News: 1615552212

"fuckity-wank-all"

But that would exclude the non-wankers and those who cannot wank at all due to bodily shortcomings. Then you are insulting the gender-less, who cannot or will not fuck anything at all. And last but not least, there are some who do not want to be classified under the "all" label because they feel special about themselves and deserve special treatment.

/s

Lets face it, you cannot say anything without insulting at least one other fuckity-wank-all.

Cheers.

Lets face it, you cannot say anything without insulting at least one other fuckity-wank-all.

And even if you somehow manage, you will have insulted at least one wankity-fuck-all ;)

I'm actually a big fan of removing offensive and anachronistic terminology. Seems an obvious and thoughtful thing to do.

But it needs to be done properly. We have a system that runs three instances on three independent machines - originally "master", "slave", and "backup". The slave machine ran in lockstep with the master, and the spare was there ready to take over if both fell over (but had a 30 second startup time).

Unfortunately the manufacturer decided to replace "slave" with "spare", which caused endless confusion.

E.g.

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2021/02/new-more-inclusive-journal-policies-ease-author-name-changes-published-papers

While in principle it seems to be quite enlightened, any implementation is going to lead to some measure of bibliographic confusion between new, past, and new-past literature and citations thereof. I thought the old "Hanbury Brown and Twiss" vs "Hanbury-Brown and Twiss" vs "Hanbury, Brown, and Twiss", vs "Hanbury and Brown Twiss" problems were quite enough!

I had quite enough problems working out how to parse one name: William Paley Baildon. Was Paley part of the surname or not?

IIRC, not.

Yes, "primary" and "secondary" would be much clearer terminology here. Or even "active" and "passive". This smacks of someone being told to change it by their boss, but not being told what to change it to, and not being given the guidance or context to make a correct choice. As a developer, this sort of thing is the bane of my existence.

" I'm actually a big fan of removing offensive and anachronistic terminology. "

Interesting juxtaposition. "Offensive" and "anachronistic". The first is a matter of morals (or at worst, ethics). The second is entirely a matter of fashion, which has no moral, or even ethical, dimension. As far back as 1909 G. K. Chesterton proposed that to call oneself a "modernist" was no more sensible than to call oneself a "Thursdayist".

All these attempts to purge technical vocabulary seem to be predicated on a failure to recognise that the words are of themselves neutral. The offence is to use them pejoratively on people . Machines can't get offended (except possibly HAL), but people can, and we shouldn't do it.

Ah yes, but I never could get the hang of Thursdays...

(RIP Douglas...)

Taking offence might be a matter of morals/ethics. Giving offence, not so much. You might be offended by my shirt, or might not. If I call you a cunt for dissing my shirt though, there's not really a question about whether I'm being offensive, and deliberately so. Whilst there might be a fair amount of grey space in the middle, sometimes things really are black and white clear-cut.

If I call you a cunt for dissing my shirt though, there's not really a question about whether I'm being offensive, and deliberately so

Only in your (and my) culture. In some cultures the word is considered mild swearing at most and calling someone a c**t would be friendly banter.

You mean in Glasgow, don't you? Here on the East coast calling someone a c*nt in banter could result in a glass in the face...

Growing up in Glasgow using archaic medical terminology like c**t to describe someone was not considered wise unless you could run quickly or were ready to take them on.

Well yes, the offensive intent is codified in the manner of communication, and the cultural and personal references that may be in play. Without getting too philosophical about it, I'm pretty sure it's easy enough to be clearly and unambiguously, deliberately offensive to another person who has the same cultural background as yourself. It is also pretty clear that people can take offence where none is meant, and also to affect offence where none is either intended, or in truth, taken.

Culture does, of course, change over time. Whilst calling someone a cunt is considered offensive now (my spell-checker even tells me "this word is considered offensive"), it is arguably less so than it would have been, say, 50 years ago. If you go back further to the origins of the word, it was originally not considered offensive at all before some time around the 18th century.

Not long after they were married, my N. Irish Grandad called my English Granny a 'silly sod' for something harmlessly daft that she had done.

He meant it affectionately in the Irish sense of a lump of turf, she took it in the English Methodist sense of 'sodomite'. Ructions ensued...

I don't find the grey space in the middle of your shirt offensive but it can be black and white whilst still being cut with pinking* shears.

* That leads to a whole load of debatable terminology.

Surely "being offensive, and deliberately so" is a matter of ethics at least (those of the deliberate actor) if not indeed morals (ditto). So giving offence deliberately is indeed a matter of ethics or morals.

However there is definite movement of folks that find things to take offence about on behalf of others (usually without asking them), and pressure (even if indirect pressure) from them seems to be a driver of the tech vocabulary "cleanup".

You mean we shouldn't do it to people or to machines ?

'Mirror' would work.

graduation photo on the bookshelf.

At first seems remarkable that they all look the same... but then same hat, same robe, similar generic photographer's background, same square-with-oval-hole standard frame, so perhaps it is more remarkable that they ever seem to look different. :-)

"but absolutely fuckity-wank-all about the app."

Right up there with websites and their "Contact Us" pages. Which contain links to social media pages staffed by work experience kids if they are ever looked at at all.

"Contact us" links really should just go straight to a page that just says, "DON'T". After all, it's what they really mean, especially if it's someone like PayPal.

>>These types probably spell "today" as "to-day"

I was recently reading Alice (either, both?) and noticed that the abbreviation for "cannot", in modern idiom rendered as "can't", is rendered "ca'n't" throughout. This is, of course, correct apostrophe use, indicating each omitted letter, but IMHO sadly a departed form from modern English.

