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Proselint

proselint.com

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Re: Proselint

#131

Post by zimpenfish »

0xffff2 wrote: post #123
zimpenfish wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recognizing that “$10 USD” is redundant People in Australia might disagree. As might people in Bermuda, Colombia, Canada, Hong Kong, Argentina, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar#Other_national_currenci...

Either "$10" or "10 [USD|AUD|etc]" are correct. It is unequivocally incorrect to use both symbols. use the first when it's clear in context what kind of dollar is being referred to, otherwise use the second.

> It is unequivocally incorrect

That's going to need a citation. To be sure there's plenty of style guides which say "don't do that, do [this other variant instead]" but where's the standard that makes this unequivocal?

Re: Proselint

#132

Post by hk__2 »

banach wrote: post #104
hk__2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hemingway is an editor while Proselint is a tool . The latter can be integrated in any editor. That’s the main reason I ditched Hemingway (the editor) because I couldn’t just copy/paste text in it to get some suggestions.

In what way were you not able to copy/paste into Hemingway to get suggestions?

I was; it was just tedious.

Re: Proselint

#133

Post by MatthewWilkes »

pablasso wrote: post #98
MatthewWilkes wrote: post #45

While the idea is interesting, I do worry about the proliferation of linting to prose. Especially the hint about authoritative near the end of the article. Linters turn guidelines into steadfast rules in programming, removing all ability to use judgement if you want your PR merged. I personally want less of that, not more.

How is standardization a bad thing in programming? in prose I can see the argument, but in programming you should always aim for standardization for code maintenance.

For example, the Python best practices document recommends 1 blank line after functions and 2 after classes. Linters enforce this. However, this can be a detriment to readability in some cases, such as closures or classes that have no body, only superclasses.

Some might say you can mark lines as not being linted, but that then makes the change vulnerable to bikeshedding. For some people, being able to force the conversation to not happen because the linter is authoritative might be good, personally I prefer to follow the guidelines but be aware of the fact that they are there to aid in understanding for future coders not to adhere to a standard.

Re: Proselint

#134

Post by conceit »

Vivtek wrote: post #40
IanCal wrote: post #34

This sounds interesting. As a bit of constructive criticism, please put some examples high up. You tell me it does cool things. Great, show me. I've looked about on the various pages and can see only one example and I don't understand it: text.md:0:10: wallace.uncomparables Comparison of an uncomparable: 'unique' can not be compared. What's the context of this, what's the error it would have caught in my writing? The…

This would catch something like "even more unique". In fact, looking at the code ( https://github.com/amperser/proselint/blob/master/proselint/... ) it would even catch something like "extremely unique", which I've been guilty of using. But yes, there should be examples on the front page.

So, I think english is an "analytical language", although I wouldn't know what it means, it inspires me to assume, that by analyszing the sentence you can make out that extremely could refer to something else than the uniqueness, isn't it? EG the phrase could mean, something was unique because of one of any number of extremes, unique by extremity. Sure, that should be uniquely extreme, but what I said shows something else. If there are different qualities that could be unique, wouldn't it make sense to quantify that? Of course, if a logic is so weak it cannot have the peano axioms, you cannot advance beyond uniqueness. (What about missing all-quantor in propositional logic and uniqueness in predicate logic? I'm just stabbing in the dark, really.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239261

Re: Proselint

#135

Post by conceit »

SixSigma wrote: post #46
IanCal wrote: post #34

This sounds interesting. As a bit of constructive criticism, please put some examples high up. You tell me it does cool things. Great, show me. I've looked about on the various pages and can see only one example and I don't understand it: text.md:0:10: wallace.uncomparables Comparison of an uncomparable: 'unique' can not be compared. What's the context of this, what's the error it would have caught in my writing? The…

One cannot have gradations of uniqueness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdZtM3_Lcy4

Imagine an object that is unique in exactly one respect, and another in two. Obviously, the other has more uniqueness. Now, if a the first has precisely only the one characteristic of having not really any characteristic at all, then that's a totally different degree of uniqueness. So either is more unique in a specific respect. But Arguably, the nothingness is most unique, if not the only really unique thing. So if we can ignore that, because no one in his right mind would talk about nothing, we can most of always readily conclude, that the first type of a collection of unique'ish things is concerned.

