Re: Flamewars & Why pedantic spelling is good.
On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 03:37:15PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
>
> > btw, as someone has mentioned privately, 'howto' is no more a word than
> > 'zonefile' is. perhaps there should be auto spelling-flame bug reports
> > on every package that uses 'howto' rather than 'how to' in the
> > description.
>
> Except that "howto" has become a noun rather like "manpage".
just like "zonefile" has.
> This is not true in the case of "zonefile".
wrong. like "howto", "zonefile" has been in common usage in its field
for several years. in fact, it has been in common usage longer than
"howto" has.
to admit that, though, would mean admitting that perhaps i was right in
complaining about trivial and erroneous bug reports like "zonefile" and
"usenet"....and you wouldn't want to do that, would you? the dilemma is
that it would mean annoying the maintainers of "howto" packages with
moronic bug reports....far better to simply pretend that "howto" is a
special case.
small minded people think that dictionaries prescribe language. anyone
who has studied even basic linguistics knows that they do not,
linguistics is a *DESCRIPTIVE* discipline...it does not presume to
prescribe what a language *should* be, it describes what a language
*is*. living languages evolve over time - new words are invented, old
ones fall out of usage or gain new meanings or lose old meanings.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
-- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Reply to: