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Subject:Re: Help: "Increment" as verb From:Tom Tadfor Little <tlittle -at- LANL -dot- GOV> Date:Wed, 20 Dec 1995 15:48:40 -0700
|I'm editing one of our manuals and have come across "increment" used as a
|verb. According to my American Heritage Dictionary, it's not a verb.
|However, I'm having a hard time thinking of a replacement. Any
|suggestions? It would be used in a sentence like this: "The software
|package automatically increments the transaction ID number after each
|entry."
I think AHD is _way_ out of synch on this one. "Increment" has
been used with the sense of "increase by one" in computer science
for decades. I wouldn't use it as a general synonym for "increase",
but in the sentence you quote it is perfectly proper.
Tom Tadfor Little tlittle -at- lanl -dot- gov -or- telp -at- Rt66 -dot- com
technical writer/editor Los Alamos National Laboratory
