Re: Alternative to typo?

Subject: Re: Alternative to typo?
From: Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:47:54 +0000

On Friday, March 27, 2009, Milan Davidovic wrote;

> And to risk a brief descent into the trivial: is there a good reason
> to choose "might" over "may"?
---

In the sentence, "An error may render the unit unresponsive.", "may"
is ambiguous. Although it expresses probability, it can mean that the
error has permission to render the unit unresponsive. Also, "may" and
"might" are sometimes taken to express different levels of
probability, with "may" expressing a higher probability than "might".

So given (hopefully) a low probability of the unit becoming
unresponsive and also that errors do not have permission to so render
the unit, I'd use "might". (but YMMV).

WRT an alternative to "typo": users who interact with this thing via a
command-line interface will, I suspect, understand the concept of
"syntax errors". So in most CLI documentation, that's the term I use.

HTH,

--
Geoff

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Follow-Ups:

References:
alternative to typo: From: Joel
Alternative to typo?: From: Geoff Hart
Re: Alternative to typo?: From: Milan Davidovic
RE: Alternative to typo?: From: Dan Goldstein
Re: Alternative to typo?: From: Milan Davidovic

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