The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

boog · 2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Power Troll:
Good lord, has Nagesh's (oddly absent) trolling manifested itself in the form of some linguistic nonsense?

Careful. I've heard if you say his name three times, it summons him.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Neville Flynn:
boog:
Neville Flynn:
"Beg the question" actually means that a statement causes the desire to ask a question. That's the more contemporary definition, anyway. Yes, it originally refers to a type of logical fallacy, but the usage has changed.
Language evolves. Accept it.
Say, that's a great example of "begging the question".

Or were you serious when you said that it's the "more contemporary definition"? Because I could just as sensibly assert that E-X-C-E-P-T is the contemporary spelling of "accept", as I'd bet just as many morons misspell it as do misuse the phrase "begs the question".

See the second definition in the section on "beg the question":

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg

In language, even incorrect usage can become standard usage depending on how widespread it is and the level of adoption. I believe the reason "except" hasn't become "accept" or vice versa is because the misuse isn't that widespread (though it seems like that sometimes).

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/begs.html

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Nagesh Nagesh Nagesh!

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
[Pullum]'s not criticizing Elements as a work of linguistics, he's talking about it as a style guide, which is a completely different thing. Strunk does not, and does not pretend to present a theory of English grammar, and no linguist - could get confused on this point.

Wrong. Most of the criticism is of wrong linguistics in S&W, not style advice.

Here's an article by Pullam elsewhere that doesn't assume that you've read any of the related Language Log posts.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-05-31 Reply Admin

boog:
Power Troll:
Good lord, has Nagesh's (oddly absent) trolling manifested itself in the form of some linguistic nonsense?
Careful. I've heard if you say his name three times, it summons him.

No, you're thinking of Old Man Swampy...

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Tower Proll:
Nagesh Nagesh Nagesh!

In location of me countree it is now time zone for the sleeping of night, the meditation of cows, or the answering of support calls claiming to be David in Salt Lake City. So dare not to wake me with your puny spells! Krishna will avenge me upon your karma!!

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
dgvid:
Nit picky, I know, but he actually went over the code with a "fine tooth-comb," not a "fine-toothed comb." (At least, according to Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) What the f* is a tooth-comb? Beats me.
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

Two wrongs don't make a right. "Fine" modifies "toothed", and together those modify "comb", so "fine-toothed" was correct, regardless of what Truss might say. Notice that you wouldn't say "a toothed comb" because teeth are expected on a comb, but if there's something particular about the teeth on the comb, you have to specify.
Some examples to make the point: She went to the store with a red hair-boy? Or with a red-haired boy? They rode down the trail on their knobby tire-cycles? Or on knobby-tired cycles? She dreamed that she was pursued by a green eye-monster? Or a green-eyed monster?

No, the proper one is: A one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eater. Sure looks great to me. The problem is that finding purple people is a bit difficult (as the song says).

This obviously dates me!

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

newfweiler:
dgvid:
Nit picky, I know, but he actually went over the code with a "fine tooth-comb," not a "fine-toothed comb." (At least, according to Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) What the f* is a tooth-comb? Beats me.
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

He didn't have any maple syrup, so he couldn't pour over the code.

Fortunately, during a brief visit to the comments page here, he was able to secure sufficient quantities of both bile and vitriol to render the code appropriately soggy.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

boog:
Meh. A real XML programmer would have base64-encoded the zipped string, embedded it in a new XML string, and sent it on its merry freakin' way.

Who hasn't done a thing like that?

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Abso:
trtrwtf:
[Pullum]'s not criticizing Elements as a work of linguistics, he's talking about it as a style guide, which is a completely different thing. Strunk does not, and does not pretend to present a theory of English grammar, and no linguist - could get confused on this point.
Wrong. Most of the criticism is of wrong linguistics in S&W, not style advice.
Here's an article by Pullam elsewhere that doesn't assume that you've read any of the related Language Log posts.

Did you read the article, or just cite it? As I said, he discusses the stylistic advice in great detail, and very well, but there is nothing in there of grammar in the linguistic sense - because the work he's criticizing has nothing in it of grammar in the linguistic sense.

He does use some terminology (relative clause, for example) which is also used in serious linguistics, but I think if you look you'll find that linguistics borrowed that from the prescriptive "Mrs. Grundy" grammarians.

