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From:David Oberstadt <daveo -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 4 Aug 1994 13:37:35 PDT
Subject:Oh my Gosh! & You may....
I always (OK, not ALWAYS) thought Gosh was
short for Land of Goshen. It's not in my
dictionary. Land of Goshen was once an
exclamation--mostly in the Appalachians (US),
if I remember right.
And as far as that 'you may' stuff goes...
Some people shy away from writing instructions
like 'do A then do B'. They feel it is too
impersonal and abrupt. To make their instructions
friendlier, they write 'you may do A then
you may do B'.
I don't like it myself. Too many sentences like
that can be obscure. (I know we've talked about
it before.) I start asking 'so, do I HAVE to,
or is this something that I might do'?
David Oberstadt Anyone should be very suspicious
daveo -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com of a sentence he's written that
can't be read aloud easily.
Santa Teresa Lab --Andy Rooney
San Jose, California
