Page Summary
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Active Entries
- 1: Interesting Links for 03-11-2025
- 2: Interesting Links for 29-10-2025
- 3: Life with two kids: Very wet test subjects
- 4: Interesting Links for 25-10-2025
- 5: Interesting Links for 24-10-2025
- 6: Thoughts on the way home.
- 7: Photo cross-post
- 8: The Andy finds its own uses for things
- 9: Photo cross-post
- 10: Interesting Links for 01-11-2025
Style Credit
- Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Expand Cut Tags
No cut tags
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 11:39 am (UTC)On the everyone being dumb, I once had a case where a staff member was following the instruction of 'change the .gifs to .jpgs' by altering the file extension but leaving the file intact. When I thought about it further I realised that this was obviously the correct way to do it and the fact it didn't work was a bug in Windows - if the file extension indicates the file type you either shouldn't be allowed to change it or it should actually convert the file on changing the extension.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 11:46 am (UTC)I don't think that's a bug in Windows - the file extension is used purely to pass a file to an application registered to handle it. The internals of any given file are none of the operating system's business.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 12:09 pm (UTC)Just sayin'.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 01:04 pm (UTC)There's a rather awesome article here in The Time about it, which sums up quite nicely why it's one of those modern rules which doesn't actually get obeyed very much and is completely ignored in general usage by most people as being, to be honest, downright silly.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:59 pm (UTC)There's certainly a different between the formal rules of a language and the way that it's actually spoken and written. Learning a language in school (at least when I was at school) you were taught to speak in a formal way that natives generally didn't. It didn't mean that this wasn't the right way to construct a sentence in that language, but it also didn't mean that people who did it in a less formal way were wrong. The way you should technically use English hasn't changed. The way a lot of people do use it is different. Both sides are right, and Stephen Fry is basically a bit of a smug hypocrite given his jumping in feet first to some similar debates that he has no relevance to.
In a previous version of windows, I can't remember which, if you chose to hide file extensions then trying to add a file extension wouldn't actually replace the hidden one, but would just rename your file to something like "file.txt.doc" which certainly is silly.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 07:56 pm (UTC)The way you should technically use English hasn't changed.
Um, what? Of course it's changed over time. I'm not sure what you mean here.
part 1 of 2
Date: 2010-10-27 02:33 pm (UTC)In brief, people having different internalised grammar rules from other people isn't by itself ignorant, elitist or otherwise, it's about brain wiring. If you use 'less' in a context that to me sounds completely ungrammatical, I'm not personally in control of how I react to that, any more than if someone uses a double negative (which does not historically equal a positive in many dialects of English and yet is pretty widely considered to be 'wrong') or using the contraction 'there's' when grammatically speaking you mean 'there are' and not 'there is' - something I've actually heard a linguistics professor do even though it's transparently 'wrong' also when you unbox it. And then of course there's the 'correct' use of 'whom' (which even I rarely bother with in speech although I've been known to when I notice in writing).
The fact is that unless you personally both intellectually and idealogically subscribe to the idea that there is no such thing as 'wrong' grammar (do you?) and never see something another speaker/writer has said/written and think 'That's wrong' (do you?) then you don't get to pass judgement on those who happen to have been wired-up with more stringent internalised rules than you on the basis of them being 'wrong' (you can object on the basis of them being annoying all you like obv). Well, not without being a huge hypocrite.
Now, from the 'elitist' POV you of course have more of a point - we do have to consider the factor of where the societal norm sits. If I have a gut negative reaction to black people or gay people caused by some deeply ingrained 'wired-in' personal prejudice I'm not about to own it if as an educated human being I know intellectually that I'm wrong, because I would aspire in that context to rewire said prejudices and 'get over' them. I would deny any prejudice, modify my instinctive behaviour where possible, and 'behave as I would like to think' as it were.
But really, if you're going to call me elitist you need to be very careful about your own thoughts on grammar because ultimately, everything we say is right for us no matter how wrong it sounds to someone else. Speakers of Scots dialects (unless we consider Scots a language - let's not here for the sake of the argument) will commit all sorts of crimes against 'common English' that most day-to-day speakers of more 'normal' dialects would consider to be completely, unambiguously wrong. Am I elitist only because the rules I personally adhere to happen to be of a certain age or stringency? Because so are yours.