His discussion of the correct verbal agreement with "none" (whether to use the singular or plural when the "none" means "not one [of the whole]") is as close as he comes to a matter for formal linguistics, but he resolves it by an appeal to the literature rather than by formulating a rule, so again he's taking part in a war between diferent sorts of prescriptions, not a war between prescriptivists and "real linguists". This isn't a problem - again, Howard McGee is allowed to write about cooking, even though he's a physicist, and likewise a linguist can write a prescriptivist style guide, or criticize one. And just as McGee can use his understanding of Maillard reactions to inform his advice on grilling, so too can Pullum be informed by his understanding or serious linguistic analysis when he commits a work of prescriptivist grammarianism. But this isn't a work of linguistics, and I don't think that Pullum intends it to be one.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

boog:
Power Troll:
Good lord, has Nagesh's (oddly absent) trolling manifested itself in the form of some linguistic nonsense?
Careful. I've heard if you say his name three times, it summons him.

His name, his name, his name.

...what?

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

boog:
Neville Flynn:
I'm just saying that the new definition has become so commonplace that we're even seeing it in Merriam-Webster.
It's not surprising to me to see a commonplace usage in Merriam-Webster. What's disturbing to me is that, unlike countless other sources (albeit countless because I have not attempted to count them), M-W doesn't appear to include the "this is not proper usage, dumbass" clause. Common yes, proper no; a place that should be clarifying usage for people who bother to look doesn't even make a note of it? So sad.
Neville Flynn:
M-W is a well-known dictionary... boog's dictionary, on the other hand, isn't well-known and it seems to only reflect boog's idea of the English language.
Or as I (boog) like to call it, the correct version of the English language (see boog's dictionary for definition of "correct"). But I might (if I wasn't so very lazy) be able to find several widely-used dictionaries (and other non-dictionary references) that publish common usage and still make note of which is the correct usage of "begs the question".
Neville Flynn:
All I'm saying is that the new definition of "beg the question" has momentum... I'm not saying it's right or wrong to fight against this momentum. But it's kind of like trying to stop a runaway truck with your bare hands.
If any of my comments have indicated that I take this "fight against momentum" of improper usage of "begs the question" seriously, I apologize. I certainly wouldn't want to stop a runaway truck with my bare hands, but I'd gladly point and laugh at anyone who decides to race behind it.
Neville Flynn:
"Wrong" words will always make their way into the language. It's kind of like natural selection, where mutations occur: you could say the mutation results in "wrong" DNA because it's not a correct replica of the previous generation. But it could either make the organism stronger or weaker. Only time will tell.
Time will tell indeed. Fortunately real evolution takes a long time. I take comfort knowing I'll be long dead when the damage from my generation is truly inflicted on the English language.

From my dead tree copy of The New Oxford Dictionary of English, printed 1998: Beg the Question:

(of a fact or action)raise a question or point that has not been dealt with; invite an obvious question 2.assume the truth of an argument or propesition to be proved, without arguing it.

It then has a box on usage notes , where it says (in summary, I'm not going to type it all) that although the original usage was in the field of logic, the more general use has arisen over the last 100 years, is by far the most common use today, and is widely excepted in modern standard English.

So I doubt it is damage from your generation (unless you are about 140 years old ofc)

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

The OP is wrong to imply that Truss had a strong opinion on the matter. The wording she used does not commit her either way:

"Interestingly, Kingsley Amis says that those who smugly object to the hyphenation of the phrase "fine tooth-comb" are quite wrong to assert the phrase ought really to be punctuated "fine-tooth comb". Evidently there really used to be a kind of comb called a tooth-comb, and you could buy it in varieties of fineness."

To me this reads that both forms of punctuation are correct, at least devoid of any particular context.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Mark:
The OP is wrong to imply that Truss had a strong opinion on the matter. The wording she used does not commit her either way:
"Interestingly, Kingsley Amis says that those who smugly object to the hyphenation of the phrase "fine tooth-comb" are quite wrong to assert the phrase ought really to be punctuated "fine-tooth comb". Evidently there really used to be a kind of comb called a tooth-comb, and you could buy it in varieties of fineness."

To me this reads that both forms of punctuation are correct, at least devoid of any particular context.

Or that could be taken as, oh, what's the word? Sarcasm, yes, I think that's it.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

That reminds me of an email sigline I once spotted in the wild:

XML is like violence. If it's not working then you're just not using enough of it.

Power Troll · 2011-05-31 Reply Admin

JustSomeGuy:
That reminds me of an email sigline I once spotted in the wild:
XML is like violence. If it's not working then you're just not using enough of it.

A tip of the hat to you, sir. Extremely well played.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

Zipped strings containing HTML rather then XML would allow for CSS which could force all data to have the same style. This would make SOAP a useless standard.

