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Comment by talldan | Hacker News Reader

Some of the language in the article is a bit strange:

"Its stance means Marble is one of a handful of breweries to be approved by the Vegetarian Society, something that's earned it a loyal following."

'Handful' is completely meaningless in this context. How can a brewery fit into a hand? The actual list is also quite long and by no means exhaustive: http://www.vegsocapproved.com/ProductCategory/Details/126?pa...

Especially when you consider a lot of craft breweries are using vegetarian friendly techniques for clarifying their brews.

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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/handful

> 2: a small quantity or number <a handful of people>

How can a person fit into a hand?

Alternatively, when were you given the power to decide what words should mean in a language you claim not to be familiar with?

Am I not allowed to criticise language usage?

I'm making two points, it's a poor choice of word, as it is conceptually poor, even bordering on nonsense. It's also clearly the wrong word as evidenced by the long list I provided.

You are allowed to criticize language usage. Others are allowed to point out that you do so in a rather silly fashion.

English, like almost any natural language, is rich in metaphor. If that's not your cup of tea, fine. But it's probably worth learning to roll with the punches, just the same. Is this really the hill you want to die on?

If I said "a handful of breweries" to you, how many would you take that to mean? Words like these can skew meaning greatly, and are inaccurate. I'm criticising because it wouldn't take much effort to indicate with more skill exactly what the state of things is. It's a careless use of words, in my opinion, which I don't expect from a writer of a factual news article. I'd be ok with it in casual usage.

It's also a shame that you and the other poster are focussing on this rather than the fact that the statement is plainly wrong. There are clearly more than a 'few' veggie-friendly brewers.

Perhaps your claim of fact is being ignored due to its highly dubious nature. That's a list of beers, not of brewers, and even on the first page we see multiple products from a single brewery in a few different cases. The list also appears to be somewhere between 126 and 150 items in length, unless they're making that annoying pagination mistake where you don't give any clue to the true length.

So what you've cited in support of your argument in fact militates pretty strongly against it, because a hundred or so breweries isn't a very large subset of all those in the UK - according to CAMRA, that's a total of 1424, which puts the fraction on your list somewhere around seven percent. That's a little strong for my taste, but still a good beer. It is also, one might dare say, a relative handful.

It's why I said that it's not a full list. It's only 'approved' beers. There's loads that I could name off the top of my head not in that list.

This is a better list, which puts the number at closer to 50% if you use the filter 'England' and then toggle between Vegan and Everything: http://www.barnivore.com/beer?vfilter=All

You link to a list of all the approved beers, not the approved breweries. Each brewery is responsible for multiple beers.

There are a lots and lots of beers that are vegan friendly as evidenced by this much better list: http://www.barnivore.com/beer?vfilter=All

I think people reading this article will come away with a view that only 5 or 6 breweries in the UK are producing vegan friendly beer, and that' clearly not the case. Lots of breweries are doing it. It's probably fairer to say 1 in 2 beers are vegan friendly

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