Back in the days of telegraph and teletype a major US news organisation banned the use of 'not'. The argument was that if 'not' was dropped it reverses the meaning of the sentence, while the sentence remains grammatically correct. Whereas you cannot drop 'cannot' from a sentence, without risking a grammatical exposure. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of bill lam Sent: Friday, 4 September 2009 11:52 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Jchat] Description of J
I guess while 'cannot' is old-style but 'can not' may be ambiguous, eg I cannot agree I can not agree the second sentence may mean I have the option of 'not agree', may be in newspeak I can notagree On Thu, 03 Sep 2009, Roger Hui wrote: > I myself have been on a crusade to replace "cannot" by "can not". -- regards, ==================================================== GPG key 1024D/4434BAB3 2008-08-24 gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 4434BAB3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.392 / Virus Database: 270.13.76/2344 - Release Date: 09/03/09 18:05:00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