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

dgvid:
Nit picky, I know, but he actually went over the code with a "fine tooth-comb," not a "fine-toothed comb." (At least, according to Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) What the f* is a tooth-comb? Beats me.
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

I think you mean fine-tooth comb

as in a comb that has (very) fine teeth....

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

TheCPUWizard:
cdosrun:
dgvid:
Nit picky, I know, but he actually went over the code with a "fine tooth-comb," not a "fine-toothed comb." (At least, according to Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) What the f* is a tooth-comb? Beats me.
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

Your sure thats an corret answer? That begs the question, where did Eats, Shoots and Leaves get there data.

"There" data? [No, here data...]

ps: Look up the definition of "Begging a Question"...this has absolutely nothing to do with it. hint: It does NOT mean that a statement causes the desire to ask a question.

I've seen lots of arguments about that on the internets, and I must say, I don't entirely degree. Clearly there is a use of 'Begs the Question' - and this is what people like you argue "What it means", but I'm gonna tread a dangerous line....

Beg (v) = Ask Question (v) = question

Begs the question can literally be used in the way that dgvid did. Doesn't matter that the phrase may have been used other way (or even may have been used to mean something totally different), the usage above is perfectly cromulent.

Just because the expression is commonly used in a different sense does not take away any literal meaning to that particular string of words - no matter how much you English puritans insist that we are destroying the language.

Can't help but sense some irony in the fact that stagnant languages that refuse to change are more likely to die off than evolving languages...

I hear Latin today is still much the same as it was a thousand years ago, maybe you should learn that instead.... DISCLAIMER: I didn't actually hear that about Latin, and I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong, and that it has in fact evolved (perhaps into Italian)

2011-05-31 Reply Admin

For those of you who enjoy reading the little comments Remy leaves in her stories, but don't like wading through the HTML source, here's a bookmarklet to make your life better:

(function(){var div=(document.getElementsByClassName("ArticleBody")||[])[0];div.innerHTML = div.innerHTML.replace(//g,"<em style="color:#FF0000">$1");})()

Scarlet Manuka · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Remy Porter:
To address those claiming that this design makes the application future-proof, it does no such thing. First off, it uses string-manipulation to build and parse XML. Thus defeating the entire point of XML. Second, it's in DCOM. DCOM is terrible. And it was always planned to live in DCOM. Oh, and this logic? Yeah, it's also used by the web code that lives on the same server as the DCOM library. The ASP application calls the DCOM libraries on the same server and pass XML back and forth. But all the XML parsing lives in the DCOM layer. So the ASP app has to pass the entire XML document back to the DCOM layer to get back the elements it wants. That's a future article.

So... definitely scope for some design improvements.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Anon:
Anon:

That might be an argument for using XML, but how does it justify using XML on top of DCOM?

Maybe because you were told that the DCOM server might go away? Or perhaps the DCOM server wasn't the original server?

Imagine,

(1) There was a [whatever] server that transacted in XML. (2) The client was written to use XML to talk to [whatever] (written very poorly). (3) The [whatever] server went away and needed a replacement. (4) The new DCOM server was written to use XML so the client doesn't have to change.

Not ideal, but no grand conspiracy needed.

But then, without overly verbose prose, Alex's writings would usually end up being a single sentence.

Even Remy's summary was longer than a single sentence

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

PedanticCurmudgeon:
dgvid:
What I really want to know is how the hell did I end up turning into a grammar troll? (Or grammar-troll, if you prefer.)
I don't know how you turned into a grammar troll, but the technique of a (deliberate?) typo in a reference to a well-known book that few own and fewer bother to actually read is the most innovative I've seen here in a long time.

Who reads the dictionary?

(For some reason I think of John Lithgow in "Third Rock from the Sun"....'Every word in that essay is plagiarised...Has none of you read...."The Dictionary"?'

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Neville Flynn:
boog:
Neville Flynn:
"Beg the question" actually means that a statement causes the desire to ask a question. That's the more contemporary definition, anyway. Yes, it originally refers to a type of logical fallacy, but the usage has changed.
Language evolves. Accept it.
Say, that's a great example of "begging the question".

Or were you serious when you said that it's the "more contemporary definition"? Because I could just as sensibly assert that E-X-C-E-P-T is the contemporary spelling of "accept", as I'd bet just as many morons misspell it as do misuse the phrase "begs the question".

See the second definition in the section on "beg the question":

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg

In language, even incorrect usage can become standard usage depending on how widespread it is and the level of adoption. I believe the reason "except" hasn't become "accept" or vice versa is because the misuse isn't that widespread (though it seems like that sometimes).

