A lighten-up topic for Friday which was, like, inspired by conversations with, like, my 8- and 11-year-old grandsons who are currently, like, visiting with us. What if the dry, sometimes boring Principles of Operation had been written in the pop American style of spoken English? We might see something like the following: "LOAD, you know, ADDRESS?? [1] Like, the address specified by the, you know, X2, B2, and, you know, D2 fields is, like, actually placed in general register R1?? The address computation, like, totally follows the rules for address arithmetic?? In the 24-bit addressing mode, the address is, you know, like totally placed in bit positions, like, 40-63, bits 32-39 are actually set to, like, zeros, and bits 0-31 essentially remain unchanged?? Check it out, Dude! [3]" Thankfully, technical writers do not write the way people speak. Bill Fairchild Plainfield, IL [1] The double question mark indicates that the declarative statement, if spoken, should end with a rising tone of voice indicating extreme tentativeness [2] on the part of the speaker. [2] The speaker must never give any indication that a dogmatic value judgment has just been stated, such as a belief that the statement might be true. [3] An emphatic, non-tentative tonal quality is permitted if the statement ends with "Dude!".
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