Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/10/2011 06:29 PM, Don wrote: Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 09:27 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 10:22 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 08:31 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 7:56 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I think the article's title is missing a comma btw. Andrei Where? Where could it ever be? After parallelism. Andrei Actually, I specifically remember learning about this grammar rule in middle school. When listing stuff, the comma before the and is optional. Putting it and not putting it are both correct. I see. I go by Bugs in Writing (awesome book) Ugh. I have a profound hatred for that book. Rule of thumb: if any style guide warns agains split infinitives, burn it. You may want to reconsider. This is one book that most everybody who is in the writing business in any capacity agrees with: my editor, heavyweight technical writers, my advisor and a few other professors... My experience is quite different. Maybe it's different in the US (I encountered the book from an American colleague, I've never seen it used by anyone else). Besides you can't discount the book on account of one item you disagree with. The book has hundreds of items, and it is near inevitable one will find an issue a couple of them. Andrei For sure, but it was not the only item. The recommendation is use 'that' vs 'which' was an even more offensive item. There were several recommendations in that book which I thought were dreadful. I also read a couple of scathing criticisms of that book. (I think one was in Bill Bryson's excellent 'Mother Tongue'). In fairness, it had a few good examples, but in general I could not stomach the snobbish pedantry in that book. I've read too much functional grammar to take arbitrary normative rules seriously, when they are not backed up by an extensive corpus. (Which is why I recommend 'split infinitives' as a good litmus test -- if they say don't do it, they haven't used a corpus).
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 11/04/2011 09:09, Don wrote: Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/10/2011 06:29 PM, Don wrote: Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 09:27 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 10:22 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 08:31 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 7:56 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I think the article's title is missing a comma btw. Andrei Where? Where could it ever be? After parallelism. Andrei Actually, I specifically remember learning about this grammar rule in middle school. When listing stuff, the comma before the and is optional. Putting it and not putting it are both correct. I see. I go by Bugs in Writing (awesome book) Ugh. I have a profound hatred for that book. Rule of thumb: if any style guide warns agains split infinitives, burn it. You may want to reconsider. This is one book that most everybody who is in the writing business in any capacity agrees with: my editor, heavyweight technical writers, my advisor and a few other professors... My experience is quite different. Maybe it's different in the US (I encountered the book from an American colleague, I've never seen it used by anyone else). Besides you can't discount the book on account of one item you disagree with. The book has hundreds of items, and it is near inevitable one will find an issue a couple of them. Andrei For sure, but it was not the only item. The recommendation is use 'that' vs 'which' was an even more offensive item. There were several recommendations in that book which I thought were dreadful. I also read a couple of scathing criticisms of that book. (I think one was in Bill Bryson's excellent 'Mother Tongue'). In fairness, it had a few good examples, but in general I could not stomach the snobbish pedantry in that book. I've read too much functional grammar to take arbitrary normative rules seriously, when they are not backed up by an extensive corpus. (Which is why I recommend 'split infinitives' as a good litmus test -- if they say don't do it, they haven't used a corpus). I have to agree with Don, burn the book, it is wholly responsible for the decline in creativity in English writing (imho). A...
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 04/11/2011 03:09 AM, Don wrote: For sure, but it was not the only item. The recommendation is use 'that' vs 'which' was an even more offensive item. I found that rule to be very helpful to my writing. Andrei
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 04/11/2011 03:26 AM, Alix Pexton wrote: I have to agree with Don, burn the book, it is wholly responsible for the decline in creativity in English writing (imho). The book is for technical writing, and I didn't find absorbing it has hurt in any way whatever creativity I may have. Andrei
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 11/04/2011 12:56, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/11/2011 03:26 AM, Alix Pexton wrote: I have to agree with Don, burn the book, it is wholly responsible for the decline in creativity in English writing (imho). The book is for technical writing, and I didn't find absorbing it has hurt in any way whatever creativity I may have. Andrei Actually, I meant Strunk/White A...
