[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Bob Hutchison scripsit:
> "facially bogus" means "bogus in a facile way"? Is that what you meant?
No, I meant "bogus on the face of it" (lawyerese, sorry).
> But why did you say that? Unless you believe that "almost idiomatic" is
> always and obviously better than "not idiomatic"? And thinking otherwise is
> facile and bogus.
Just bogus. But I do mean that. Remembering to type dot instead of colon
may be annoying, but interpreting 2.50 as half past two requires far more
brain cycles.
> Hmmm, user is told "no problem, you get to write things the way you always
> have, only remember not to use ':' but '.'. Oh, and over here, where you
> want to write a co-ordinate, remember to write it this way... it'll be easy
> to remember because it is so similar to what you do now. Oh and over
> here..." I don't know if I'd be quite so quick to insist that something that
> is familiar but not normal (idiomatic) is necessarily better than something
> less familiar solely on the basis of its familiarity.
This was actually a booby trap: the style 12.15 (for a time) is perfectly
common in the U.K., maybe even standard. But it means 15 minutes after 12,
not 12.15 hours after midnight.
--
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders."
--Hal Abelson
|
