-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Matthew,
Thanks for your thoughts Matthew Strawbridge wrote: |>David wrote: |>Whereas US speakers are fond of using verbs as nouns, |>nouns as verbs, adjectives as nouns etc., this happens much less |>frequently in British English and English in other parts of the |>commonwealth. Such misuse of words is generally frowned upon. | | I'm not sure that this is a purely American phenomenon. We're quite Agree, but as I said it's common - or should that be commonplace ;-) - in the USA but comparatively rare in British English. | happy with phrases such as "haves and have-nots". However, I think ... which, dare I say it, many Americans cringe at. In a meeting in the US recently I referred to one of their cities as "... a place ...", to which I was met with storms of laughter. I still don't understand why this caused such a stir. :-( | Coy appears as a verb in the OED, so it's not solely a US usage. Interesting, which version are you looking at? It does not appear as a verb in my 2002 OED Reference dictionary. Adjective and adverb, but not as a verb. Nor does it appear in my Chambers as a verb. |>A good writer will turn off grammar checking anyway. | | This is what we must strive to avoid. Nobody's grammar is so good | that they don't make occasional mistakes. To be useful, a grammar I think what you mean is that we should strive to make the grammar checker good enough to be of use even to competent authors. I agree with this sentiment. :-) However, let's not forget that the majority of the people using it will not care about the advanced features, and for them getting the basic straight forward elements right is crucial. Given that OOo is rapidly becoming a mainstream mass-market end-user application, it is my opinion that we need to focus on getting it right for them first, then we can add the more advanced features. Cheers David. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCkgu/gH46HTEjeiURAmQTAJ4iqVLaW+rxjFmdSROMu9dJsz9DugCgwehS xN9pLvEXCqCZPihTlxaiun0= =Lf6T -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
