Terminology questions

Terminology questions

[Stephen Berman]

I noticed that Paul Eggert corrected, in revno 113232, a number of
spelling errors and miswordings by me in todo-mode.el (thanks, and sorry
for not being more careful).  However, I'm not sure about two changes in
wording.

One case is from a doc string where I wrote: "You can persistantly [sic]
change the order of the category at point...."  Instead of correcting
the spelling Paul replaced the word: "You can permanently change the
order of the category at point...."  What I intended to get across is
that the change can persist beyond the current session, but not that it
is permanent, i.e., can only be changed once and for all.  "Permanently"
seems to suggest the latter, but maybe it's clear enough from the
context.  I guess "persistently" most commonly suggests repetition or
insistence, neither of which is appropriate here, but I was thinking the
adverb use can also just imply "long-lasting", like the adjective
"persistent" can.  Anyway, if people think "persistently" is wrong here,
and "permanently" doesn't lead to the expectation that only one change
is possible, then the latter is fine with me.

The other case involves two places where I wrote "cross-categorial",
which Paul changed to "cross-category": "And you can build
cross-categorial lists of items that satisfy various criteria." "Display
a cross-categorial list of items filtered by FILTER."  I'm familiar with
the term "cross-categorial" from linguistics, where AFAIK it is
frequently used; but I was till now unaware of "cross-category", and it
sounds strange to me.  I googled both and to my surprise,
"cross-category" has almost 20 times as many hits as "cross-categorial",
and the uses of the latter do seem to be largely confined to
linguistics, while most uses of "cross-category" seem to come from
economics and market analysis (which I guess explains the web search
statistics; though I did see other uses of it, including one from a
linguistics paper;).  I also checked Google Scholar and here, too,
"cross-category" predominates, though the ratio is less than 4:1.  Since
I'm also writing a Texinfo manual for Todo mode, which will use one of
these terms, I'd like to use the one that is most appropriate.  If
there's no consensus here, I'd prefer to use "cross-categorial", but if
most people think "cross-category" is better, I'll defer to the
majority.

Steve Berman

Re: Terminology questions

[Paul Eggert]

On 07/01/2013 11:30 AM, Stephen Berman wrote:
> if people think "persistently" is wrong here,
> and "permanently" doesn't lead to the expectation that only one change
> is possible, then the latter is fine with me.

"persistently" is fine, but "persistently change" confused me.
E.g., "stars persistently change in color and brightness
during their evolution" means that stars are always
changing, but the Emacs doc intended to say that the setting change
persists through Emacs restarts, not that the setting is always
changing.  I changed it to "permanently" because I was too
lazy to reword the sentence, but if "persistent" is
preferable then it'd be fine to reword the doc to say
something like "make the change persistent".

> The other case involves two places where I wrote "cross-categorial",
> which Paul changed to "cross-category"

I used "cross-category" over "cross-categorial" because the
former is in aspell's dictionary and the latter is not --
sorry, I wasn't familiar with either term.  If you intend
the social-science connotation please change it back to
"cross-categorial", otherwise I suggest leaving it alone as
"cross-category" is less likely to furrow readers' brows.

Neither of these is a big deal, of course; please feel
free to revert both of my changes.

Re: Terminology questions

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

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() Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
() Mon, 01 Jul 2013 14:25:06 -0700

   On 07/01/2013 11:30 AM, Stephen Berman wrote:

   > if people think "persistently" is wrong here, and "permanently"
   > doesn't lead to the expectation that only one change is possible,
   > then the latter is fine with me.

   if "persistent" is preferable then it'd be fine to reword the doc to
   say something like "make the change persistent".

Another way is to rephrase to explicitly state the time frame, e.g.,
"change FOO for the duration of the session".

   > The other case involves two places where I wrote
   > "cross-categorial", which Paul changed to "cross-category"

   I used "cross-category" over "cross-categorial" because the
   former is in aspell's dictionary and the latter is not --
   sorry, I wasn't familiar with either term.  If you intend
   the social-science connotation please change it back to
   "cross-categorial", otherwise I suggest leaving it alone as
   "cross-category" is less likely to furrow readers' brows.

Also, "categorial" can be mistaken for a mispelling of "categorical".
Personally, i think nouns that are adjectivized by prefixing w/ an
adjective (and hyphen) should maintain their spelling:

 cross-category  not  cross-categorial / cross-categorical
 top-shelf            top-shelfish / top-shelved
 hot-dog              hot-doggy

Stuff like "super-chocolaty yumminess" is simply beyond the pale...

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen
GPG key: 4C807502

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Re: Terminology questions

[Stephen Berman]

On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 14:25:06 -0700 Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 07/01/2013 11:30 AM, Stephen Berman wrote:
>> if people think "persistently" is wrong here,
>> and "permanently" doesn't lead to the expectation that only one change
>> is possible, then the latter is fine with me.
>
> "persistently" is fine, but "persistently change" confused me.
> E.g., "stars persistently change in color and brightness
> during their evolution" means that stars are always
> changing, but the Emacs doc intended to say that the setting change
> persists through Emacs restarts, not that the setting is always
> changing.  I changed it to "permanently" because I was too
> lazy to reword the sentence, but if "persistent" is
> preferable then it'd be fine to reword the doc to say
> something like "make the change persistent".
>
>> The other case involves two places where I wrote "cross-categorial",
>> which Paul changed to "cross-category"
>
> I used "cross-category" over "cross-categorial" because the
> former is in aspell's dictionary and the latter is not --
> sorry, I wasn't familiar with either term.  If you intend
> the social-science connotation please change it back to
> "cross-categorial", otherwise I suggest leaving it alone as
> "cross-category" is less likely to furrow readers' brows.
>
> Neither of these is a big deal, of course; please feel
> free to revert both of my changes.

Thanks for the explanations.  I've decided to avoid the confusing terms
altogether and reworded the doc in revision 113288; it's more verbose
but hopefully clearer.

Steve Berman