If only there was a trade, a group of educated professionals with specific training in the use of language to describe a desired outcome. We could call them "language engineers" and regulated them via state associations meant to protect the public from charlatans.
> Words matter. But they are not the way humans communicate.
People communicate any way they can. On online forums, we have to communicate with words as there is no other way (so far).
> Assuming a well-intended statement is intended to be malicious is a path to complete communication meltdown.
You're right, but this is just as much, and probably more so, the fault of the writer than the reader. Because like you said, so much of our communication is not using words, when we are limited to words, we have to be extra careful about which words we use and how we craft our message because the chance of being misunderstood is much higher.
Seriously, how many times I need to write it's a bad thing to do so that somebody won't comment "so, you're saying it's a good thing to do, right?" It's like there's some weird font some people have installed which turns meaning of every word to its opposite.
> * You are writing based on the spoken word ... an example*
That is intentionally didascalic for the intentional expression of clarity, and it is enclosed in quotes, which do denote a switch. It intentionally describes a process in blocks.
> your posts, which will set off
My dear friend, do you realize that when something is labelled through «common characteristic[s]», that would be the shallow labelling that a machine does? And it is not even Bayesian, because important amounts of texts are written in a way similar to that in which I write - machine learning itself mocks human learning after all. Maybe it would be important in this time and age for information accessors to realize that either they put themselves seriously into understanding expressions, or if they have to break a guinness world record of processed text per time unit (cpr.: "Spedread War and Peace, 'ts about Napoleon in the east"), it's more serious to renounce to actual judgement - after all, there are machines for preprocessing (and really they cannot but guess on normalspeak because they are stupid)?
You should see even more the absurdity.
Again - the point is very important: rushed prejudice-like labelling ("Cialis - spam") is not appropriate, it's machine-level, and a sign of decadence.
> When I was in high school we couldn't use the verb "to be" in assignments for English class. No is, am, are, was, were, has been, will be, etc.
> Of course this is overly restrictive, but 80-90% of the time there was a better way to phrase the sentence if you thought about removing the "be" verb. 10% of the time it was awkward, which sucked.
> Emails have their Pro's & Con's - I prefer them, but not everyone is able to be precise and on-point in written language. Also, you need to be able to express your feelings in written language.
This is exactly the opposite of what professionals do. They should be able to write well. It is not optional, it is an expectation. Feelings should not be part of a technical discussion.
In a few years, we're gonna get emojis in an RFC. Just wait, you!
> This is akin to grammar police. In life encounters, there is no real place for grammar policing. However, you should try to be grammatically correct.
That's because most humans have feelings. But most machines don't. So that's not comparable.
> It must be so difficult being so offended by the regular function of language. Context matters in language, and meanings and vocabulary change over time as contexts change.
The sheer irony of someone who's in favor of linguistic prescriptivism typing this out (when master record and master key have no linguistic relationship to master/slave) is astounding.
So... its worse. People want to use natural language.
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