Hardware Insights Forum

Megametres, gigametres, terameters, etc...for some strange reason, few people even use them. It's similar with grams, and to confuse matters, there are two different types of "ton/tonne" - why don't they just use the unambiguous "megagram" for the metric version???

For the same reason that people use an overabundance of acronyms whilst texting instead of actually using the English language, I would hazard such a guess...

Wester547 wrote:…an overabundance of acronyms whilst texting instead of actually using the English language…

I think I've figured out part of the motivation for that:

The English language is pushed to its limits, as it's not a masterpiece or anything, quality-wise. I know some will disagree with this part, but IMO it's a three-way sacrifice: Either drop the subtler details (the approach I go with for sanity) to keep sentences at a passable length, make tiringly long sentences, or use a confusing array of acronyms. Or the fourth approach that can't be used in BBCode or other simple systems, which is to add elaborations that can be viewed by hovering over keyed (by, for example, a dashed underline) words — IMO this is the most decent approach if you can use it but the fact that you often can't is very restricting.

I've heard that the Dvorak alternative keyboard layout is optimised for this…rather limiting language — and actually loses to QWERTY for other languages. So I'm not going to actively promote it or anything.

I don't like the approach of sticking in "advance apologies" whenever you anticipate potential reader offence, as the ultimate effect of it is a linguistic disaster. For as long as the English language is popular, the battle to avoid accidental offence will be effectively unwinnable. A good part of the problem may be rather ironic:

Forbidding the use of swear words is actually worse than leaving them uncensored, IMO. At least if they aren't restricted, people can be clear when they lose respect while maintaining brevity. Without them, people resort to less wieldy means of showing their anger, and are more prone to becoming insecure around others and more likely to accidentally take offence. There's nothing inherently wrong with the existence of swear words, people are just prone to extremism and "black/white" thinking.