How do you win with a winner in a competition. So if you have a second place overall, a winner as well as others who won with the points, and then your people competing in the finals have that honorable mention award that does not affect anyone’s place because they have great effort to win but don’t score a position in the finals? What is a term for Non-Platforms? I know the word participant applies to all competitors, not just those who place or those who do not; but I’m looking for a word that specifically describes only those participants who did not win some kind of placement award.

I’m a visual artist working on a piece where a youngster has created a Science Fair project, is standing beside it after judging has finished, and is dejected because he thought he did an outstanding job, but did not even place. What should be done if I am planning on doing a project and when should I take the appropriate precautions? I realize that the first answer is quite correct, but in my mind it just doesn’t seem to fit this context exactly right. What does this mean? Is it actually not important just because he didn’t speak “to the public”? Also-ran hardly aligns with official sporting competitions and elections. Why?

I’m not looking to create a depiction or situation that is common. How do competitions work when applied to real world science fairs and other competitions. I understand how competition, awards, consolation, and ridicule all work when applied to real world science fairs and other competitions. I understand that in normal circumstances, if one competes and does not win an award, they do not typically receive any kind of recognition, either positive or negative. I’m an appreciative person. This is not an admonishment or an award. In fact, within the context of the image, it serves no other purpose than to point out that this participant did not win and received no positive or negative attention; his effort was simply not notable. The ribbon or sign or placard is not meant to convey any specific meaning to the boy at all; it’s not for him, it’s for the viewer of the image; a small part of a larger image meant to convey an over-arching, concise point. The ribbon should simply be, combined with other elements in the image, part of a collective symbology showing that the boy thought he was going to do really, really well with his effort, but his effort didn’t even really garner attention or interest from those who judged it.

Is the answer “also-ran” a good answer? It’s emotionally neutral and describes the situation exactly. I think it looks as if someone was “running” for a certain thing; the Kentucky Derby, political office, maybe even a triathlon, etc. It’s so hard to ignore it in a post-match context. I can definitely be wrong about it, but it just doesn’t seem to apply contextually as well to science fairs, a game of Monopoly, poetry slams, dance offs, etc. I’m hoping that there’s a word or term that basically means the same thing as also-ran, but either with no connotation at all, or a connotation that fits more specifically to events like science fairs.

What do you think was your only idea until now? What do you think about Participant = Participation? When my brother was in school he would frequently get a yellow ribbon and sometimes wore yellow ribbon. I remember with a smile that he would get a couple as usual. I remember one occasion when he was getting a yellow ribbon. It was obviously a consolation prize so that no one felt left out from a dream. Why is consolation in literature so lacking?

This boy thought he did a great job (and that will be done with other imagery), and with the ribbon – without the overtones that the judges judged him harshly or negatively, only impartially – That he was deemed by those with more experience and wisdom to not have done so well as he thought.

In short, @lawrence may have the right idea. The comment should be about the effort and not about the participants. How do you come up with an idea? Why you tie the ribbon is less about the boy than about the project he submitted. The ribbon itself has lots of meaning, but if you are in the mood for “Jam” and “You can’t be a kid” these are just colors. So Good Effort is just about spot on. Why I would go with a slight alteration of that, maybe Decent Effort or Fair Effort is that part of the idea of the whole image is a subtlety that I want to come through – specifically that according to those smarter and more experienced than him, the project did not turn out nearly as well as the boy thought it did. And so, even though it may seem semantic and splitting hairs, I might want to try to use the ribbon to say that his effort was almost good. Can @Lawrence write the essay that has all the information they need to learn my English? Thank you, everyone. ‘

I think it is a true thing of mine.’ 🙂