Re: Of Legal Language and CS Notation

[Olivier Lefevre<address@hidden>]

>>> Peter J. Wasilko<futurist@cloud9.net> 20/11/2003 15:13:54 >>>
> Students who pepper their papers with archaic latinisms and pursuant's 
> and whereas's are punished with bad grades 
[...]
> eventually forces in the marketplace led firms and educators to realize 
> the using clear language was a competitive advantage.

I can understand banning latinisms but seeing something as commonplace 
as "whereas" on the list confirmed my suspicions that this is just demagoguery.
Incidentally just what you would expect to result from the application of those
fabled market forces to standards of discourse.

This reminds of how a bunch of progressive bishops in the UK once had the Holy
Bible "translated" because they thought that sentences like "There came a man,
sent by God, whose name was John" were too hard on their charges: I mean, 
is the Bible saying that God's the one named John? I read that in the TLS a 
long time ago.

I hope CS discourse will not follow such examples. What many papers could use
is more material on motivation and context, something that it should be possible to
write in plain english: too many dive headlong into the equations. The problem is 
by no means limited to CS, though: I remember reading more than a few physics 
papers written in that style when I was in grad school.

-- O.L.