Oh Lisa, facts don't mean anything. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Neville Flynn:
boog:
Neville Flynn:
"Beg the question" actually means that a statement causes the desire to ask a question. That's the more contemporary definition, anyway. Yes, it originally refers to a type of logical fallacy, but the usage has changed.
Language evolves. Accept it.
Say, that's a great example of "begging the question".

Or were you serious when you said that it's the "more contemporary definition"? Because I could just as sensibly assert that E-X-C-E-P-T is the contemporary spelling of "accept", as I'd bet just as many morons misspell it as do misuse the phrase "begs the question".

See the second definition in the section on "beg the question":

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg

In language, even incorrect usage can become standard usage depending on how widespread it is and the level of adoption. I believe the reason "except" hasn't become "accept" or vice versa is because the misuse isn't that widespread (though it seems like that sometimes).

Oh Lisa, facts don't mean anything. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

boog:
So all that's needed is a dictionary suggesting improper usage? Great, I'm going to start my own dictionary where "up" means "south", "west" means "potato salad", and "dodecahedron" means "paper airplane". And so nobody can accuse me of a logical fallacy here, I'll define "straw man" to mean "handsome fellow".

I'm gonna assume you're not trolling (although past experience should warn me otherwise), but if we ignore dictionaries (and reasonably mainstream ones), we find ourselves in a position where we just have to believe the people in the know (like yourself) - who point us to websites with far less credibility than a dictionary. Once we descend into such a world (where we are taking your word over all credible resources), we are in a position where we should believe a dictionary you produce anyways.

Either way, this means if you create a dictionary that says otherwise, we must be inclined to agree with your definition.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

WTF you on about:
PedanticCurmudgeon:
dgvid:
What I really want to know is how the hell did I end up turning into a grammar troll? (Or grammar-troll, if you prefer.)
I don't know how you turned into a grammar troll, but the technique of a (deliberate?) typo in a reference to a well-known book that few own and fewer bother to actually read is the most innovative I've seen here in a long time.

Who reads the dictionary?

(For some reason I think of John Lithgow in "Third Rock from the Sun"....'Every word in that essay is plagiarised...Has none of you read...."The Dictionary"?'

+1

That guy, and the show, were awsome!

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

PedanticCurmudgeon:
Neville Flynn:

boog:

Neville Flynn:
In language, even incorrect usage can become standard usage depending on how widespread it is and the level of adoption. I believe the reason "except" hasn't become "accept" or vice versa is because the misuse isn't that widespread (though it seems like that sometimes).
Or it could just be because it's wrong, and people who spell it wrong are corrected/berated/mocked in order to preserve the correct spelling. In fact, that could be just what's happening here with "begs the question".
"Wrong" words will always make their way into the language. It's kind of like natural selection, where mutations occur: you could say the mutation results in "wrong" DNA because it's not a correct replica of the previous generation. But it could either make the organism stronger or weaker. Only time will tell.
In this case, however, the mutation obviously makes the organism weaker, assuming strength is defined as expressive power.
People who misuse the phrase "begs the question" already have a phrase that expresses perfectly what they wanted to say: "raises the question." So now we have two phrases that mean the same thing in common use, and the original meaning of "begs the question" will effectively be lost.

I see, so having more than 1 way to do something is a bad thing...

x++;

x+=1;

x=x+1;

Sure they're not identical (neither are the two phrases), but as written (that is, as expressions on their own), they all have the same affect (as would ++x;, for that matter). Perhaps a bad example, because many people would say allowing all of these constructs to exist as statements on their own is a bad thing, but that's another kettle of eels...

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
Meep:
If they were standard, they wouldn't be errors, and considering that it's something that can take 100+ years, I probably won't ever have personal recollection of an error becoming standard.

Right. So what you're saying is, no, it's not a very important factor in language change. And you're right. There are some cases, but as a whole hypercorrection is mostly a source of persistent mistakes that are never absorbed into that language as a whole. Language can change much faster than on a century scale, typically you'd be looking at a generation-scale for most changes, as children hear and re-interpret the previous generation's speech. (which is in fact where language change comes from, in the end - adult changes don't take until they're learned natively by the the next generation) (yes, I did write a thesis on this, why do you ask?)

What linguists seem to think is that when the leading prescriptivists put their ideas together in a book, they get it horribly, horribly wrong. And, by wrong, they make verifiable claims that turn out to be untrue, or often just invent stuff.

