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Comment by quietbritishjim | Hacker News Reader

Did you really need to insert a contentious distraction in your original comment? The fact that you felt the need to clarify up front shows you knew it would be misunderstood, and discussion of it is totally unrelated to this topic. If you're not using the original meaning, where "beg" specifically is important as the verb, you could have said almost any variant instead, e.g., "raises the question", and not annoyed or confused anyone and not detracted from the actual point you were trying to make (assuming your main goal wasn't social media-style ragebait).

To quote from a sibling comment of yours:

> a phrase that will be misunderstood is worse than useless.

Exactly.

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> Did you really need to insert a contentious distraction in your original comment? The fact that you felt the need to clarify up front shows you knew it would be misunderstood, and discussion of it is totally unrelated to this topic.

I put in the footnote precisely to try to pre-empt this tedious digression.

> If you're not using the original meaning, where "beg" specifically is important as the verb, you could have said almost any variant instead, e.g., "raises the question", and not annoyed or confused anyone

I believe a different phrasing would have been (marginally) less effective communication for readers who were sincerely trying to understand. And I don't believe I caused any actual confusion; no-one genuinely misunderstood my comment. The only people who try to "correct" the phrasing are people who weren't actually interested in communication in the first place.

> I put in the footnote precisely to try to pre-empt this tedious digression.

Next time, just don't try to advocate for your personal view of language, and use a less contended term, as the parent said 'raises the question' would be fine.

> I believe a different phrasing would have been (marginally) less effective communication for readers who were sincerely trying to understand.

Nope. Raises the question is far clearer and less ambiguous.

> The only people who try to "correct" the phrasing are people who weren't actually interested in communication in the first place.

Or people who care about misinformation being spread.

> Raises the question is far clearer and less ambiguous.

"Raises the question" is less familiar and marginally more difficult to understand for people who are actually good-faith trying.

That's not true at all. It's intuitive to understand, less ambiguous and far more common than the incorrect usage than you prefer.

If you disagree, I would ask you to provide a source to support your assertion.

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