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I know this is nitpicking but... I really hate when journalists who I would presume have some studies in literature, confuse "then" and "than". I'm not a nativ

by saganus 12y ago

I know this is nitpicking but... I really hate when journalists who I would presume have some studies in literature, confuse "then" and "than". I'm not a native English speaker and I know the difference, and for some reason this particular mistake and "their/they're/there" makes me choke. Like I said, totally nitpicking on an otherwise interesting article but still... "...with true blue CPUs possibly faster per socket then even the next generation Xeon Phi..." /rant

jjoonathan 12y ago
This kind of thing can creep up when you least expect it. I'm a native speaker, I've had a solid and reliable intellectual understanding of these distinctions since grade school, and yet somehow on a paper a few years back I substituted "weather" for "whether" throughout the whole thing. Not because I had forgotten the distinction, but because I just wasn't paying attention.
- saganus 12y ago
  I guess you have a fair point. And I'm certain I've made such mistakes as well, it's just that I can't stand those two particular errors for whatever reason :) Maybe I'm getting old...
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
In some dialects, "then" and "than" are pronounced identically, so it is reasonable that they might be confused.
- saganus 12y ago
  Really? I did not know this. Interesting. What kind of dialects are you referring to?