I don't think Pullum's making the mistake you think he's making. He's not criticizing Elements as a work of linguistics, he's talking about it as a style guide, which is a completely different thing. Strunk does not, and does not pretend to present a theory of English grammar, and no linguist - could get confused on this point.

So since they're not even talking about the same sorts of thing, it seems difficult to imagine that a linguist would say that someone offering stylistic rules (a "prescriptivist" in the Strunkian sense) is "wrong", except stylistically, the way Howard McGee might say that Julia Child's cooking is wrong, gastronomically. (He wouldn't say that her cooking violates the laws of physics...) In fact, what a linguist will tell you is that a style guide really has nothing to do with their work, and that's not what they do.

This is all stuff you get in an intro linguistics course, which you might want to consider taking, since you seem to have a keen interest in and almost no understanding of the discipline.

"Thesis" - aha that explains a lot. Suggests Masters or Doctorate or some such really useful qualification.

Should we start the debate on whether Tertiary education is any good or not again?

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

trtwtf:
Abso:
trtrwtf:
[Pullum]'s not criticizing Elements as a work of linguistics, he's talking about it as a style guide, which is a completely different thing. Strunk does not, and does not pretend to present a theory of English grammar, and no linguist - could get confused on this point.
Wrong. Most of the criticism is of wrong linguistics in S&W, not style advice.
Here's an article by Pullam elsewhere that doesn't assume that you've read any of the related Language Log posts.

Did you read the article, or just cite it? As I said, he discusses the stylistic advice in great detail, and very well, but there is nothing in there of grammar in the linguistic sense - because the work he's criticizing has nothing in it of grammar in the linguistic sense.

He does use some terminology (relative clause, for example) which is also used in serious linguistics, but I think if you look you'll find that linguistics borrowed that from the prescriptive "Mrs. Grundy" grammarians.

His discussion of the correct verbal agreement with "none" (whether to use the singular or plural when the "none" means "not one [of the whole]") is as close as he comes to a matter for formal linguistics, but he resolves it by an appeal to the literature rather than by formulating a rule, so again he's taking part in a war between diferent sorts of prescriptions, not a war between prescriptivists and "real linguists". This isn't a problem - again, Howard McGee is allowed to write about cooking, even though he's a physicist, and likewise a linguist can write a prescriptivist style guide, or criticize one. And just as McGee can use his understanding of Maillard reactions to inform his advice on grilling, so too can Pullum be informed by his understanding or serious linguistic analysis when he commits a work of prescriptivist grammarianism. But this isn't a work of linguistics, and I don't think that Pullum intends it to be one.

And given this obsession with linguistics, does all the hogwash about "begs the question" actually matter? I mean, in the grand scheme of things...

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Uh Oh:

"Thesis" - aha that explains a lot. Suggests Masters or Doctorate or some such really useful qualification.

Suggests any number of things. The actual fact is that I went to school and got a bachelor's in linguistics at an institution that required a thesis for that degree. Never worked as a linguist, and never pursued further work in it, but I think I'm in a pretty good situation to talk about linguistics, or to know when I reach the edge of my knowledge and how to extend that edge. Someone who reads that Pullum article - which is quite good, for what it is - and thinks they've read a linguistics article clearly hasn't even the start of a clue about what linguistics studies. Hint: it's not concerned with clarity of exposition, or graceful development of an intellectual position, and how that's best to be done in the English language. Just read Michael Silverstein if you want to be convinced of that.

Second hint: it's more to do with understanding the internal structures of languages as reflected by our external performance of those languages. To put it very briefly.

Should we start the debate on whether Tertiary education is any good or not again?

Sure, go ahead if you like. I'll be over here trying to become less abysmally ignorant about math, because that's fun, but knock yourself out.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Dingo Dan:
And given this obsession with linguistics, does all the hogwash about "begs the question" actually matter? I mean, in the grand scheme of things...

Probably not, but that shouldn't stop intelligent discussion...

C-Octothorpe · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Uh Oh:
"Thesis" - aha that explains a lot. Suggests Masters or Doctorate or some such really useful qualification.
Should we start the debate on whether Tertiary education is any good or not again?

... says the guy who never graduated high school...

Severity One · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

dgvid:
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

Or in XML. At least it would be future-proof.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Kevin:
So apparently it's a total WTF to use XML? It'd be crazy to serialize objects in XML!

I'm probably echoing what many other people have said in response to this, but yes, it is. It is crazy to write an XML writing layer and a parser and create the most verbose protocol imaginable when you personally are writing both the client and the server and have a library which will reliably bundle up your binary objects for you and unbundle them at the other end.

