Daryo May 27, 2019:

you are not the only one that remembers that kind of "consigne".

I don't think that "consigner" is the wrong verb. Here it's about including / adding a document to a folder as in "consigner une pièce / un document au dossier [médical]", not the same as "including some information in a document" like in "un document où sont consignés les nom, adresse, date de naissance et profession des personnes ayant signé l’accord au nom de l’entité"

Charles Davis May 27, 2019:

"Consigner is about putting a document in a folder/register": well, that's the point; is that what it means? I was about to write what Ph_B has just written (except the bit about the pocket money :-)). I think there is an element of doubt about it.

(By the way, while we're reminiscing, my weekly pocket money was one and tenpence, which was quite generous; it was really two shillings, but the other twopence was to put in the collection plate in church on Sunday. I saved a bit every week and bought my first 45 rpm single, "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, for 6s 8d. in 1964. An LP cost £1 12s 6d; it took me ages to save up for "With The Beatles".)

Ph_B (X) May 27, 2019:

wrong verb? I agree that a different verb would have been needed to mean that a folder has been included. It is quite conceivable in this day and age that it is the case, and so, a verb like joindre, as in pièce jointe in an email, should have been used instead. Consigner when applied to paperwork means "referred to/included by reference/mentioned in writing". In addition to other other things (e.g. customs), it means "physically added" when applied to things: Remettre un objet en dépôt. (https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/consigner) Some of us (in France anyway) may remember the days when you'd take your dad's empty wine bottles (!) to l'épicerie du coin and get FR0.01 for each of them. That was your weekly pocket money :-) Oh dear, perhaps I shouldn't have written that! Anyway, Liz should perhaps check with her client.[EDIT] when applied to material/physical things.

Daryo May 27, 2019:

the kind of structures you can build in the virtual world are potentially far more complex than what you can do with tangible/paper documents, but to avoid completely confusing users, "virtual" structures tend to replicate as much as possible "paper structures";

"consigner" is about putting a paper document in a folder/register, but you could also perfectly well do it "virtually" - same as you are "writing" on a screen ...

Charles Davis May 27, 2019:

@Daryo Yes, of course, but my comment was directed to the question that has been discussed here, namely whether the verb consigner can plausibly refer to a document being added to (incorporated into, placed inside) a file, as opposed to being registered or mentioned in the file (which is what it "ought" to mean), and whether this usage, specifically, might possibly be more plausible in a virtual than a paper file. Quite probably not, but I wondered.

Daryo May 27, 2019:

"Virtual" or not you still have the concept of "a collection of related data" (related to the same patient, for example) that can be a tangible collection of paper documents, or a "folder" or a "record" in some electronic storage medium, makes no difference regarding the way the information is structured - once you include this "document" in the set labelled "dossier local de l'usager" it become part of this set.

Charles Davis May 24, 2019:

Physically present? I would certainly not venture to arbitrate on this. In principle, to my mind, Ph_B is right: consigner should mean that the document is mentioned or recorded in the file. It may be physically present, and maybe that is even necessarily understood to be the case when it is consigné, but if the intended meaning were "physically inserted and present" you would perhaps have expected a different verb.

But in any case, things are moving towards electronic medical records, though I don't know how far advanced this is in France. In other words, the presence of documents in files is becoming virtual; even though a paper document exists, it may not necessarily have to be physically inserted into a paper folder in order to be present in the file. I wonder whether this might be relevant?

Ph_B (X) May 24, 2019:

Drmanu49's reading is of course possible, so I'll rephrase my earlier comment like this: "Is there a chance that consigné could mean "mentioned/referred to in writing": ... ?

Drmanu49 May 24, 2019:

Sorry but my reading is that the document can be there physically " lorsqu’il y est consigné."

Ph_B (X) May 24, 2019:

consigné usually means "mentioned/referred to in writing": ([Le compl. désigne une parole, un fait] Mettre par écrit, mentionner, inscrire, noter, spécialement dans une pièce officielle. Consigner qqc. au procès verbal; consigner un fait dans les annales; consigner ses idées, une pensée, une réflexion dans un carnet.). It is not there physically, but it is referred to and because of that, the reader must consider it's part of the report. Read: Ce document fait partie intégrante du dossier local de l'usager lorsqu’il est consigné [càd: mentionné par écrit] dans le dossier local."