Date: 31 May 2003 09:48:33 -0700 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: grammar Message-ID: <qvsmqvnjtq.mqv@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <20030531080645.Q33085@welearn.com.au> References: <3ECD3A8C.1040506@potentialtech.com> <00ae01c32668$2ff5ad70$2441d5cc@nitanjared> <20030531072026.O33085@welearn.com.au> <20030530213625.GA41089@wopr.caltech.edu> <20030531080645.Q33085@welearn.com.au>
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Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> writes: > On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 02:36:25PM -0700, Matthew Hunt wrote: ... > > Here in the US, at least, it is > > common for fire alarms to have instructions like "In case of fire, pull > > handle." > > We had signs like that here for a while, and they were strictly > speaking correct for our language. The presence of "of" changes > the meaning and makes it clear, at least to someone in a calm > state who can stop and process language patterns that are not > part of every day speech (i.e. only found on emergency signs). > Comedians had a field day with people pulling handles, smashing > glass windows, etc, just in case the disaster might happen. > But I agree, that usage is correct by my language. The phrase > "in case of" and the phrase "in case" have very different meanings. For "in case", my dictionary has "If it happens that; if.", but I'm sure that that is an incomplete definition. I suppose that "in case" is a long-accepted shortening of "in the case" or "in a case" and that "in case X, do Y" is a shortening of "in the/a case of X happening, do Y". This shortening can explain the above warning, but another explanation is that it is a shortening of "In cases of fire", which seems strictly correct to me. > Tell me, how would you follow the following (hypothetical) instruction? > > In case you run out of memory, don't run all of the programs together. This, and your original example, are not grammatically wrong, and are fully sensical language. The problem is with the meaning that the language conveys. (One hopes that it isn't the meaning the author meant to convey, but that's a different issue.) This is partly because we understand "case" here to mean "an instance of a general case". The sentence is telling one what to do in a particular instance (ie, when something happens), and that has a couple of problems. 1) When the case happens, the advice doesn't help with this instance; there might not even be a next one for which to use the advice. 2) The advice is weasily; it tells you what not to do, instead of what to do, so that running no programs follows the advice without solving the problem. "In case you run out of memory, cry." has a much better "ring" to my ear. The sentences clearly need complete rewriting. Usually, one can guess the intended meaning of of bad writing, but it takes extra effort and it leaves one wondering if one guessed right. Writers should think of their readers more and at least read what they have written and do a bit of self-editing of the worst parts. > Is it something to do as a precaution, or a response to take when > an unlikely situation occurs? I would read it as a precaution and > make a workplace rule that we must follow it. How one reads something depends a lot on one's tolerance and imagination, but we should use little of either when discussing the meaning of some writing. The examples are not precautions, as written, even if everyone is clever enough to find them so.
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