Here's a good example for you: You're writing a web app. Would you have the javascript frontend and backend communicate over ajax using XML which needs some heavy parsing in the browser and the client side, special data structures, basically a whole lot of bespoke code... or JSON, which passes objects directly via a serialisation library?

Use the right tools for the job and you'll have a much easier life.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
but that shouldn't stop intelligent discussion...

... or even a thread on this website.

Hatshepsut · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Mae:
dgvid:
Nit picky, I know, but he actually went over the code with a "fine tooth-comb," not a "fine-toothed comb." (At least, according to Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) What the f* is a tooth-comb? Beats me.
English, that's TRWTF. Maybe these stories should be posted in some sort of compiled byte code. They'd be more precise and svelte.

I think you mean fine-tooth comb
as in a comb that has (very) fine teeth....

I have a tooth-comb. I use it every morning. You see, a number of my teeth have fallen out, leaving a gap in my smile that I makes me very self-conscious. So I have let the teeth on one side of my mouth grow quite long, and I pull them over to cover the gap, applying a little Brylcreem to help them stick in place (or so I hope).
I do this with my tooth-comb.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

HiddenWindshield:
boog:
Power Troll:
Good lord, has Nagesh's (oddly absent) trolling manifested itself in the form of some linguistic nonsense?
Careful. I've heard if you say his name three times, it summons him.

His name, his name, his name.

...what?

Now that hastur be a mistake. It hastur be. It just hastur.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Dingo Dan:
And given this obsession with linguistics, does all the hogwash about "begs the question" actually matter? I mean, in the grand scheme of things...

Probably not, but that shouldn't stop intelligent discussion...

Even if it's intelligent, it's still stupid.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Lorne Kates:
frits:
Lorne Kates:
frits:
The Article:
The application had been written in an era when XML was all the rage.
Is that era over? What's the new XML? JSON?
I'm looking to create some work...

You do know you can put an XML string inside a JSON object, right?

json.objects[id].id = object.id json.objects[id].data = SerializeXML(object)

You can also put JSON in your XML. What's your point?

My point is that you can have the all-the-rage JSON, and not have to give up tested-and-true XML.

But you do bring up a good point. If we switch the webcall from XML to JSON directly, who knows what problems it may cause. Let's wrap it again.

json.objects[id].id = object.id json.objects[id].data = SerializeXML(object)

xmlToSend.json = SerializeXML(json)

yo dawg, I heard you like serialization...

C-Octothorpe · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Xzibit:
yo dawg, I heard you like serialization...

+1

I thought the same thing too, but didn't because I figured someone beat me to it.

boog · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Zebedee:
boog:
...real evolution takes a long time. I take comfort knowing I'll be long dead when the damage from my generation is truly inflicted on the English language.

From my dead tree copy of The New Oxford Dictionary of English, printed 1998... So I doubt it is damage from your generation (unless you are about 140 years old ofc)

I wasn't specifically referring to misuse of "begs the question" when I said "the damage from my generation". Wait until standard English includes chatspeak/twitterspeak/lolspeak.

Zebedee:
...and is widely excepted in modern standard English.

I see what you did there.

frits · 2011-06-01 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Xzibit:
yo dawg, I heard you like serialization...

+1

I thought the same thing too, but didn't because I figured someone beat me to it.

Everybody thought the same thing...

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

trtwtf:
Abso:
trtrwtf:
[Pullum]'s not criticizing Elements as a work of linguistics, he's talking about it as a style guide, which is a completely different thing. Strunk does not, and does not pretend to present a theory of English grammar, and no linguist - could get confused on this point.
Wrong. Most of the criticism is of wrong linguistics in S&W, not style advice.
Here's an article by Pullam elsewhere that doesn't assume that you've read any of the related Language Log posts.

Did you read the article, or just cite it? As I said, he discusses the stylistic advice in great detail, and very well, but there is nothing in there of grammar in the linguistic sense - because the work he's criticizing has nothing in it of grammar in the linguistic sense.

He does use some terminology (relative clause, for example) which is also used in serious linguistics, but I think if you look you'll find that linguistics borrowed that from the prescriptive "Mrs. Grundy" grammarians.

