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“I just chose words carefully”

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#171

Post by frereubu »

rectang wrote: post #94
sho_hn wrote: post #2

There's a similar anecdote Gillian Anderson recently revealed during an interview on the X-Files , saying Chris Carter had an OCD-like habit to write dialog to conform to certain text layout preferences (no widows[1]) in the script, which made for the show's distinctive style of dialog cadence. 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans

"No widows" on its own isn't enough to create a distinctive dialog cadence. "Widows" (alone at the top) and "orphans" (alone at the bottom) are single lines cut off from the rest of a paragraph by a column/page break. The solution is generally just to fiddle with column/page breaks, which is purely typographical. I'm sure that there's a distinct identity to X-Files dialog; it's just not due to this quirk. I can total…

I had the same thought, but I think the idea is that it didn't so much create a specific cadence as the cadence was a bit odd because the language needed to fit the visual layout rather than feel natural when spoken.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#172

Post by seszett »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #125
saghm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that; "missils" would be more phonetic

> I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that Sorry? How do you think people pronounce words such as truffle / turtle / tremble / pickle / maple / rubble / etc. etc. etc.?

They pronounce these words as if the e and the l were reversed, if "truffle" was written in a phonetic manner it would be written "truffel". Since the "l" sound is last and preceded by a schwa, "truffle" (or "missle") obviously cannot be considered phonetic.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#173

Post by JoshTriplett »

Biganon wrote: post #134
_jackdk_ wrote: post #16

I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide. Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

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".

> Funny tidbit: "missile" used to be an adjective, "a missile weapon" = "a weapon than can be sent/thrown".

Related bit of comedy:

> Note also that the correct term for 'a missile to be deployed against "anti-missile missiles"' is not "anti anti-missile missile." It's "anti anti-missile-missile missile." You're always supposed to have one more "missile" than "anti," because otherwise nothing will blow up.

-- https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-03-16

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#174

Post by JoshTriplett »

likis wrote: post #157
cyphar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are British, at least in Australia (and the US, I guess?) we pronounce the second "i". It is always fun when you notice where someone is from based on secondary clues like that -- my favourite is the choice of "a" or "an" where it is ambiguous (for instance, I recently ran across "an HTTP request" where I would've said "a HTTP request").

I thought the rules were clear and it depends on how the word is pronounced, with a vowel or consonant sound. I have only heard people say H T T P, as specific letters when pronouncing HTTP, and thus the a or an should be based on how one would pronounce the letter "H". And H would be pronounced as "aitch". Starts with an a -> vowel sound -> should be "an". But I'm a non native english speaker, so I'm happy to be pro…

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

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#175

Post by unicorn_platfor »

I like the idea that arbitrary constraints can actually improve writing. Without a constraint, it's easy to fall back on familiar phrasing, while having to work around something unusual forces you to reconsider each word. I wonder if this applies to programming and other creative work too.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#177

Post by thaumasiotes »

seszett wrote: post #172
thaumasiotes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that Sorry? How do you think people pronounce words such as truffle / turtle / tremble / pickle / maple / rubble / etc. etc. etc.?

They pronounce these words as if the e and the l were reversed, if "truffle" was written in a phonetic manner it would be written "truffel". Since the "l" sound is last and preceded by a schwa, "truffle" (or "missle") obviously cannot be considered phonetic.

> They pronounce these words as if the e and the l were reversed, if "truffle" was written in a phonetic manner it would be written "truffel".

You can just look this up. The usual way to write "truffle" in a phonetic manner is of course /tɹʌfl̩/. You'll note that there is no vowel in the second syllable at all; it consists of just the L. (And that's what the small mark below the L means - "syllabic".) This is the standard phonetic analysis.

You might also notice that the IPA differs from your proposed spelling in several other ways. One, the difference between "ɹ" and "r", has no relevance in a discussion of English. But the difference between "f" and "ff" is more significant, and the difference between "u" (the vowel in GOOSE) and "ʌ" (the vowel in STRUT) is of critical importance.

And this is still just a phonemic transcription. Phonetically, you'd expect the word to be [tʃɹʌfl̩], with the initial consonant matching that of "chill" and not "till".

All of these are conventions of written English. Written "tr" is pronounced as if it were written "chr". Pronounced [tʃɹ] is always spelled "tr" and never spelled "chr". The difference in vowel quality between "moping" and "mopping" is indicated, as you probably already noticed, by the doubling of the consonant written after the vowel, and this is also the reason for the double "f" in "truffle". Why do we write an extra "f" when what we mean is that we're changing the pronunciation of the vowel before it? Not for phonetic reasons.

And what do you know, there's a standard spelling of syllabic L in English too, and that standard spelling is "-le", not "-el". That spelling is phonetic in exactly the same way that using "m" to spell the initial consonant of "mat" is phonetic - it is the established mapping between the orthography and the pronunciation.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#178

Post by eps »

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.

Also have/want if old/new is already taken.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#179

Post by dchftcs »

unicorn_platfor wrote: post #175

I like the idea that arbitrary constraints can actually improve writing. Without a constraint, it's easy to fall back on familiar phrasing, while having to work around something unusual forces you to reconsider each word. I wonder if this applies to programming and other creative work too.

Live is short, required time to market is even shorter. Arbitrary constraints might work if you have nothing better to do, but if you have a goal, or specific ideas you want to train, you'll get more natural constraints.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#180

Post by eps »

CarVac wrote: post #114
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.

Row/col works but width/height doesn't, alas.

But w/h does.
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