Hacker News Reader

Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

The article disagrees with your comment. They found that the plainer English laws would be no less enforceable.

Here's an example. Patent lawyers absolutely love the word "plurality", a very uncommon word in normal English. They mean "more than one", but why don't they say that? It's not only clearer but it's also less ambiguous (check the many definitions of "plurality").

It's because they are copying a rule without thinking about it. Other examples of that:

* "an historical occasion" - this is wrong, it's "a historical occasion", but people hear it and think it's some special rule

* Not using "I" in research papers, even with a single author! There's no rule that requires this but people think there is. I read a paper once that used "I". It was great.

View on HN

I like to use words like "thus", "hence", and "therefore" a lot -- but this is because, as a mathematician, I picked up a style of writing that has been deeply influenced by the mathematics I learned.

For that matter, the first day I was in Great Britain, I noticed that the other Americans I met had British accents, and I noticed in the few hours talking with them, I was already picking up on the accent myself.

It's only natural to pick up the language and idioms of the cultures you happen to be immersed in!

(And this applies to Law and Engineering as much as anything else, too.)

I agree, but "thus", "hence" and "therefore" are fairly normal words. "Plurality" and the grammatical structures of lawyers are on another level.

I would say maths has its own issues with language accessibility, but they're a bit different from law. Probably the biggest problem is naming everything after people instead of coming up with meaningful names.

I'm writing a nonfiction book about why people play a certain video game. It's been interesting to switch between 'I' for when I'm making a novel or specific point and 'we' when I need the first person but what I'm saying is the consensus point or common experience. I recommend the same in academic writing. I'm sure that this is a flamewar topic now that I think about it though, aha.

Agreed, I'm a proponent of using "we" in technical communication, because the "I" is not important and should not be emphasized. This goes against popular writing advice, but I don't think the advice is good.

"an historical" is because that's more fluid to pronounce, not because of a false rule.

The use of “an” with “history” is likely a holdover of its French origins where the h isn’t pronounced or from English dialects where the h isn’t pronounced. It’s essentially a learned behavior at this point. If it was used solely because of ease of pronunciation we’d expect also to see “an history”, “an high five”, “an hit record”.

But, in any case, for those who pronounce the h, “a historical” is easier to say.

In the case of lawyers I’d suspect tradition first and fear of typos reversing meaning (“ahistorical”) second.

So you would say "an history lesson"? No.

I say "an historical event" and I also say "a history lesson".

Precisely. That is incorrect because the purpose of "an" is to make the first part of a word easier to say, and "historical" and "history" start in exactly the same way.

You're only doing it because you've heard other people do it and you think there's some special rule for it. Maybe subconsciously even.

And don't say "you can't say something is wrong in language because prescriptivism Vs descriptivism etc."

Yes generally it is the case that language is defined by how it is used. This is an exception, where something has a very very clear purpose and usage, and you're doing it wrong.

I actually can't think of any clearer cases where the prescriptivists are right. It would have to be something so obvious you don't even think about it, like using spaces between words. Yet for some reason everyone messes up "a historical". It's as bizarre as if everyone omitted spaces before "historical" but not "history" or any other words.

Hah, ok.

The grammar police have yet to pull me over. I'll continue speaking as I do, thank you.

> ‘an historical occasion’ - this is wrong

There is nothing wrong with the use of ‘an’ before ‘history’ and the forms of that lemma. It is unusual, and perhaps pretentious or otherwise silly, but only in the same way as ‘connexion’ is an unusual (&c) but perfectly correct spelling.

It is one of the few things in language that definitely is wrong.

The point of saying "an" instead of "a" is to make it easier to say a following word that starts with a soft sound (there's probably a technical term).

"A igloo" is hard to say, so we change it to "An igloo" which is a lot easier.

"A history lesson" is not hard to say so there's no need for "an".

Have you ever said "an history lesson" or even heard anyone say that?

No. Of course not.

I would assume it has to do with the next word. You wouldn't say "a occasion", you say "an occasion" so then it's natural to say "an historical occasion" as well.

Not arguing correctness, just intuition.

It depends on pronunciation, not on the first letter. This is why you say "an MBA" not "a MBA". If you are from a region that pronounces "historic" as "'istoric", then "an historic occasion" sounds fine and "a historic occasion" would sound weird.

> Have you ever

Yes, often.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com