His discussion of the correct verbal agreement with "none" (whether to use the singular or plural when the "none" means "not one [of the whole]") is as close as he comes to a matter for formal linguistics, but he resolves it by an appeal to the literature rather than by formulating a rule, so again he's taking part in a war between diferent sorts of prescriptions, not a war between prescriptivists and "real linguists". This isn't a problem - again, Howard McGee is allowed to write about cooking, even though he's a physicist, and likewise a linguist can write a prescriptivist style guide, or criticize one. And just as McGee can use his understanding of Maillard reactions to inform his advice on grilling, so too can Pullum be informed by his understanding or serious linguistic analysis when he commits a work of prescriptivist grammarianism. But this isn't a work of linguistics, and I don't think that Pullum intends it to be one.

I was thinking mainly of the complaints that S&W don't correctly identify the passive, and are wrong about the effect of a split infinitive.

I don't know how you would expect Pullum to "formulate a rule" about written English without looking a written English.

Your main complaint, so far as I can tell, is that Pullum doesn't use much jargon. Since the article isn't in a linguistics journal, that's not really a weakness.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Meep:
Kevin:
So apparently it's a total WTF to use XML? It'd be crazy to serialize objects in XML!

Yeah, most people realized that XML was just an obnoxious, bloated format for untyped s-expressions ten years ago. Welcome to the 21st century!

As the original poster says: xml is useful if you want to transfer data between hetrogeneous systems. And OMG do not write your own silly parsing mechanisms with the likes of instr etc. Use XMLDOM for MS stuff and, for instance, simpleXML if going into php land.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Abso:
Your main complaint, so far as I can tell, is that Pullum doesn't use much jargon. Since the article isn't in a linguistics journal, that's not really a weakness.

I'm not complaining about the article. It's a well-written diatribe, tilting at a widely-loved windmill. Makes you think a little about Strunk and White, and that's a good thing. I still think that Strunk and White is about the only really good single volume on writing in English, even if I disagree with most of they prescriptions, and I like getting into Pullum's head and seeing what he thinks of the work.

What I'm saying is, the criticism is not linguistics. Linguistics is a science that deals with the formal structure of the language - that's what Pullum does in his day job.

I don't know how you would expect Pullum to "formulate a rule" about written English without looking a written English

But that's not the issue, is it? Here he's looking at written English without forumlating, or indeed without citing any of the sort of rules that characterize formal linguistics.

Here, he's looking at written English and discussing it without reference to the sorts of formal analysis that constitute the science of linguistics. So, what he's doing is really not very different from what Strunk and White do; in fact, he's arguing with them on their ground and doing a good job of it. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't then say this is an example of a paper in linguistics, any more than Don Knuth's recipe for a beef chili, or his review of a new Thai place in Menlo Park would be a paper in computer science.

I'm not sure why this is difficult to understand. You might easily talk about S&W from a linguistic perspective, and I'm sure it's been done. For example, you might look at why the syntactic choice of active voice is considered "more clear" than the passive by some readers. This could be done in terms of syntax - for example, in good old x-bar you'd probably want to show that more transformations are needed to convert the passive to the active (which that theory assumed as the underlying form). This would be something like explaining the physical properties of a molecule in terms of the chemical model used to describe that molecule. "It's more stable because it has more double-bonds" or something like that - chem is not my strong suit, excuse my poor example. Or you could even cite previous work of that sort to support or undermine S&W's claim, without doing that work on your own, then at least you're making use of linguistics. You might do some psycholinguistics - strap some subjects into chairs and test their response times for different constructions, take some brain measurments, see if they're processed differently. Or just cite such research, again.

But Pullum doesn't do anything that actually involves linguistics in this paper: he's objecting to S&W's stylistic advice, and he's doing it as another prescriptive grammarian. Having done that, he puts his linguist hat on again and goes off and does linguistics, which is his day job.

Really, if you can spot any actual linguistics in the paper, please point it out to me.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Ralph:
OK, the magic genie allows you to go into the past and permanently delete one thing from the history of technology. Part and parcel of the bargain is that whatever you choose to ban can never again be re-invented. It's kinda like a preemptive patent. ... Discuss.

Okay. I'd eliminate any product advertised with the sales pitch, "Do X without writing any code!"

Every such product that I've been forced to use turns out to mean by this: Do X without writing any code in a well-known computer language like Java [or COBOL or C or whatever depending on the era]! Instead, we've invented a whole new computer language that is more difficult to write, more difficult to maintain, has poor error checking, and is full of bugs! But you don't have to write any Java, so this is clearly a huge step forward!

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Jay:
I'd eliminate any product advertised with the sales pitch, "Do X without writing any code!"
Every such product that I've been forced to use turns out to mean by this: Do X without writing any code in a well-known computer language like Java [or COBOL or C or whatever depending on the era]! Instead, we've invented a whole new computer language that is more difficult to write, more difficult to maintain, has poor error checking, and is full of bugs! But you don't have to write any Java, so this is clearly a huge step forward!