As a slight aside, the old form makes the book actually quite hard to read - brain expects the pattern can't, gets ca'n't and has to decode it as letters rather than a token.

/mine's the one with "The Annottated Alice 150th Aniversay Edition" in the pocket

This is, of course, correct apostrophe use...

That one may be arguable. When I was taught this (too many decades ago) it was that the apostrophe replaced one or more removed letters. So either can't or ca'n't could be correct, depending on whether the first or second n was the removed one in addition to the o.

surely: cannot --> can[no]t --> can''t :-)

Apparently not....

cannot --> ca[n]n[o]t --> ca'n't ;-)

Personally I like the idea of multiple apostrophes indicating every missing letter but each to their own :-)

They actually mean different things. "Fewer" applies only to number (counting things) but "less" applies more generally to reductions or comparisons of many alternative kinds. Consequently it is (should be) clear that "less" is the more general and "fewer" the more specific and narrowly applicable term. Consequently using "fewer" outside the numerical context is simply incorrect.

In a similar vein, "impact" is now almost universally used in public rhetoric to indicate any effect of anything on anything else. I got so pissed off by this recently that I spent half an hour with a thesaurus, in which time I identified over 60 specific verbs that have been generally supplanted by "to impact" or "to have an impact on". Each of these specific verbs conveys more information in its appropriate context about the nature (and even in some cases the consequences) of the effect than the general term "impact."

If regret for loss of clarity and precision in communication is pedantry, long live pedantry.

Less clarity is clearly caused by having fewer clarits available.

If you really want to wind up pedants, use fewer where it really should be less.

As in, "I couldn't care fewer about Grammar Nazis".

I think you mean "I could care fewer about Grammar Nazis"

"England and America are two countries divided by a common language"

George Bernad Shaw (attrib)

This is a great example of how the British and American versions of this idiom differ. Being as I am, British, the American version is obviously wrong. I'm sure any cross-pondians will take the opposite stance. QED.

That is Interesting. For me as a non-native speaker (who learned American English) the phrase "I could care less" sounds hopelessly wrong, that is why it seemed funny to make the "correction" in the previous message.

I didn't really know there was a British vs American debate about it.

"Less clarity is clearly caused by having fewer clarits available."

Or by drinking more clarets.

Is 18 less or fewer than 24? Is a dozen and a half less or fewer then two dozen?

Simple.

18 eggs is fewer eggs than 24 eggs (as counted objects). 10 is less than 24 (as abstract numbers).

Similarly a dozen and a half turkeys is fewer turkeys than two dozen turkeys, but (etc.)

Alternatively, half a mile is less than a mile (not fewer) but to travel five miles is to travel fewer miles than to travel 10 miles.

"half a mile is less than a mile (not fewer)"

It's also 4 furlongs fewer than 8 furlongs.

In fact Fowler says "Less can be idiomatically used with plural nouns in certain circumstances, esp. distances"

"Fewer" applies only to number (counting things) but "less" applies more generally to reductions or comparisons of many alternative kinds.

Why are there not equivalent forms for "more" ?

I suppose the pedant would prefer "bigger" or "larger" as the opposite to "less".

Dabbsy, I'm a programmer / software developer / engineer (what do those words even mean, really, other than making me sound impressive?) from the American midwest. Your column is generally my favorite one from the Register, and today's showed me that you are a master with words. I hate user interfaces because its really hard to pretend to be a non-computer-literate and also hard to admit how bad my designs are. I spent 800 hours last year building my personal program (a Dungeons and Dragons assistant) and my users were consistently unhelpful saying "come back when its useful". To sum it up, your programs live or die by your user interfaces, and your users are completely unhelpful in building it. Perhaps you know the story of the Little Red Hen? Cheers

I don't know what the hell the gender nonspecific person in the top icon had been eating, but it must be powerful stuff as the result has blown his head off...!

That said he's orange anyway, so probably washed down with a Tango.

My counter-argument was that those people who do know the difference notice the error. Pedants get annoyed; literate readers assume you are lazy. By using inappropriate terms or words used incorrectly, you alienate these people and lose them as readers. But by using the right words, everyone is content and you keep all your readers. Therefore making the effort to get it right is, by definition, more inclusive.

This. One hundred percent this.

English has a million words to choose from. Let's use the right ones, please, and keep the precision of the language.

"This" what? *twitch*

Ta for the new French words. I have no idea how I've managed to get through an entire O level in French without learning some of the essentials relating to digestive distress. Mind you, I did successfully fail it with a grade D.

Yes.

ballonnements

The imagery is delightful.

Although O level German took every opportunity to use Durchfall

That Whisky label looks like it was drawn by Hergé.

This has been my bugbear long before the mere User Interface was elevated to User Experience. Yes and No are opposites, they leave no room for a third option and so confusion is inevitable.

I blame Microsoft for the fact that "No" and "Cancel" have been synonymous in responses to questions such as "Do you like the Mash Report/Piers Morgan?".

On the other hand, the averagely-vacuous "About" box is almost encyclopedic in its content compared with today's typical SPA Home Page - a full-width graphic of nothing in particular, some stock photographs, an e-mall link and a few random words from the Little Book of Trite adorned with a putrid garland of social media logos. I could stand a great deal fewer of that.

Shirley you mean “a great deal fewer of *those*”

Caught orange-handed eating too much foie gras. Vegan? Yeah right, Mr Dabbs.

There are ever fewer people who prefer fewer but those that prefer less are lesser.