We explain what a trade is and how it differs from a profession. In addition, what is the office as a document and act ex officio.
What is a trade?
A trade is the usual occupation that a person has, that is, that activity to which you dedicate the most hours and effort, and which defines your job on the society. Thus, when people ask us what we do, that is, what we work, they are asking us about our trade.
However, this word is very old, and throughout history it has been part of many different formulations and has accumulated new specific meanings, as we will see later. Originally, it was a Latin word: officium, simple form of opficcium, a term in which two voices were combined: opus ("Work") and facere ("do").
So the trade was the type of work we did for society: the shoemaker made shoes, the carpenter made wooden objects, the furrier made objects of animal skin, and so on. This could also be extended to things and objects, which had their job, their purpose, their utility in their trade.
But human activities and dedications were not always so simple, and the term office had to be adapted to account for new social realities, thus giving rise to new words such as officer and office, for example.
Hence, today this word is linked to bureaucratic matters (that is, office matters), or to certain rites ecclesiastical (such as the "office of the dead", through which the church prays for the souls of the deceased), since these areas were at the time closely linked in their time with the administration of society.
Thus, trade is a very used and very versatile word, and below we will try to clarify only some of its main meanings.
Trade and profession
As we have already said, the office originally had to do with the productive activity that corresponded to one in society. To talk about the trade was to talk about what things one does, that is, what one knows how to do, in the most literal sense of the verb: what types of objects can one materialize.
These trades were transmitted from father to son, so that the son of the blacksmith normally knew about blacksmithing, or in any case an apprentice interested in acquiring the trade and opening his own forge. Therefore, the acquisition of trades occurred through the experience direct.
However, as societies became more complex and knowledge began to accumulate and refine, new forms of occupation emerged that, in addition to direct experience, required theoretical preparation, that is, a period of time. study and training that took place between books, usually in institutions like churches, temples, philosophical academies, and other equivalents to today's universities.
This is how professions were born, that is, professional trades, which were the result of an academic “career”, that is, they were possible thanks to a set of exclusive knowledge for those initiated.
This is the fundamental difference between trades and professions: the former are acquired through experience and are more or less accessible to everyone who dedicates time and effort to them; while the professions require an academic training of several years, during which specialized knowledge is accumulated and a way of thinking is acquired that can hardly be reached through pure experience.
Thus, they are examples of trades: plumber, carpenter, shoemaker, street sweeper, worker, bricklayer, actor, cook, etc. And they are examples of professions: architect, doctor, engineer, teacher, chemist, physicist, mathematician, designer, computer scientist, etc.
Office (document)
In bureaucratic and judicial language, an office is called a type of document in which dispositions, consultations, orders or other types of information relevant.
These documents emanate from certain institutions such as ministries, embassies, unions, or government offices, among others. Their consumption can be internal (internal trades) or external (external trades), depending on whether they are aimed at the institution itself or at customers external.
Being a form of official documentation, the trades usually consist of a letterhead and a heading, in which the entity is identified transmitter, contextual information is provided (date, place, subject) and the recipient of the communication, which in the case of multiple trades may be more than one. The rest of the trade is made up of the content of the text, that is, the information itself, the signature and the materials annexes, if any.
Act ex officio
In legal, bureaucratic or administrative jargon, the term “ex officio” is used for those procedures or procedures that can be carried out without the need for the express wish of the interested party, that is, without any request from the party. These actions are carried out by public bodies, within the scope of their powers and in accordance with their duties, without the need for someone to explicitly request them.
Examples of ex officio actions are:
- Investigation of a criminal act by the police, once it has become known to them or public knowledge.
- When a judge rules, within the framework of a judgment legal, that certain preventive actions are carried out that guarantee the fair resolution of the case, without any of the parties requesting it.