True dat. Or it's some sort of supposedly transparent visual interface that is obvious only to the person who designed it, which is generating horrendously ugly code behind the scenes. I used to work with a guy who was waiting for fifth-generation programming languages the way some Xians wait for the Rapture, and with the same trembling anticipation. "It'll be a purely visual programming system... no code at all!" The idea makes me sort of queasy.

Funny thing is, the guy's one of the best programmers I've ever worked with, a really top-notch brain. Just a little weird on this subject, that's all.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
Abso:
Your main complaint, so far as I can tell, is that Pullum doesn't use much jargon. Since the article isn't in a linguistics journal, that's not really a weakness.

I'm not complaining about the article. It's a well-written diatribe, tilting at a widely-loved windmill. Makes you think a little about Strunk and White, and that's a good thing. I still think that Strunk and White is about the only really good single volume on writing in English, even if I disagree with most of they prescriptions, and I like getting into Pullum's head and seeing what he thinks of the work.

What I'm saying is, the criticism is not linguistics. Linguistics is a science that deals with the formal structure of the language - that's what Pullum does in his day job.

I don't know how you would expect Pullum to "formulate a rule" about written English without looking a written English

But that's not the issue, is it? Here he's looking at written English without forumlating, or indeed without citing any of the sort of rules that characterize formal linguistics.

Here, he's looking at written English and discussing it without reference to the sorts of formal analysis that constitute the science of linguistics. So, what he's doing is really not very different from what Strunk and White do; in fact, he's arguing with them on their ground and doing a good job of it. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't then say this is an example of a paper in linguistics, any more than Don Knuth's recipe for a beef chili, or his review of a new Thai place in Menlo Park would be a paper in computer science.

I'm not sure why this is difficult to understand. You might easily talk about S&W from a linguistic perspective, and I'm sure it's been done. For example, you might look at why the syntactic choice of active voice is considered "more clear" than the passive by some readers. This could be done in terms of syntax - for example, in good old x-bar you'd probably want to show that more transformations are needed to convert the passive to the active (which that theory assumed as the underlying form). This would be something like explaining the physical properties of a molecule in terms of the chemical model used to describe that molecule. "It's more stable because it has more double-bonds" or something like that - chem is not my strong suit, excuse my poor example. Or you could even cite previous work of that sort to support or undermine S&W's claim, without doing that work on your own, then at least you're making use of linguistics. You might do some psycholinguistics - strap some subjects into chairs and test their response times for different constructions, take some brain measurments, see if they're processed differently. Or just cite such research, again.

But Pullum doesn't do anything that actually involves linguistics in this paper: he's objecting to S&W's stylistic advice, and he's doing it as another prescriptive grammarian. Having done that, he puts his linguist hat on again and goes off and does linguistics, which is his day job.

Really, if you can spot any actual linguistics in the paper, please point it out to me.

It's true that there is no formal analysis, but there is informal analysis. It's not a linguistics paper, but neither is it only stylistic objections.

As for your specific suggestion: in science (including linguistics), it's a good idea to collect evidence before you try to explain it. Before you can ask "why do some readers consider the active voice 'more clear'?" you ask "do some readers consider the active voice 'more clear'?" And before you even do that, you should know what you're trying to measure, so you need to ask, "is the claim being made here that active voice is clearer than passive voice?" From the examples it seems the answer is "no," so looking for a difference in clarity between passive and active sentences would be irrelevant. Trying to explain the difference with syntax theory, without having looked for—let alone found—such a difference, would be really irrelevant.

I suppose you could transfer the whole "analyze it in terms of syntax" suggestion to the discussion of "However." But in that case, S&W haven't provided evidence in support of their claim that good writing doesn't have sentences starting with "However," so you'd need to look for such evidence first. Pullum does so (and doesn't find any). It is the looking for evidence that makes this linguistics, rather than just a disagreement about style.

Would you agree that it was linguistics if he'd used the term "corpus analysis?"

TL;DR: I agree that Don Knuth's hypothetical restaurant reviews wouldn't be computer science papers. However, while a code review from Don Knuth probably also wouldn't be a computer science paper, it would involve computer science.

2011-06-01 Reply Admin

Neville Flynn:
But it's kind of like trying to stop a runaway truck with your bare hands.

Or like trying to beat up hundreds of armour-piercing bullets using only your face.

Design for the Future

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