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Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

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Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#81
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in 24h cultures always use 12 analog hours in normal situations, but the 24h system is needed for situations where it is easy to make a mistake. When is dinner? - It's at seven. When does the flight depart? - At 19:00

> People in 24h cultures always use 12 analog hours in normal situations No, we don't. The only person I know who by default uses 12h is my grandmother. Everybody else always uses 24h.

Do you mind me asking where you are?

All my experience has also been using 12h time in casual situations in 24h countries. I'm curious of a country that doesn't, and whether that's true of the whole region.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#82

I'm a but wary in general about how US tech used around the world slowly erodes the nuances of different cultures. Often the software doesn't take into account how things work in other languages, different regions etc. I'm also not sure I'd blame the engineers in SV too much, of course they design software based on their own context. But with tech becoming global, it's a bit sad how it's not prioritized more. Example…

It's not even American prudeness is many cases, it's "making sure everything is advertiser safe" as interpreted by poorly paid Filipino moderators.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#83
post #38

I'm a but wary in general about how US tech used around the world slowly erodes the nuances of different cultures. Often the software doesn't take into account how things work in other languages, different regions etc. I'm also not sure I'd blame the engineers in SV too much, of course they design software based on their own context. But with tech becoming global, it's a bit sad how it's not prioritized more. Example…

Oh my god, as a Scandinavian, the whole American thing about boobs is so annoying! It seems like the internet really want to force me to be shocked about seeing a chest, it's so weird. Most of the time, it is completely outside of a sexual context, but videos get 18+ because you apparently take psychological damage of you see a pair of tits before you're allowed to vote. Actually didn't know about the quote thing tho…

> Oh my god, as a Scandinavian, the whole American thing about boobs is so annoying! It seems like the internet really want to force me to be shocked about seeing a chest, it's so weird

My favorite are medical tiktokers sharing gynecological information talking about vajujus and peepees so the algorithm doesn’t punish them for foul language.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#84

I'm a but wary in general about how US tech used around the world slowly erodes the nuances of different cultures. Often the software doesn't take into account how things work in other languages, different regions etc. I'm also not sure I'd blame the engineers in SV too much, of course they design software based on their own context. But with tech becoming global, it's a bit sad how it's not prioritized more. Example…

> My name contains a letter not in ascii, breaking lots of systems

Tell me about it. In my native language (European) we have accents at the end of some words (like città or pubblicità; city and advertisement respectively).

As someone that works with typography in someway or another, I can't count how many times I had a font that didn't support the character à or é or whatever and I had to choose a font that looks similar to the one I want but that if you look at the text for even a few moments more, you are guaranteed to notice it.

An even more disappointing fact is how many people use the apostrophe instead of the accent for capitalized letters (E' instead of É) because there no É button on the keyboard. Shift+è brings up é

> Some systems ask me to input a time in am/pm and I've no idea which is when.

I have a similar problem. Sometimes someone writes a date in the American MM/DD/YYYY format instead of the DD/MM/YYYY one and unless it's something like 08/24/2023 where there is no month 24, it can be pretty disorienting to me. That's why I really like the ISO (please fill me up on the number) YYYY-MM-DD: it's both clearly distinct for the other two and standardized across the world

> I actually think MS products are fairly good at this. They are big enough and have been around long enough to be fairly well localized

100% agree with you, although there are some other production that do a pretty good job (both FOSS like Jellyfin and commercial like Affinity Photo). Fun fact: Microsoft Word 2007's dictionary doesn't have the surnames of some of my classmates but has mine (which is something so rare it's basically impossible)

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#85
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in 24h cultures always use 12 analog hours in normal situations No, we don't. The only person I know who by default uses 12h is my grandmother. Everybody else always uses 24h.

Do you mind me asking where you are? All my experience has also been using 12h time in casual situations in 24h countries. I'm curious of a country that doesn't, and whether that's true of the whole region.

Poland. It seems to be more of a generational thing than regional. People over the age of 70 seem to use 12h. Younger ones use 24h.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#87

> Word introduced line breaks, along with bold and italic fonts on screen. Forgot about WordStar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

On screen. It’s talking about the WYSIWYG paradigm, which WordStar didn’t do, judging by that screenshot.

From the wikipedia entry

> WordStar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer mail merge and textual WYSIWYG.

They produced a bunch of different versions, and that screenshot is for an MS-DOS version.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#88
post #21

> Write a word ending in "-ise" and it will suggest changing it to "-ize" [...] Sounds like it's working fine to me. Joking aside, this is a great article with many strong points, but disabling or mitigating spellcheck is always a possibility. I usually disable it since many of the grammar suggestions Word provides are questionable. In a workplace setting when consistency is key, it seems like grammar and spellcheck…

I think the point the article is trying to make there is about the power of defaults. Sure, you can disable the grammar and spellcheck (I do that too), or you can configure it to specifically UK English and otherwise adjust it, but most users will not, and so on aggregate the choice of default setting will exert some pressure on the user base.

For a good few years, Word's English (Australian) dictionary, was practically a renamed EN_US dictionary. Because if it, I fear the number of people from that era had their spelling localization errors metastasize and crystalize. (Yes, Chrome is not far behind)

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#89
post #84

I'm a but wary in general about how US tech used around the world slowly erodes the nuances of different cultures. Often the software doesn't take into account how things work in other languages, different regions etc. I'm also not sure I'd blame the engineers in SV too much, of course they design software based on their own context. But with tech becoming global, it's a bit sad how it's not prioritized more. Example…

> My name contains a letter not in ascii, breaking lots of systems Tell me about it. In my native language (European) we have accents at the end of some words (like città or pubblicità ; city and advertisement respectively). As someone that works with typography in someway or another, I can't count how many times I had a font that didn't support the character à or é or whatever and I had to choose a font that looks s…

> because there no É button on the keyboard

On a Mac it’s easy. Just hold down the letter and you will have options for pretty much any accent. Holding Capital E for example on iOS: Ë É E È Ê Ě Ę etc..

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that always gets me is how Google's image captcha assumes everyone knows what American school buses, fire hydrants, crosswalks, and various other street features look like. As a youngish EU citizen I do know those from cartoons and the internet, but I doubt my parents do > Or how things are moderated to an US standard It's just comical how adults on Youtube talking about adult topics are pressured into censor…

> It's just comical how adults on Youtube talking about adult topics are pressured into censoring even mild profanity That's mostly due to TikTok which is even worse than Youtube in its opacity and complete unaccountability to anyone. IMHO this app is controlled by the Chinese government to a degree that it is intentional that kids can't talk about stuff like sexuality (which has to be censor-named to "seggsual") or…

Well, IMO, one of the former communist dictatorships doing things that resemble 1984 is... completely unsurprising.

What is different now is that we are getting contact with it. While in the past the Orwellian features were kept inside borders both for propaganda effect and because nobody outside of them would willingly adopt the practice.

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