Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 18:06:07 -0500 (CDT) From: Jay Nelson <noslenj@swbell.net> To: "Thomas M. Sommers" <tms2@mail.ptd.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDCon East Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10004111749530.473-100000@acp.swbell.net> In-Reply-To: <38F2D1E7.7119FA0F@mail.ptd.net>
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On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, Thomas M. Sommers wrote: [snip] >In what ways is it fiendishly difficult? Many so-called grammatical >rules, such as to not split infinitives, are nothing but some 18th >century antiquarian's idea of what the language should be, not what it >really is. I would disagree that the notion is antiquated. Split infinitives create an ambiguous reference that isn't easily understood without back-tracking and sorting out the pointers. Double negatives are equally as bad. "I don't have no X..." is common American street idiom, but says little except the speaker has some X -- which isn't what they generally mean. 'if [ ! "$grammer" != "$common_sense" ]; then...' is difficult to read, hear or comprehend. -- Jay To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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