From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Apr 11 16:14: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mta3.rcsntx.swbell.net (mta3.rcsntx.swbell.net [151.164.30.27]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C8BA937BAF6 for ; Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:14:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from noslenj@swbell.net) Received: from ppp-208-190-158-24.dialup.austtx.swbell.net ([208.190.158.24]) by mta3.rcsntx.swbell.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.2000.01.05.12.18.p9) with ESMTP id <0FSV008LNKJ3XO@mta3.rcsntx.swbell.net> for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Tue, 11 Apr 2000 18:13:56 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (noslenj@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by acp.swbell.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA00504; Tue, 11 Apr 2000 18:06:07 -0500 (CDT envelope-from noslenj@swbell.net) Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 18:06:07 -0500 (CDT) From: Jay Nelson Subject: Re: BSDCon East In-reply-to: <38F2D1E7.7119FA0F@mail.ptd.net> To: "Thomas M. Sommers" Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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