By the same token I suppose I could stop correcting others' grammar (I don't in most cases anyway, less/fewer is one of the few knee-jerks I haven't excised yet), stop bothering to use apostrophes (which are also on their last legs), leave all my modifiers dangling, put prepositions where I please and completely obliterate the semi-colon (another one on the way out) and generally aspire to 'rewire' my own stringent perceptions regarding correct grammar to have no rules, no preferences, not a care in the world how anyone writes or expresses him/her/zirself. After all, I already split infinitives when I feel like it, why not go the whole hog?
part 2 of 2
Date: 2010-10-27 02:34 pm (UTC)At the end of the day we all have our line in the sand - for all of us there are (to our finely tuned language centres) violations 'up with which we will not put' and that to us sound vulgar, or undereducated, or just plan lazy. I don't reflexively correct less/fewer distinctions just because I'm a pedant. It actually sounds stupid to me. If someone uses it's instead of its or there's instead of there are (or 'there're' as I both pronounce and write it in informal register) my brain hears 'IT IS', 'THERE IS' and that person sounds stupid - and I feel the urge to let them know that the same way I would if they said 'Battlestar Galactica is a pile of wank' - they have an opinion, I have an opinion, we both feel strongly about our opinions and generally speaking Andy you're not known for objecting to people arguing vociferously with you on such topics.
Now, it may make me 'elitist' that I choose to adhere to a comparatively recent/stringent rule of English grammar that is gradually ending its short reign of being received as 'correct', and it may seem smug (it wouldn't be the first time) or at best unnecessary that I observe when something someone else has said doesn't adhere to my personal rules, but at least I know what I'm doing when I do it, and why. I'm not 'ignorant' about English grammar due to my own 'wired-in' rules any more than you are. Actually I know an awful, awful lot about the rules of English grammar, past and present - enough to know how little they actually mean at all really and how wrong it is to place any objective marker on what is or is not correct.
I never said you were 'wrong' to use less in that way - not that I wouldn't in a more casual context but in a reasoned debate I would never subscribe to that concept; it's completely contrary to my own education and understanding to do so. When I said you were 'wrong' I meant that you're wrong to describe my thinking that you sound stupid to me when you use 'less' in a way that sounds 'wrong' to me as showing 'ignorance'. It shows only a desire to overcommunicate information that perhaps isn't strictly necessary.
Ignorant would be assuming that any rule of English grammar either 'should' or 'need not' be adhered to because Wikipedia and the Times says so/not.
Which one of the two of us did that again?
The truth is there are no real hard-and-fast universal rules to English grammar (and never were) any more than there are really rules about English spelling. Except those that we make up in our little brains.
Re: part 2 of 2
Date: 2010-10-27 02:47 pm (UTC)People do things all the time that jar with me. Using "lose" rather than "loose", for instance. But the fact that they do things that jar me doesn't make them appear thick to me - they're just using English in a way that feels dissonant to me.
I have no object to people preferring particular uses of English. If they use those to judge other people's intelligence levels then it triggers a severe dislike in me, because (in my experience) it comes from a lack of understanding of how language works, and a lack of understanding of how people work, and is generally associated with particular attitudes (like elitism) that I have a strong dislike of).
Re: part 2 of 2
Date: 2010-10-27 02:50 pm (UTC)"Not wearing a tie will make you look stupid to some people."
This is true. And people like that? Can fuck off.*
*I'm not assuming that _you_ would think that. But a chunk of society would. And warning me about it would be perfectly valid.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 03:12 pm (UTC)Ignorance to me implies a lack of knowedge or understanding of some concept, the implication usually being that if the ignorant person had a better understanding they would behave in a different way. I don't think that a person is ignorant if their own neural make-up makes a thing sound 'wrong' to them, and I don't think ignorance comes into how they react to that - provided said reaction is 'this feels wrong to me' and not 'this is wrong' of course.
Elitism, sure. But not ignorance. Furthermore we all judge other people every day in a lot of different ways and not a single one of those ways is entirely fair, whether it be not wearing a tie, 'abusing' the English language, or driving an SUV in the city.
