I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues.
Microsoft Outlooks suggestions are more than a mere annoyance on this front. They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing precisely because they convey uncertainty. That is why I wrote them in the first place! If I knew a result confidently, I would say so.
Please, let's not have another venue algorithmically pressuring everyone to uniformly remove nuance from communication. There is no one-size-fits-all threshold for "too wordy" or "too passive" or anything else with regard to language. Context is everything.
There's an example tweet where Google suggests that 'landlord' is not inclusive and 'property owner' or 'proprietor' could be used instead.
This will encourage people to avoid the word 'landlord'. They will start using 'property owner'. I'm not okay with that. A homeowner is a property owner. A landlord rents out the property they own. The terms shouldn't be conflated like that (as much as many landlords might want them to be).
I agree that sometimes a landlord might be subletting something and therefore they might not own it, but what you write is mostly ridiculous: if a landlord owns the property, they are the property owner.
I think you missed the point. In math terms: landlords are a proper subset of property owners, not equivalent. Using the latter term instead of the former is likely to change the meaning of the sentence.
For example: "landlords should pay more taxes" is very different from "property owners should pay more taxes".
Your explanation doesn’t square with the weird comment about landlords wanting to be conflated with property owners, which I read as meaning that the parent thought they weren’t subsets.
Apologies if I was unclear. I meant 'conflate' as in 'treat as equivalent'.
As for landlords perhaps wanting to be treated as equivalent to property owners, I think the previous poster gave a suitable example of why this might be the case. In many places landlords are being targeted politically (rightly or wrongly). It would be to their political advantage if all reference to them was conflated with regular owner occupiers by use of the term 'property owners'.
That poll says most prefer Hispanic, it also says most do not find Latinx offensive. It also seems like a bit of a push poll since it doesn't ask any questions about whether or not they find "Latino" offensive.
Latinx is revolting, full stop. Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it.
Spanish isn't the jumbled mess that English is. It has a lot of rhyme and reason to it. While not without exceptions, its rules are generally quite reliable.
"inx" is a not a Spanish syllable. You can't pluralize it. You can't rhyme with it. Hell, you can't barely pronounce it.
I get so tired of people popping up to defend the idea as if it's not so bad, invariably citing data collected from bilingual, second-generation US immigrants. Stop. If it's important to you, then at least have the sense to argue for "Latines", which at least kind of makes sense and doesn't sound like something invented by an English speaker who had only ever seen Spanish written, not spoken.
> Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it.
Your argument isn't cogent to me: it's an English word used in an English context. Your line of reasoning could be used to argue that "Anglo-Saxon"[1] is not a legitimate term because the Germanic tribes didn't use the term to refer to themselves.
1. The same goes for "German", "Chinese" or "Belter"
German is an English word that English speakers use to describe Germans. It doesn't have any etymological relationship with the word that Germans use to describe themselves.
Latino and Latina are Spanish words that American English speakers have adopted in the last ~80 years due to the significant intermingling of Spanish and English speakers. Their use spans a spectrum of Spanish-only speakers, bilingual speakers, and English-only speakers. Not only does the English word "Latino" (my eyes roll typing that) have an etymological relationship with the Spanish word "Latino", their etymologies haven't even diverged. English speakers who took a Spanish class in high school even pronounce Latino in the Spanish way, "lah-TEE-noh" instead of "luh-TEE-no", because they think of it as a Spanish word.
Latinx is a Spanglish word. You seem offended by the very existence of Spanglish. Personally as a gringo who was born in a majority-hispanic neighborhood in Texas Spanglish is my culture.
As someone who speaks Spanish I agree with you as a matter of taste, the word feels ridiculous when I say it out loud. Latines honestly sounds roughly as ridiculous to my ear. (Of course even though I was exposed to Spanish at a very young age living in San Antonio English is my first language.)
I have friends who self-identify as Latinx, and use the word, I have friends who say Latine, I have friends who say Latino. Language evolves and I don't think your vitriol is warranted.
