Adding Machine Instructions for Dummy Office Drones

If you wanted instructions on how to, say, drive a car with a manual transmission, you probably wouldn't be satisfied with detailed instructions about how to drive a specific vehicle. Let's say a 1974 VW Super Beetle (4 on the floor) vs. a 1961 Mercury Comet (3 on the tree). For one thing, shifting those two manual trannies is pretty different and for another, whatever you want to drive is probably different still (like the AN's fifth-generation Toyota Tacoma 6-speed). You want general instructions, not chapter and verse. Incompetent freelancers like eHow's Lacy Enderson never seem to figure out the "general" bit, as she amply demonstrated in "Adding Machine Instructions" at BizFluent.com.

Enderson got the basics out of the way, explaining up front that an adding machine,

"[I]s also called a 10-key or a printing calculator..."

...which is, of course (it's Lacy, after all), not exactly true: a printing calculator generally has more functions than an adding machine. We're talking trig functions, powers, and the like; but that's OK. It's not that Lacy blew that bit, it's that she botched the basics. Take, for instance, her instructions on how to add numbers:

"For example, press the '6,' '+,' '7,' '+,' '-4' and '=' buttons for the equation '6 + 7 + (-4) = 9.'"

Uhhhh, Lacy? There's no "-4" button on an adding machine – at least any adding machine anyone on the AN staff has ever seen! Of course, your average eighth-grader knows that 6 + 7 + (-4) is the same thing as 6 + 7 - 4 – but not Lacy! She also blathered quite a bit about the memory capability of the adding machine which, we hesitate to point out, is not actually a feature of every adding machine. That's not to mention that she copy-rewords-pasted some defunct website's instructions, right down to the introduction, while never actually telling someone how to USE an adding machine!
No, Enderson never mentioned that a fast 10-key operator rests the middle finger on the 5 key, and uses the first finger for the left-hand row, the middle finger the the three center keys, the ring finger for the 3-6-9, the thumb for the zero, and the pinky for the operations keys. Now that might have been useful...

...but no, Lacy didn't know that and was in too big a hurry to collect her stipend to do any real research into "adding machine instructions." As a result, she gave instructions for a specific version (and perhaps brand) of adding machine while not providing real instructions for using the keypad that's still found on desktop keyboards and a lot of laptops. You know what that makes Ms Enderson, don't you? Right: our Dumbass of the Day... again.

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