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“I just chose words carefully”

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#361

Post by JoshTriplett »

throaway25498 wrote: post #360
JoshTriplett wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some UK speakers pronounce "H" as "haitch" (with a non-silent leading 'h'), not "aitch". Which leads to "a haitch tee ...". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H#Name

Not uncommon in Australia too. As a very ordinary General Australian speaker I use haitch (and therefore a, not an). I'm probably not 100% consistent in this. It's one of many words where Australian English permits two equally valid pronunciations (e.g. 'dance'). I do cringe when people insist on "an + h" where the h is in fact invariably pronounced, as in "an historic occasion". You only ever seem to hear this from…

> I do cringe when people insist on "an + h" where the h is in fact invariably pronounced, as in "an historic occasion".

Some people do in fact say "istoric", which seems largely like an affectation.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#362

Post by efskap »

pmontra wrote: post #131
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.

Ah, but I use a normal proportional font in my editor so same and diff have different widths. That was the fun comment. The serious ones: 1. I'm trading the ability to align statements on consecutive lines for a more pleasant reading experience. 2. Nobody ever complained that my source code is a = 1 ab = 2 abc = 3 instead of a = 1 ab = 2 abc = 3 3. No tables or diagrams in comments of course but I think that I could…

The best of both worlds would be achieved by elastic tabstops. https://nick-gravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

If only they took off.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#363

Post by b112 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #124
jimmydddd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."

That is in fact what the dictionary is supposed to do.

Yes, but also with a bit of lag.

A dictionary would be all but useless, if it included words used for 2 months, and essentially never used in that context, way, or spelling again. That sort of means teenage slang probably shouldn't appear, and amusingly if it did appear in the dictionary, it'd probably be less 'cool' to use that slang.

And alt-spellings for 'being kool' aren't what I'd call a dictionary thing.

Put another way, slang is in the dictionary, but only long-standing slang. Such as 'cool'. I'd see it more as temp slang->more used->enters dictionary-> eventually the 'slang' note is dropped, it's just language.

I'd want to see a word used for a few years, before it enters. And really, some slang morphs endlessly, like a fire flickering and then going out. How do you capture that? Even online, it'd be out of date once published.

And lots of slang is colloquial. Do you care to add slang language used across dozens of regions in the US?

I recall 20 years ago, Oxford Dictionary took a literal physical trip across Canada, and made the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, filled with 2200 'Canadianisms'. Akin to what you're saying here, if people are using it, it should be in there. But these were things Canadians had been saying for decades...

Anyhow.

I guess my point is, the kid was wrong because transitory has no value in the dictionary. His special words won't be used by even him, in a year.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#364

Post by matja »

jwilk wrote: post #298
matja wrote: post #219

Obligatory mention, the GNU JUSTIFIED PUBLIC LICENSE: https://tom7.org/bovex/JCOPYING (for the rabbit hole: https://tom7.org/bovex/ )

Hmm… To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest 1 to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively 2 state the exclusion of warranty 3; and 4 each 5 file 6 should 7 have 8 at 9 10 least 11 the 12 "copyright 13 line 14 and 15 a 16 pointer 17 to 18 where 19 the 20 full 21 notice 22 is 23 found 24. What's up with the numbers?

Looks like it messed-up and they're just for padding, remove them and it makes sense.

I never noticed that before.

As such, I propose a replacement :) :

    To accomplish this, append the following warnings to the software. It is
    safest to place them at the beginning of each source document to clearly
    declare the exclusion of guarantees; plus every single file must include
    a minimum of the "copyright" text and a link detailing the full warning.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#365

Post by Xirdus »

everdrive wrote: post #353
Xirdus wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you mean by privacy. Most computers are a lot less private than most phones, in terms of how many people can access your data.

I think that characterization is too broad to be considered accurate.

Right back at you re: browsing internet from a phone.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#366

Post by boomlinde »

saghm wrote: post #314
boomlinde wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversations like this are a dead end. You can't devise a phonetic spelling convention without using a phonetic alphabet. The reason you think that "le" makes sense and the person you are responding to thinks otherwise is that in English, the pronunciation of "le" isn't phonetically consistent. I imagine that GP's reasoning is that in writing "missile", the consonant is followed by a vowel, while phonetically the vo…

> Conversations like this are a dead end. You can't devise a phonetic spelling convention without using a phonetic alphabet. I don't disagree with the latter point, but the former doesn't make sense to me; unless you're saying that there wouldn't be enough phonemes representable by the letters to define spellings for all English words? In my mind, the entire point of a conversation like this is hypothetical changes t…

> but the former doesn't make sense to me; unless you're saying that there wouldn't be enough phonemes representable by the letters to define spellings for all English words?

Then you're inventing a phonetic alphabet that happens to look like the English alphabet. That's what makes discussions like this are pointless. No one has established a phonetic definition of "le" or "el", which is the only basis according to which one can decide which is phonetically more appropriate.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#367

Post by internet_points »

buttercraft wrote: post #311
internet_points wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong also some abbreviations work fine: min max row col beg (vs start) end key val src dst pos len and we have public_key secret_key (vs private) from till push pull load save init done inner outer ----- and if you speak Norwegian you have two options: ja yes no nei but that may trigger a different kind of OCD :-)

There's also aye/nay but I don't think I've ever seen those in code

Muckle thanks tae ye, ah'm stealing thae richt noo

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#368

Post by mjmas »

card_zero wrote: post #310
boomlinde wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliberate distractions from the functional end goal benefit other arts just as well, promoting lateral thinking. Brian Eno made a card deck of "oblique strategies" to help you out of blocks. https://enoshop.co.uk/products/oblique-strategies

Imagine a messageboard that required this writing style in order to make any posts!

  Including the making of the posts
  into nice rectangular portions of
  each thirty three characters wide ?

  Not including the double space at
  the beginning of each line or any
  of the punctuation character ends .

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#369

Post by thoughtbefore »

iaaan wrote: post #151
defrost wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugger all - particularly given the boom mic operator and other framing "gaffs" are (as I recall) all part of the "wide screen" 16:9 later release on BluRay etc that were somewhat rushed out the door. A number of shows of that era were filmed wide (16:9) and post processed / coloured / reframed and broadcast on TV in a box 4:3 aspect ratio No visible boom mic operators, etc - careful eyes in the initial post producti…

There's a famous example of this in Malcolm in the Middle where the camera cuts to a different shot and a stand-in for Dewey is visible in the 16:9 release, but was not visible in the original 4:3 broadcast. So in one shot you have Dewey's normal actor, then in the next there is some random kid.

[dead]

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#370

Post by pflenker »

Biganon wrote: post #128
wombatpm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funny because "fixing an orphan" is hard in real life (assuming they've lost both their parents, you have to find them a foster home) but easy in typesetting (just add an empty line before), whereas "fixing a widow" is easy in real life (just remarry) but hard in typesetting.

The explanation for the German words (widow = Schusterjunge, which means cobbler‘s boy, orphan = hurenkind, as mentioned in another comment) is also applicable for the English ones: An orphan doesn’t know where it comes from, a widow doesn’t know where she will go.
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