21–30 of 65 posts
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Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft. If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Good as well: Politics & The English Language. ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm )
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I can read it fine when I highlight the text. And the article is quite good - yes. I've up-mud it. My point remains. I'm actually technically fairly competent compared with most of my customers. If either of my companies served a web page like that, half my customers wouldn't be able to read it. Is that my problem?? Or theirs? It's my problem. If you have a web page, you need to decide where the cut-off is. The autho…
Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing fixes it. Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support. It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and so wouldn't mess up.
I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making.
Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?
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Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing fixes it. Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support. It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and so wouldn't mess up.
Loaded three times, same result each time. I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making. Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?
As for having every browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with a miniscule portion of the users then you must surely agree that the minor discomforts of that are of your own choosing. Just like, for instance I will not support IE3, IE4 or Netscape 1.2 (and a whole host of other browsers that have met their end-of-life long ago) any more.
I've been a long time user of Konqueror myself, but right now I wouldn't know of any real good reason to continue to use it, Mozilla/FF/Iceweasel or whatever it wants to be called is available just about everywhere for the price of a free download.
Even Opera has a huge following compared to Konqueror, which is now below 0.08%, in spite of being the 'default' browser on a whole bunch of linux distros.
Chances are you're one of very few people that has ever tried to load that page using Konqueror, and chances are that the problem lies in (your old version of) Konqueror, especially since a newer one displays the page correctly.
My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem: You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary." I can say what I need to say in half the words now.
I can say what I need to say in half the words now.
60%
My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem: You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary." I can say what I need to say in half the words now.
Such a waste! I should have dropped myself from the story but stuck with the active voice and written "The data show that murder causes death." Notice the jarring effect of such forthright prose. Do the data really show that murder causes death? Atleast the writing lives up to the ideal of scientific objectivity: the focus is on what the data do or do not show.
851 words to convey the message, "No one wants to read your shit"? Really?
Ryan, 14 words to convey the message, "That was boring"? Really?!??!
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Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft. If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
The problem with The Elements of Style is that White flagrantly, persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of those rules.
My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem: You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary." I can say what I need to say in half the words now.
Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft. If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Pullum points out how silly most of the book is in this article: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...
A better respected book that wastes less time is Joseph William's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
A short review, with some excerpts: http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/Reviews/williams.h...
http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...