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You started and perpetuated a completely unnecessary flamewar here, and of all the offtopic things to do that about, someone's use of the word "next" is particularly superfluous.
An isolated comment of that sort is forgivable, but perpetuating the flamewar and crossing into personal attack, as you did below, is not. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do that.
Probably nobody at all got confused by that word choice.
This is overconfidence; e.g. it "it is clear to me, so it must have been clear to everyone else."
Indeed, there is a person in this overall thread [1] saying the use of "next" was ambiguous:
> I literally thought some unpublished book.
It was made clear to everyone because of the word choice in context. If someone didn't get it then they didn't put two and two together.
I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
You are wrong on this.
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
Even if you had looked at every dictionary, would you claim such a process resolves ambiguity in general? I hope not.
As you know, there are other entries other than the first in a dictionary. Multiple entries means there are multiple usages: there can be ambiguity. Sometimes usage diminishes or eliminates ambiguity, but not always.
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries...
You only took a small sample. How can you offer this as definitive evidence? You can't.
In case you didn't check it or overlooked it, here is the first entry from the Apple Dictionary:
> 1 (of a time or season) coming immediately after the time of writing or speaking: we'll go next year | next week's parade.
Anyhow, my argument does not rely on pointing to a dictionary and saying "I'm right" and "you are wrong". I am saying:
1. Reasonable people see ambiguity (in this specific case and in general)
2. No one person is the arbiter of what is ambiguous for others.
3. Claiming there is a definitive process to resolve ambiguity for everyone is naive.
“The next book he wrote, Noise, ….” Would have been better or “After that book he wrote Noise….”.
I absolutely was confused for a second or two and thought “wait, are we talking about a different person? He isn’t going to have a ‘next’ book unless he had one queued up?”.
Did I need the explanation above? Not really, I’d come to the right conclusion on my own but I can imagine someone who isn’t a native speaker (reader?) might stumble on that more and I enjoyed the confirmation.
Not sure why I bothered responding to a troll.
It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
That sounds right. I only can make probabilistic guesses as to what is happening in someone else's brain. By posing a question to someone else, there is some chance that person may ask it of themselves. If not today, then perhaps in future.
You are an excellent poster child for this tendency in this thread.
So beside pedantic it’s unnecessary.
- product development: why make someone "do one extra click" when you can make the extra click unnecessary?
- writing: respect your audience's time.
- humility: take one minute of your time to save other's time.
- databases: optimize for reading not writing
The ones who don’t care about the book don‘t click anyway.
The ones who are interested click no matter if it’s an upcoming or already existing book.
1. The argument above is sound, but it overstretches my metaphor and sidesteps my point which is: "if there is negligible cost in helping a customer, do it." Stated another way: "if reducing ambiguity helps a customer and has negligible cost, do it." (If a one word change reduces some ambiguity for some people, that's an easy win. Copy-editors do this frequently.)
2. Another angle: broadly speaking, I'm asking the question "What is better?" not just "What is necessary?". The first motivates improvement, no matter where you are. While the latter can sometimes be pragmatic, too often aiming only for 'necessity' justifies the status quo.