scott
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Computer references changing written language?
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Nov 12 18:42 UTC 2000 |
So how are computers affecting the English language? I mean aside from the
obvious jargon and so forth.
For instance, using URLs in text is where I got to thinking about this.
Systems like Grex that make URLs clickable tend to have less than perfect
rules, so things like periods might cause a problem in a URL. Periods are
needed to end sentences, though! So while you might say: "Check out
http://xxx.com.", it might work better as "Check out http://xxx.com for
more info.", or some other way to move the punctuation away from the URL.
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swa
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response 2 of 151:
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Nov 12 19:33 UTC 2000 |
(Yes, xxx.com is exactly what it sounds like... what sort of info did you
have in mind for us to find out there, Scott? ;))
What gives me difficulties is that a lot of computer terms don't seem to
be standardized. Is "e-mail" hyphenated? Is "website" one word or two?
I've seen both written both ways frequently enough that I have no idea
which is correct. Plus, as there are more and more new terms, sometimes
there *isn't* really an established "correct" version. I'm not, you know,
losing sleep over this, but I like to spell things correctly when I can.
And I've run into the period-at-the-end-of-the-URL problem a lot, where it
seems like it would be more concise to say (for example) "Over 300,000
explicit photos can be found at http://xxx.com.," but I have to rearrange
it to avoid that problem. Even saying, "At http://xxx.com, one can find
over 300,000 explicit photos." screws it up with the comma. So you have
to say something like, "The explicit photos at http://xxx.com number over
300,000.," which just doesn't sound as good.
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swa
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response 3 of 151:
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Nov 12 19:38 UTC 2000 |
Kae slipped in while I was rambling about explicit photos. ;) Yeah, I've
found that I end up writing more lazily the more time I spend online.
Typing a smiley face takes less work than typing, "This makes me happy,"
and typing "<sigh>" takes less work than typing, "This makes me
exasperated." But it seems like cheating. I guess that if you rely on
the assumption that these symbols mean the same things to everyone, then
it's still communication. But it makes me feel lazy, although I usually do
it anyway.
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