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771 points abetusk | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.738s | source
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rendall ◴[] No.41879499[source]
> ...I approached musée Rodin with a strategy to illicit a full airing...

Minor typo: if the author or anyone who knows him is reading this, the word wanted there probably is elicit.

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1. dTal ◴[] No.41879945[source]
That jumped out to me as well, particularly given the otherwise high quality of the writing. It's an example of what I perceive as a more general phenomenon - spelling errors, particularly confusion of uncommon homonyms[note], appear to have increased in frequency. I previously attributed it to the internet simply lowering the bar for "publishing" to the less educated, and the greater proportion of text that makes it to our eyeballs without the intercession of an editor - but seeing such a glaring mistake in a text clearly written by someone with otherwise very good command of the language makes me wonder if there are other factors, perhaps the rise of verbal media such as audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

[note: I see "fazed" spelled as "phased" more often than I see it spelled correctly now. I suspect its proper spelling will eventually die out.]

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2. hotspot_one ◴[] No.41880457[source]
or speech-to-text systems. The person might not be typing the text.
3. rendall ◴[] No.41880566[source]
It has taken me a long time to let go of "to beg the question" as exclusively meaning "to employ circular reasoning" and not cringe when I see it used to mean "to raise the question".

What gave me calm to accept such changes is understanding that the language we use today is a result of such changes. Awful once meant full of awe and now means very bad or unpleasant. Nice no longer means foolish and now means pleasant. Girl referred to a young person of either gender and now specifically means a female child. Silly once meant happy or fortunate and now means foolish or absurd. Meat once referred to food of all kinds, not just animal flesh. I imagine there were people who experienced these changes with some despair. But everything's okay. English is still expressive and meaningful. The sky has not fallen. The center holds.

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4. dekhn ◴[] No.41884109[source]
Note also the different meaning to "to table" (in a political context) between England and the US. One means "to put on the table for consideration" while the other means "take out of consideration and set it aside on the table"