Is this regression ad absurdum or argumentum ad silencium?

Re: Proselint

#136

Post by conceit »

busyant wrote: post #93
stared wrote: post #84

What is wrong with "very smart"? (line 86)

I worked w/ a guy who was good at editing my manuscripts. His opinion (which I agree with) was that the word "very" was almost always superfluous. You can delete it without affecting your message.

Took me a while to see that very comes from veritas and doesn't mean much. At first I wrongly thought, I knew what the word means. Now I do know verily.

Re: Proselint

#137

Post by x1798DE »

reikonomusha wrote: post #94
x1798DE wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's obvious that what people mean is that "more unique" = "unique in more dimensions" or "the degree to which this differs from the norm is greater". E.g. (2, 4, 7) (2, 4, 8) (2, 8, 4) (2, 4, 7) (1, 4, 8) (0, 9, 3) (987, 4, 7) When asked what are the "most unique" sets in that list, you'd probably be acting deliberately obtuse if you chose anything but one of the last two.

I guess it's understandable but why not choose an appropriate word like "different" and keep "unique" a very strong word?

Well, you don't really get a choice. I'm just describing how the word is used, not suggesting an alternate meaning for it.

Re: Proselint

#138

Post by SixSigma »

conceit wrote: post #135
SixSigma wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cannot have gradations of uniqueness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdZtM3_Lcy4

Imagine an object that is unique in exactly one respect, and another in two. Obviously, the other has more uniqueness. Now, if a the first has precisely only the one characteristic of having not really any characteristic at all, then that's a totally different degree of uniqueness. So either is more unique in a specific respect. But Arguably, the nothingness is most unique, if not the only really unique thing. So if…

I like your thinking.

The link I posted really concerns the insufferability of someone who corrects technicalities of language rather than a discussion on whether uniqueness is a countable property.

Re: Proselint

#139

Post by MawNicker »

mbrock wrote: post #101
MawNicker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a excellent and subtle comment. You seem like someone with a tolerance for philosophical nit-picking. Please forgive me if I'm mistaken. Instead of saying every thing is unique we could simply say that there is no thing . A thing is itself an abstraction. The concrete world is without inherently distinct thing s. We must abstract thing s for "unique" to describe some thing at all. As you implied, this process…

Some philosophers, thinking especially of Graham Harman, have started reacting against the now sort of commonplace idea that "there are no things (or objects) in reality." From a common sense perspective, it's obvious that there are things. Sure, you can point out the flux and decay of all entities, but still, this table here is a coherent thing even if it's made from parts in a temporary arrangement. In some sense,…

Thank you very much for this comment. I'm an armchair philosopher and I hadn't heard of Graham Harman. His notion of objects is beautiful. In one motion nihilism both compels me to accept my sins and deprives me of any path to salvation. Harman's objects capture the essential impetus of nihilism without ultimately voiding conception. In fact, they even capture the paradox of nihilism. The denial of objects necessarily implies an objective system: dualism. First there is an object contriving infinitely varied "caricature objects". Then there must be another object that is (infinitely) not any of those. This expression of our relationship to The Great Unknowable Reality is much saner. It doesn't overmine. It doesn't undermine. It doesn't leave me oscillating between affirmation and denial. Also, most importantly, I'm given a clue to further knowledge. I am that contriving object. This is just a caricature of reality. My participation in it's consideration is entirely arbitrary. I'm haunted by the concern that knowledge exists which cannot be captured by this freedom. But for now these objects certainly get us further than nothing. ;)

Re: Proselint

#140

Post by johnny4000 »

debacle wrote: post #120
joosters wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this program is like having some insufferable pedants arguing over your language? Great! Does it accept 'nearly unique' ?

It accepts "kind of unique" and "hardly unique" but also "greatly unique" which in my mind is very close to "very unique." This tool is a blunt instrument. Writing is an art.

What exactly is the argument or implication in the last two sentences? There are many works of art that use "blunt" instruments. Say the Venus of Willendorf or a Serra sculpture, though that depends on what you mean by blunt. Even in literature blunt tools are use such as a pencil.
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