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 04/11/2011 07:31 AM, Alix Pexton wrote: On 11/04/2011 12:56, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/11/2011 03:26 AM, Alix Pexton wrote: I have to agree with Don, burn the book, it is wholly responsible for the decline in creativity in English writing (imho). The book is for technical writing, and I didn't find absorbing it has hurt in any way whatever creativity I may have. Andrei Actually, I meant Strunk/White That I'd agree with. For what it's worth S/W is considered dated and not-necessarily recommended in technical publishing circles. Andrei
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 04/11/2011 03:09 AM, Don wrote: Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/10/2011 06:29 PM, Don wrote: Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 09:27 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 10:22 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 04/09/2011 08:31 PM, dsimcha wrote: On 4/9/2011 7:56 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I think the article's title is missing a comma btw. Andrei Where? Where could it ever be? After parallelism. Andrei Actually, I specifically remember learning about this grammar rule in middle school. When listing stuff, the comma before the and is optional. Putting it and not putting it are both correct. I see. I go by Bugs in Writing (awesome book) Ugh. I have a profound hatred for that book. Rule of thumb: if any style guide warns agains split infinitives, burn it. You may want to reconsider. This is one book that most everybody who is in the writing business in any capacity agrees with: my editor, heavyweight technical writers, my advisor and a few other professors... My experience is quite different. Maybe it's different in the US (I encountered the book from an American colleague, I've never seen it used by anyone else). Besides you can't discount the book on account of one item you disagree with. The book has hundreds of items, and it is near inevitable one will find an issue a couple of them. Andrei For sure, but it was not the only item. The recommendation is use 'that' vs 'which' was an even more offensive item. There were several recommendations in that book which I thought were dreadful. I also read a couple of scathing criticisms of that book. (I think one was in Bill Bryson's excellent 'Mother Tongue'). In fairness, it had a few good examples, but in general I could not stomach the snobbish pedantry in that book. I've read too much functional grammar to take arbitrary normative rules seriously, when they are not backed up by an extensive corpus. (Which is why I recommend 'split infinitives' as a good litmus test -- if they say don't do it, they haven't used a corpus). I have Mother Tongue as well, haven't read it yet. You recommendation bumped it up a notch. One thought - since you enjoy this kind of stuff, I think you'd find great reward in writing. Since you have so much stuff to say about D, I highly recommend you try your pen more often. A lot of good things are happening in D lately, and in no small part due to you. It is worth sharing all that good stuff with the larger community. Andrei
Re: [Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D
On 4/10/11 1:23 AM, Russel Winder wrote: On Sat, 2011-04-09 at 21:37 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: [ . . . ] I see. I go by Bugs in Writing (awesome book) and Strunk/White. They both recommend the comma, no ifs and buts (hard for me to get used to because in Romanian that comma is _never_ correct). The bibles in this situation are The Oxford Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style, everything else is mere commentary. :-) Romanian is not English, rules do not transfer ;-) Just googled it now, it's quite a story. Found among other things a Wikipedia page dedicated entirely to the topic! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma Since when has the Oxford Comma been known as the Harvard Comma. Never. Pah. Above all, it's your article, and one great thing about that is you get to decide everything about it. A great feeling! Except when the sub-editors impose the publisher's choices. Of course they always work to either The Oxford Style Manual or The Chicago Manual of Style, so the moral is to buy one of them and work to it. http://www.suite101.com/content/the-chicago-manual-of-style-vs-the-oxford-style-manual-a267432 Also The Oxford Style Manual is smaller and cheaper as well as being better. And of course English, whereas The Chicago Manual of Style is just American English. I shall now duck to avoid the spamming that this troll will invoke. :-) In fact let me extend the same suggestion to you too: write! You are a seasoned writer who has recently worked a lot in and on D, so I'm sure you have a lot to share. And you stand to gain an iPad, too. Andrei
