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...and whatever you do, please don't call them "tenants" in your design docs. And if I may add another request (not an "ask")... learn the difference between se
by ggambetta 5y ago
...and whatever you do, please don't call them "tenants" in your design docs. And if I may add another request (not an "ask")... learn the difference between segue and Segway.
Reading anything that plays that fast and loose with language makes me think that the author plays equally fast and loose with other aspects of their writing that I'm not qualified to judge (in a way similar to how we can spot errors in movies that depict hackers, but are more likely to "buy" whatever we see on a medical drama), so it makes me generally distrustful of the material.
Am I being pedantic? I don't think I am. I think clear communication is super important.
Edit: my comment is inspired by, but not directly related to, the article.
- jadeforrest 5y agoI don't understand your critique -- the words tenant and segue do not appear in this post. What are examples of playing fast and loose with language?
- ggambetta 5y agoMy comment is not a critique of the post at all; the post just made me think of this.
- politician 5y ago2nd’d. The “All Hands” presentation to communicate “Our Tenants” is a classic fail.
- charles_f 5y agoThat is, unless you want to present Bob and Rebecca, who decided to make the "Red Cedar" meeting room their home for a small monthly fee.
- kzrdude 5y agoMaybe I'm like many others, I heard of Segway long before I learned the word segue. I also don't mind adjusting spelling of words over time, so I don't mind if segue gains a new spelling namely segway.
- ggambetta 5y agoNot picking on you specifically, just curious: the first time you [thought you] heard "this is a great Segway into the next topic", didn't it sound strange or unusual to you? Weren't you curious enough to google it, which would have led to the correct version? I think this is what gets me when people use "Segway" or "per say". It suggests a certain lack of curiosity, an attitude of "I have no idea what this means, it doesn't make sense, but I'm going to use it confidently anyway". It also suggests that the speaker doesn't read serious works (otherwise they wouldn't use the mangled spellings). (As an aside: I recently read something about "wearing a Guy Fox mask". Took me a second to get it, and it was almost physically painful when I did)
- sokoloff 5y ago“For all intensive purposes” is another one that doesn’t pass mustard for me.
- Wistar 5y agoWow. What a doggy dog world language has become.
- ummwhat 5y ago"Segway" also makes perfect sense. "Let me use this as an awkward clumsy vehicle to get to the next topic".
- kzrdude 5y agoSegway and segue are close to homophones or homophones depending on the speaker, it's kind of the point
- ggambetta 5y agoWell, yes, that's part of my point. You know "Segway" but not "segue". Speaker says "segue", because they're close homophones and you don't know "segue", you parse that as "Segway". But the problem is, the resulting sentence doesn't make any sense. At this point, you either look it up to make sense of it and discover "segue", or you're OK saying things that don't make sense if they sound cool, and start using "Segway".
- dreamcompiler 5y agoCame here to say "finally somebody spelled 'tenets' properly" but you beat me to it. Thanks! Now we just need to stamp out "reign in" (the 'g' shouldn't be there), "mute point" (it's "moot"), "take another tact" (it's "tack"), "digestive track" (it's "tract"), and various versions of "Wallah! Here's the product!" (it's "voila!"). And "its" is always possessive while "it's" is never possessive.
- HKH2 5y ago"tow the line"
- pjc50 5y agoMy personal bugbear: "loose" which should nearly always be "lose".
- ben_w 5y agoI am frequently guilty of this. I mostly only even notice when my proof-reading takes the form of running the text through a speech synthesiser.
- ggambetta 5y agoI had forgotten about "wallah"! What an abomination.
- Y_Y 5y ago> Reading anything that plays that fast and loose with language makes me think that the author plays equally fast and loose with other aspects of their writing that I'm not qualified to judge (in a way similar to how we can spot errors in movies that depict hackers, but are more likely to "buy" whatever we see on a medical drama), so it makes me generally distrustful of the material. This sounds very like Gell-Mann Amnesia.