the personnel department.
John Holmes
>
> I think it's probably worth mentioning that "staff" may only be
> synonymous with "personnel" in the context of private-enterprise
> office workers. For example, would we say the local sewage-treatment
> plant was staffed by "staff"? I'm not sure we would, unless we
> specified the "office staff" to distinguisgh them from the workers in
> the wellies with the rakes.
I think the ground staff at Lord's might disagree.
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au