From: Dom Lachowicz (doml@appligent.com)
Date: Sat Sep 21 2002 - 14:39:15 EDT
Your English barbarism links add something very important to this
discussion - that a good barbarism tool will need something that spell
checking tools lack, and that grammar checkers have, namely context.
Anything based on simple word replacement would be a hack, and miss
things like:
already vs all ready
accept vs except
which are all valid English words. A spell checker model would miss "all
ready" when you wanted to type "already." The links you point to reek of
suggestions a grammar checker might make. A simple "find/replace wrong
word" suggestion won't do for anything more complex than, say, an
American getting rid of excess 'u's and 'e's from British words, because
it lacks context. Even in some cases like "enthuse" there is no word
that maps directly onto it. Your tool would need to suggest something
like "Reword this using the phrase 'to be enthusiastic'"
Again, I'm not opposed for a tool like this from going into the main or
plugin tree. I just want it to be done correctly, at the correct level,
and for the correct reasons. A poorly implemented feature is often worse
than not having that feature at all.
Dom
On Sat, 2002-09-21 at 14:11, Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> > In the other side, barbarisms are different. They are just wrong words. If you
> > already have a word in your language to express a concept and you use an
> > incorrect one that is a barbarism.
>
> I wanted to get a better understanding of what you are talking about and
> found these:
>
> http://www.tulane.edu/~kidder/SlipsandBarbs.html
>
> "It is very useful to use this guide as a checklist to insure that your
> writing is clear and eloquent. Most word processors have a search and
> replace function that can be "programmed" to find and change offending
> terms or usage."
>
> http://its-nt.nmc.edu/writectr/barbarisms.htm
>
> So i think now i understand barbarisms, but if dom does not want them in
> the tree it is mute point but i suppose we could do some peer review and
> decide what is best
> (okay so the previous sentence is probably just bad rather than containing
> barbarisms)
>
> This is another part of whatever it is that describes
> something that encapsulates grammar
> spellchecking style diction etc.
>
> The Gnu Aspell people probably have a better idea of where this fits in to
> the scheme of things.
>
> Later
> Alan
>
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