discuss: Some ideas on General Style
Subject:
Re: Some ideas on General Style
From:
Hugo van der Kooij ####@####.####
Date:
13 Apr 2002 16:38:42 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204131832290.8525-100000@ultra1.hugo.vanderkooij.org>
On Sat, 13 Apr 2002, Martin WHEELER wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Tabatha Persad wrote:
>
> > Style Don'ts:
> ...
> > - Sexist or gender specific language
>
> This is a culturally-dependent concept, affecting mainly N. Americans.
> Personally I'm proud of my (British) linguistic heritage; have an
> excellent reading background in a variety of texts written in English
> over the past six centuries, and don't suffer from any sort of semantic
> constipation in the language.
> My personal attitude is to stick to historic usage (known and
> recognised), and eschew late 20th C. fads, experimentation and
> uproarious attempts at social engineering. (see Australian Government
> Manual of Style recommendations on lexical items such as 'manhole
> cover'.)
Nice sample of how it should not be done in LDP documents. English is not
my native language but I can handle it reasonably well. (I hope ;-)
But in this paragraph you managed to include several words that are not in
common use and can only be understood if you take the time to fetch a good
dictionary.
Take in acount that a significant part of the readers is not native to any
form of the English language and use more common phrases to make your
message clear.
Hugo.
--
All email send to me is bound to the rules described on my homepage.
####@####.#### http://hvdkooij.xs4all.nl/
Don't meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
for they are subtle and quick to anger.
