“I just chose words carefully” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#141

Post by defrost » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #140

Biganon wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny tidbit: "missile" used to be an adjective, "a missile weapon" = "a weapon than can be sent/thrown". Same with cereals, "cereal" was an adjective that meant "relative to the goddess Ceres" then "relative to bread/wheat". "Cereal plants" -> cereals. It's called "nominalization (or substantivization) by ellipsis".

Reminds me of how some people (groups? cultures?) call a lathe a “lathe machine.”

Machine lathe sounds more natural in English, but presumably that qualification may well be to distinguish a machine lathe from a foot lathe.

* https://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/foot-powered-wood-turn...

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#142

Post by marton78 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

You caught my OCD. I like to use upper / lower a lot.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#143

Post by diurnalist » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

tobr wrote: post #117

diurnalist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also saw that interview, then out of curiosity I tried to find any evidence of this. There are some fan sites with ostensibly original X-Files scripts out there[1]. Looking through some written by Carter[2], I wonder if this is apocryphal, or if he was messing with her a bit. [1]: https://www.boggsfiles.com/x-files-scripts-by-season/season-... [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQbfRmeq3FsajjYcEuqDHv0kf2B...

Hey, I looked into this too! And I came to the conclusion that it's completely true. The movie she mentioned in the anecdote was I Want To Believe. Here is the actual scanned screenplay, rather than re-typed: https://lvei.net/wp-content/uploads/script-de-prod/The-X-Fil... Just scroll through and look. In almost every paragraph or dialogue block, the last line ends very close to the right margin. Pretty much the only…

Hah! I was wondering if it was maybe something he started doing over time and should have looked more at the later seasons I guess. It's comforting that it's not just a fun story.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#144

Post by ahofmann » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:12 AM UTC

wombatpm wrote: post #110

rectang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forming every paragraph of dialog into perfect rectangles is way more extreme than just avoiding "widows". The usual term for this is "full justification" and typographically when it's done it's typically through word spacing and letter spacing. Full justification in monospace through word choice (which is what the Ares Luna article is about) is bonkers, but I can't see that happening for TV dialog. I've sometimes he…

Widows are when the final line of a paragraph starts the next page. Orphans are when the first line of a paragraph ends a page.

In german typography the name for widow is "Hurenkind" wich translates to "child of a whore". I was pretty surprised to hear that word on a regular basis while working in text for print. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurenkind_und_Schusterjunge

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#145

Post by runtime_lens » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:20 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#146

Post by knuckleheads » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:22 AM UTC

Agents get a little upset when you ask them to do this and then check their work with a hook. They do not enjoy the process and create some weird looking text!

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#147

Post by efskap » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:27 AM UTC

knuckleheads wrote: post #146

Agents get a little upset when you ask them to do this and then check their work with a hook. They do not enjoy the process and create some weird looking text!

Well, estimating string length of tokens is much like counting R's in strawberry.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#148

Post by Kootle » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:29 AM UTC

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

In Japan they have the abbreviation “NG” (“not good”) that’s often used as the opposite of “OK”. I always liked how, when I worked for a Japanese machine learning company, classifiers would be between “OK” and “NG”. Maybe semantically “okay” and “not good” are not great opposites, but I always liked how having textual alignment makes the contrast immediately obvious

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#149

Post by Nevermark » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

I remember doing this by hand. A long time ago. It gave me a nice ADHD fidget-subtask while my brain worked out the higher level organization of what I was writing.

I completely forgot I did that.

My life has 1000's of strange untold stories of absentminded activity. I've done things you people wouldn't believe. Someday I will fall asleep and get so distracted I will forget to wake up. All those moments will be lost in time, like bits on bad tape.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#150

Post by floki165 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:32 AM UTC

It's comforting to read this thread and realize I'm not the only one who spends an embarrassing amount of time swapping synonyms in docstrings just to make the paragraph perfectly hit the 80-character margin. Doing it for a 17,000-word Super Metroid guide, tho, is a completely different level of dedication.