Re: Pet Peeves (was Re: The 'user' in User Manual)

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

True, we give inanimate actors credit for being actors (as in active 
voice).  Still, some of us find that 'allow' (another example is 
'enable') seems to have a meaning that is too strong for what a computer 
or software can do for us (yet, if ever).  I've heard a similar 
objection against writing 'The terminal displays', as if the verb 
display is a special sort of communication beyond the reach of computer 
monitors.

Anthropomorphism seems like a fair explanation for Mary's 
objection--people can allow, but a computer merely simulates allowing, 
by going to the next programmatic step.  This is weird (in the good 
sense)--it is in the cause of  preciseness with words, in a language 
with so much vocabulary that there ought to be a precise word for what 
computer software does that emulates but is different from what a person 
does,  but I don't think we (English) even have a name for a sense of 
language (and the world) that won't allow a computer to allow. It isn't 
standard fare, and it isn't simply precise, or else it wouldn't seem so 
idiosyncratic.  Would it?

Whatever.  It can be adjudicated--the dictionary would support uses of 
allow with inanimate actors--but I don't think that would resolve 
anything for someone who feels a word this way. 

It seems a bit savory or tantilizing, doesn't it?  It reminds me of 
synesthesia. 

http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html

--Ned "people are evens, computers are odds"


Karen Murri wrote: