Is it kind to email people telling them they wrote 'its' and not 'it's'? Thus used to be called being a grammar Nazi and is just a different kind of asshole
Do you understand the difference between these two words? I am asking genuinely, no offense
Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
21–30 of 35 posts
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#22"English being my second language, I curse it everyday and wish it could be more like, say, Hungarian, in which such a thing as a spelling bee would be unthinkable." I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. We even stole an entire grammatically complete sentence from French ("Je ne sais quoi"). If you want English to be more like Hungarian, start inserting Hungarian words into sen…
> I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. It's impressive. English language: ~500,000 words. German language: ~135,000 words.
Where do these numbers come from?
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#23"English being my second language, I curse it everyday and wish it could be more like, say, Hungarian, in which such a thing as a spelling bee would be unthinkable." I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. We even stole an entire grammatically complete sentence from French ("Je ne sais quoi"). If you want English to be more like Hungarian, start inserting Hungarian words into sen…
I think a lot of what the author has an issue with is related to the Great Vowel Shift, not necessarily loanwords.
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#24>>The recipients of the mail campaign aren't passive in this story; on the contrary, some played a reverse card, informing of issues... Yeah, this gets me. Grammar is grating to me and I used to call out when someone would write "Me and my friend..." only to get attacked in response as if grammar matters to no one.
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Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t agree. Sending AI generated spam with spelling errors isn’t kind. Traditionally, humans ask to be edited and they deserve that agency.
The person I'm responding to didn't say anything about AI. I don't agree that this kind of thing should be automated like in the OP either. However, as far as I'm concerned, notifying post authors about spelling and grammatical errors is normal and generally appreciated.
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Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. It's impressive. English language: ~500,000 words. German language: ~135,000 words.
Where do these numbers come from?
Multiple sources have those approximate numbers. Here's one: https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-how-many-english-wo...
"Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number."
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#27> Before sending the first mails, I stopped for a moment to reassess whether this was a good idea. What ultimately helped me decide was whether I would like to get the mail as an author.
The only reason this is a reasonable thing for this person to do is this:
> since I ultimately manually check every error
Imagine these emails going out automatically, and incorrectly.
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t agree. Sending AI generated spam with spelling errors isn’t kind. Traditionally, humans ask to be edited and they deserve that agency.
The person I'm responding to didn't say anything about AI. I don't agree that this kind of thing should be automated like in the OP either. However, as far as I'm concerned, notifying post authors about spelling and grammatical errors is normal and generally appreciated.
OP did mention they're manually verifying every found error, which is the only reason this is even remotely acceptable to do, imo.
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#29"English being my second language, I curse it everyday and wish it could be more like, say, Hungarian, in which such a thing as a spelling bee would be unthinkable." I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. We even stole an entire grammatically complete sentence from French ("Je ne sais quoi"). If you want English to be more like Hungarian, start inserting Hungarian words into sen…
> English being my second language, I curse it everyday
"every day"
Perhaps the author should check grammar while he checks spelling :D (Not the only issue I noticed, and I didn't read the entire article...)
Re: Spell Checking a Year's Worth of Hacker News
#30"English being my second language, I curse it everyday and wish it could be more like, say, Hungarian, in which such a thing as a spelling bee would be unthinkable." I love this about English! We are the most prolific word thieves of all time. We even stole an entire grammatically complete sentence from French ("Je ne sais quoi"). If you want English to be more like Hungarian, start inserting Hungarian words into sen…
The way English uses this vast vocabulary is beautiful.