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What pointless little things annoy you? (yiffit.net)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just got invited to a meeting for a time zone that doesn't exist this time of year. In the US EST does not stand for Eastern time, it stands for Eastern Standard Time (~November-~March), EST is not an active time zone, it is EDT Eastern Daylight Time. Its a pointless thing, most people probably don't notice, but its wrong.

Fake internet points to anyone who knows why DB-9 bothers me.

Edit: corrected a missing n in an eastern

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I see this fairly often for other two languages*, but the reasoning is the same.

The "language drifts" argument is actually fallacious (is-ought fallacy). In my opinion the main reasons to be lenient towards deviations from the standard are:

Unless heavily overdone, they don't affect comprehension.
They reinforce the informal register, and the register itself helps to convey meaning.
They allow individual expression, doubly so when the misspelling has dialectal marks.
A standard is just a standard. It should be seen as a reference, not as encompassing everything that is allowed within a language and its spelling.

*and I use it, at least in my L1. In my case it's typically due to #3.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I’ll concede points for stylistic or deliberately informal language, I didn’t want to belabor anyone reading what I wrote to get into the weeds over deliberate “abuse” of the language to convey whatever the author wishes to. There’s certainly room for slang, too.

I’m much more pointing the finger at the more simple things that can be corrected easily, hence the minor irritation, not someone willfully knowing they’re using an informal register. IOW, “could have” to “could’ve” to “coulda” is decreasing formality order, and deliberate, vs “could of” which appears completely unaware of how the words actually work. Break/brake isn’t even comparable. Completely different words. Plenty of room on that one for autocorrect to mess it up though. IMO there’s a difference.