Re: Midol Moment or National Tragedy? You decide...

[JohnMethod -at- aol -dot- com]

Dear List,

<clip>
According to a lot of people on this list, all that really matters is that 
"industry" accepts the terminology as "normal." Proper useage is whatever the 
masses deem it to be, thus the grammar in your letter is perfectly acceptable.
</clip>

<soap box>
Whoa! Leave us not "forget or neglect to remember" that:
- terminology is nouns and their definitions (vocabulary)
- spelling is the correct alphabetical representation thereof
- grammar is structure and use of the parts of speech
- punctuation (my weak point) delimits ideas for clarity.

Doesn't "Industry" have every right, and the need, to define new terminology 
and spelling? How does that imply or demand that "anything goes" with the 
rest of the language? Sorry. Change happens, if you live long enough. The 
"King James" didn't refer to email.....and yes, this "bad" grammar and 
punctuation are unacceptable in tech writing....

Try reading Robert Louis Stevenson's (I just looked up the spelling, FYI) 
"The Black Arrow" to your children - explaining buskins, bolt (crossbow 
arrow), shrive ... it is virtually impossible now, but it was an easy read 
when I was 7. Even so, the grammar, spelling, and punctuation (largely) are 
unchanged.

Hmmmmmm....I guess I view "losing" Stevenson's vocabulary, OK, terminology, 
as a tragedy...yet it is just the twin of "inventing" new terminology. Change 
happens, if you live long enough.

<sigh> Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. </sigh>
</soap box>

John G. Boland
Reasonable people, equally informed, tend to arrive at the same conclusions.
- National Public Radio