On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 07:17:30 -0700 "Richard C. Steffens" <[email protected]> dijo:
>On 09/05/2012 06:07 AM, Rich Shepard wrote: >> Two truisms that might actually be true are that scientists make >> poor programmers (see old FORTRAN code) and that programmers can't >> write good documentation. The latter may come from being too close >> to the application. There's no reason why any of us cannot clean up >> and clarify documentation for any open source tool ... including the >> OS. I've done this on several of the critical applications I use >> (e.g., LyX, GRASS) and no one's offended by my offerings. >> Unfortunately, poor writing skills are endemic in the broader >> business world, too. And let's not go into the results of our local >> school systems ... One of my pet peeves is the use of an ellipsis to end a sentence instead of a period. :) >In my transcription work I find many occasions where there is evidence >of change in spoken English (I think that's how John would think of it >-- I think of it as people who don't know the correct usage). For >example, it appears that the article "an" is no long used by many >people. And the understanding of when to use "take" versus "bring" >seems to have been lost. I suspect this general change in spoken >English is contributing to the quality issue in written documentation. The use of 'a' before a word starting with a consonant (pronounced [ɑʔ], with the glottal stop instead of [n]) is simply a historical development in a particular dialect. In fact, Anglo-Saxon had no articles at all. The present day indefinite article developed from ān 'one' (that's ā with a macron, denoting a doubled vowel). Prescriptivists have succeeded in proscribing this pronunciation so well that people with this dialect are considered uneducated and not fit for polite company. As for 'take' and 'bring,' what you complain of is nothing more than semantic drift, a diachronic change that has always existed in all languages and always will. The favorite example of semantic drift is the English 'black,' which many, including me, believe is derived from a word that originally meant 'white.' Cf the Oxford English Dictionary: Etymology: Cognate with Middle Dutch blac ink, Old Saxon blac ink (Middle Low German blak ink, black dye, black colour), Old High German blah- (only in blah-faro of the colour of ink, blah-māl niello decoration (Middle High German blach-māl ), blah-mālōn to decorate with niello); further etymology uncertain; on formal grounds the word could be from a base related to the Germanic bases of blank adj. and the various forms discussed at blik v., but since this would give an expected meaning ‘shining, white’ there is an obvious semantic difficulty; many have sought to resolve this by hypothesizing that the word meaning ‘black’ originated as a past participle (with the meaning ‘burnt, blackened’) of a verb meaning ‘to burn (brightly)’ derived from this base; this verb may perhaps be reflected by Middle Dutch blaken (Dutch blaken) to flame, to burn. >When I have some free time, I'd consider contributing some of it to a >documentation editing effort. Is there a proper way to do this? Does >it vary from program to program? Does one simply take some sentences >that should be shot and rehabilitate them and offer them to the keeper >of the documentation? And how does one find out who the keeper of the >documentation is? Professor Susan Conrad of the PSU Department of Applied Linguistics (together with others) has been instrumental in developing classes designed to teach English academic writing. So far most of the effort has been targeted at foreign students, but she has also worked to teach English writing skills to engineers (her husband is an engineer). If anyone is interested in developing classes to teach skills in writing computer documentation she would be a good contact person. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