There's always a backstory. We could listen to every individual's story before we judge them, or of course we could not judge them at all.
Now maybe you don't ever make snap judgements or get 'feelings' about your fellow humans - bear in mind I'm not talking about what you act on, just your gut instinct. Maybe you don't have that gut instinct. Maybe everybody is lovely to you until you know every single tiny facet of their personality and feel able to make a call on whether you want to know them or not.
If so, I think you're in a tiny, tiny minority.
Me? If someone uses what I would consider to be appalling or lazy grammar (txt spk, lack of apostrophes or capitalisation, etc) in what I'd consider to be a formal context, it will (on a gut level) annoy me if they're a friend, lower my opinion of them if they're an acquaintance, and put me off bothering to get to know them at all if I don't already.
I don't think that's a mark of my character. It's a mark of my social and educational programming.
The mark of my character is whether I just go with that gut reaction or whether I use my knowledge that actually, those rules that I follow are not hard and fast, do not necessarily indicate a lower intelligence or lack of education, and that my rules are no more right than anyone else's, to re-evaluate my knee-jerk instinct and play it like I don't care as much as I actually do.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 03:24 pm (UTC)But you said that it would make me appear thick. These people are going to look at something I did and use that to deduce that my intelligence is subnormal. That's not "This feels wrong to me." it's a judgement of another person based on pretty specific language use.
About half an hour ago someone emailed me using "there" rather than "their". And yeah, that grated. But I didn't think that the person that used it was thick. Just either in a hurry or had misremembered which way round it goes.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 01:51 pm (UTC)If the number of side effects had decreased to one, but it was severe (e.g. your arms fell off) would that still be a cream with much less side effects than the pill?
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 01:58 pm (UTC)I tend to think of side-effects as being more of a continuum. Possibly because I've spent a chunk of time looking at the chemical reactions to things. But in any case, the effects could be both less severe and there could be less of them, because those things tend to go hand in hand.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:16 pm (UTC)In the case of the number of side effects falling to one, but it being very severe I would regard the following statement as true,
"There are fewer side-effects."
and this statement as false
"There are less side-effects."
Do you agree?
Isn't this a counter example to your statement that less and fewer are interchangeable and purely a stylistic choice?
Now I agree that in the vast majority of cases less / fewer have the same meaning and picking on people for 'incorrect' usage is just irritating pedantry, but in this case the distinction is relevant.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:20 pm (UTC)I'd say that in that particular case I'd want to be even more specific, as most people read them as interchangable, so it wouldn't matter how grammatically correct you were you'd be confusing people unless you said something as literal as "It only has one side effect, but it makes your legs fall off."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 03:33 pm (UTC)I think you have adequately stated my case that the word 'less' as used in the summary was ambiguous, and that fewer would have been a better choice of word because it's unambiguous.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 03:40 pm (UTC)I've already said that both "less" and "fewer" are both unambiguous in my view as they, to me, imply the number of side-effects. Either that or they're both ambiguous in terms of whether you infer that they cover severity or not. Either way, I don't see it as one being ambiguous and not the other.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 07:10 pm (UTC)"the latest study on the gel, which involved 18 women in their 20s to 30s."
As well as implying that this was only one of presumably several studies, the article mentions a couple of times that of course there will be years of large scale testing.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:43 pm (UTC)That said, a lot of modern tech items and websites are weirdly designed and obviously the designer thinks things are intuitive because they are for them. On my phone, you have to click a button that, if you were familiar with Windows, looks like it changes the language in order to change between predictive text and regular input.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 07:47 pm (UTC)Heckmondwike? While I'm loving they had to say where it was while assuming everyone would know the others (probably fair), why on earth does Heck get it first?
OTOH, given how close it is, maybe we'll get it soon after. Hope so.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 08:02 pm (UTC)Fx's "awesome bar" with built in search and history auto complete was supposed to help fix it, but it hasn't got very far.
Saw some stats awhileback. Most popular search term on Bing/MSN is "Google", most popular search term on Google is Facebook, YouTube and Facebook Login. Might've been you that linked that actually. Most people want something that 'just works'.
Which is how Apple is gaining market share. And why Linux is likely to never become a desktop choice for normal people.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 08:42 pm (UTC)