Six goes at the same letter
Look at six versions of one letter, work out which one is the real one from evidence rather than from its name, and leave it so that nobody ever has to work it out again.
Every course has one lesson people mention afterwards, and in this one it is the six copies. Here is the six copies, on somebody else’s machine, three weeks after the fact.
One of them went to the city. The other five are earlier goes at it. Nothing on the screen will tell you which is which, and the names are no help at all — that is rather the point of them.
Key points
- Tell which of several near-identical files is the real one, by what is inside them rather than what they are called.
- Give a file a name that will still say what it is in two years.
- Put earlier goes somewhere they cannot be picked up by mistake.
What to remember
- Six copies are made by Save As, one careful afternoon at a time, and everybody does it. The way out is always the same: find the outside evidence — the reply, the acknowledgement, the date on the envelope — rather than trusting whichever name has the most capital letters in it. A name that works has three parts to it: what it is, who it is to or from, and when. Put the date in as 2026-03-14 and the computer quietly sorts them into order for you, for ever, which is the single most useful thing anybody ever learns about naming files.
- Honestly — how was that?
Try this
Open Documents on your own computer and look for the word final. Whatever you find, the useful question is not which one is newest — it is which one somebody else has already replied to.
Practice: Six goes at the same letter. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.