On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 03:17:32PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Rolf Turner
<r.turner(a)auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>
> Just read some stuff on this list about "spins", a concept which had
> not previously impinged itself upon my consciousness. So I went and
> had a look at the
spins.fedoraproject.org page. It started off by saying
> "What is a spin? Fedora spins are alternate version of Fedora, tailored
> ...".
>
> For God's sake, people!!! That's "alternative versions"!!!
Alternate
> means "every other" or "every second". Alternative means
"available as
> another possibility". Saying "alternate" when you mean
"alternative" is
> sloppy, lazy thinking and irritates and confuses the reader.
>
> Why can't computer geeks learn to write English correctly?
In American usage this is acceptable and common. But if it bothers you
that much why didn't you just correct it on the wiki in a fraction of
the time it took you to rant about it here?
Actually, this is on the spins.fp.o site which isn't a wiki. But
regardless, a query of
https://www.google.com/search?q=alternate using
en_US locations shows this is acceptable usage. We also tend to
misspell with vigor here. ;-) Move along, nothing to see here...
--
Paul W. Frields
http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
http://redhat.com/ - - - -
http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
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