Editing 1562: I in Team

Jump to: navigation, search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision Your text
Line 8: Line 8:
  
 
==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
"There's no I in team" is a well-known saying that tries to encourage teamwork. The intention of the phrase is to state that, just as the letter "I" is not present in the word "team", doing things on your own is not constructive when working in groups. It can be used as a light reprimand to a team member who isn't cooperating, with the reminder that when working as a team one cannot think only for oneself, and must work in partnership with the rest of the team towards a common goal.
+
{{incomplete|explain the meaning of "I in team" }}
  
The phrase "no I in team" dates from the 1960s in the USA with printed references [http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/Theres-no-I-in-team.html] showing it is familiar to baseball pitchers such as {{w|Vern Law}}. As an aside, it's interesting that it seems to come from baseball, a sport where players have significantly more independence compared to, say, {{w|rugby}}.
+
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthography Orthography] is a set of rules and conventions that dictates how a language should be written. [[Cueball]] is trying to point out to [[Hairy]] that the spelling of a word doesn't relate to its meaning. He does this by the use of a self-referential joke.
 
 
Interestingly, the letters M and E can both be found in "team." This suggests that the phrase "There's no I in team" was a slight victim of {{w|cherry picking}}, especially when considering that "there's no me in team" would, strictly speaking, be a bit more grammatical. On a related note, in the {{w|International Phonetic Alphabet}}, an alphabet designed to spell words from every language in a completely unambiguous and straightforward manner, "team" would be rendered /ti:m/.
 
 
 
Of course, the spelling (or {{w|orthography}}) of a word doesn't relate to its meaning (an instance of the {{w|use–mention distinction}}), and the comic makes fun of this by [[Cueball]] ironically echoing the sentence's sentiments by pointing out there ''is'' a "u" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning", taking advantage that the letter <nowiki><U></nowiki> and the pronoun "you", here referring to [[Hairy]], are pronounced identically.
 
 
 
Of course, it's very likely that Hairy knows that orthography doesn't determine meaning, and could easily reply "There's also a 'u' in 'People who assume {{w|aphorisms}} are literal'".
 
 
 
The title text "There's no 'I' in 'VOWELS'." provides another illustration of the distinction between orthography and meaning. "A", "I" and "U" are vowels, notwithstanding the irrelevant fact that they are not included in the spelling of "VOWELS".
 
 
 
Orthography was the subject of [[1069: Alphabet]].
 
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
 
:[Hairy and Cueball stand opposite each other.]
 
:[Hairy and Cueball stand opposite each other.]
:Hairy: Remember, there's no "I" in "team".
+
:Hairy: Remeber, there's no "I" in "team".
 
:Cueball: No, but there's a "U" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning".
 
:Cueball: No, but there's a "U" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning".
  
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
 
[[Category:Language]]
 

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)