Re:Are you a grammar pedant? This might be why
by dingaling on Sunday April 10, 2016 @09:37AM
(#11466034)
> none of these things have any impact on the ability of a reader to understand the writer's intended message
I disagree, I've encountered several instances in corporate communications where the use of then instead of than has completely changed the meaning of a message.
Imagine writing a compiler that spent much of its parsing time trying to infer what the programmer meant, instead of enforcing a syntax and getting-on with the task of translating to machine code. It would be an enormous behemoth that would take much longer to do its job than necessary.
Yet, strangely, those programmers who don't care much about grammar seem quite happy to adhere to arbitrary programming language syntax. Why is that? Why don't they force compilers to just accept their possibly-incorrect inputs with the excuse 'you knew what I meant'?
I disagree, I've encountered several instances in corporate communications where the use of then instead of than has completely changed the meaning of a message.
Imagine writing a compiler that spent much of its parsing time trying to infer what the programmer meant, instead of enforcing a syntax and getting-on with the task of translating to machine code. It would be an enormous behemoth that would take much longer to do its job than necessary.
Yet, strangely, those programmers who don't care much about grammar seem quite happy to adhere to arbitrary programming language syntax. Why is that? Why don't they force compilers to just accept their possibly-incorrect inputs with the excuse 'you knew what I meant'?