Generally speaking, when a wide sweeping change is going to take effect, the onus of proof about why it should be done is on those advocating in favor of the change, not on those defending the standard. That is, "How is this change useful?" vs. "Why wouldn't this change be useful?" The latter assumes the change is good and asks for proof which cannot exist yet, while the former focuses the questioning on the underlying value of the change prior to implementation.
This particular change is a complex one. It clearly has w*stern politics crammed into its carcass, which are tedious to read, and doubly so to speak on. For that reason, I'll try and avoid such topic. Besides, I tend to assume your question is asked in good faith, so I would simply ask:
Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful?
Under optimal circumstances, the ability to "help" the writer would be subjective, right? Under suboptimal conditions, the suggestion would be: unwanted, unneeded, or wrong.
> Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful?
Sure:
Upon writing, "That guy is a loser," a response from the computer: "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language. Consider revising to provide constructive criticism."
Ideally, the feedback a computer would provide would be similar in scope and wisdom that feedback from an experienced human editor would provide.
The projected cultural judgements are plain in your comment:
> "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language
Whats wrong with emotionally loaded content? Are you afraid of feelings? That statement doesn't seem ambiguous at all to me - but even if it was ambiguous, I believe ambiguity is sometimes appropriate.
I'm partially with you - I don't often utter things like "That guy is a loser" either. But there are still plenty of contexts in which I'd happily write those words. For example:
- When writing dialogue in fiction
- When supporting a friend with an abusive partner, to let them know emotionally that I'm on their side in the conflict
- In conversation like this
But to go deeper, the language I use is an expression of me. There are very few things as intimately tied to our identity and world view as our choice of language. I can't think of many things as dehumanising to an adult as taking away their choice of how they express themselves.
Imagine if the suggestion, when writing about the war in Ukraine was "Using the word 'war' is inflammatory to some audiences. Have you considered 'military exercise' instead?". Or "Using the word 'they' is ambiguous language. Have you considered using he/she instead?". It doesn't feel as good when you don't agree politically with the suggestion.
To this day people cite doublespeak as one of the most chilling aspects of George Orwell's 1984. This whole thing spooks me for the same reason.
There are undoubtedly times when this sort of feedback is undesirable. If you're writing fiction, or poetry, or just want to flame somebody (damn the consequences), these sorts of prompts just get in the way. Similarly, if you're writing math equations, there's not much use in a spell or grammar check.
But as others have said, writing feedback -- automated or otherwise -- is a resource. Sometimes it's helpful, particularly in the professional context. Other times, it isn't. We still have the freedom to choose when to use it and when not to. And I see no harm in having the tools available to help when needed.
I hear what you're saying. I'm sure people who work at google appreciate an AI making sure they don't accidentally post some wrong-speak to an internal mailing list. Especially when doing so might get them fired.
I just think politically controversial writing suggestions should be opt-in. We don't all work at google. And not all documents are corporate memos. Its extremely important to a liberal society that people are free to think and express heretical thoughts without feeling like we're being watched and judged for doing so.
Getting political judgements ("suggestions") from an omnipresent AI looking over my shoulder while I write sounds dystopian. That sort of technology skeeves me out. I don't trust the sort of people who think this should be turned on by default with access to my private notes. And you shouldn't either.
I'd rather not outsource my morality to the arbitration of an algorithm, regardless of its provenance being of a company that claims to "not be evil." This honestly seems like a particularly flagrant application of this feature; we have enough human interaction mediated by coercive tech, the way we communicate personal beliefs about one another shouldn't be the next pillar to fall. That it's "just a suggestion", as others have argued to excuse it, belies how strongly its UI implies authoritativeness -- users reflexively view the squiggly underline as a sign that something is unambiguously wrong with what they've written.
I forgot to write in my previous reply "Thank you for your levelheaded response. I know these types of discussions can get out of hand, so thank you for approaching without that baggage that sometimes comes with the territory."
Saying both is fair. I generally assume there is a primary intended target, but both is workable too. Your assessment is that both parties benefit from the change?
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on “landlords” changed to a proposed tax on “property owners”. If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on "moles" changed to a proposed tax on "holes". If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.
Thankfully HN wasn't around when spell-check was introduced.
