💾 Archived View for flexibeast.space › gemlog › 2021-02-28.gmi captured on 2024-03-21 at 15:39:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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i'm a native speaker of English, and in my travels online, there are a few ungrammatical/unidiomatic uses of English that keep cropping up. i usually don't draw attention to them, for two reasons:
So i've decided to just write an ‘FYI’ post instead. :-)
Writing:
Setting this allows to save the document in other formats.
isn't gramatically correct. Two possible alternatives here are:
Setting this allows [one|you] to save the document in other formats.
or
Setting this allows saving the document in other formats.
In most of the contexts i've encountered this, the more appropriate word would be ‘question’ rather than ‘doubt’. For example, instead of:
I've been learning to use X, and I have a doubt. How do I do Y?
i'd suggest:
I've been learning to use X, and I have a question. How do I do Y?
‘Doubt’ is more appropriately used when you're not sure if X is the case:
I've been told X is the best software for my use-case, but I have some doubts.
This isn't idiomatic; use “like this:” instead. For example, instead of:
In gemtext, blockquotes are indicated by a greater-than symbol, like that: '>'
write:
In gemtext, blockquotes are indicated by a greater-than symbol, like this: '>'
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