Digital Sidhe ([info]digitalsidhe) wrote in [info]dot_pedantic,
2004-10-20 15:33:00
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  • Mood: angry

Must... Restrain... Fist of Death

A recent ZDNet editorial, in paragraph 4, includes the sentence: "In fact, the many hardcore server administrators would just assume do away with a lot of the ease-of-anything frills in return for a mean, lean, simple, command-prompt driven Web, database, e-mail, directory or database application server." (Emphasis added to make it easy to find the error.)

I haven't bothered to read paragraph 5. If this guy wants me to take his opinion seriously, why doesn't he learn his own native tongue?

And it really bugs me that, if I were to post a correction in the Talkbacks at the bottom of the page, someone would be sure to tell me that I was just nit-picking and it didn't really matter.

At least I have the consolation of not having to tell anyone here what was wrong with that phrasing.

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  • 12 comments

[info]chalepa_ta_kala

October 20 2004, 15:54:13 UTC 7 years ago

The wily trope.

just assume do away with

I can't even figure out the rationale behind that, um, turn of phrase. Just assume doesn't even mean anything in that context. Just as soon, although idiomatic, makes some sense.

Of course, I'm assuming that the writer's intent was to communicate. If not, well, I guess I've just made an ASS out of U and...well, just U, really.

[info]jabber

October 20 2004, 16:13:39 UTC 7 years ago

Turn?

Folded, spindled and mutilated, more like. :)

[info]oneironaut

October 20 2004, 18:24:52 UTC 7 years ago

Re: The wily trope.

It's an eggcorn. The originator was probably thinking of 'assume' in the sense of 'to take upon oneself' or 'to undertake the duties of (an office)' and probably didn't know the wording of the expression at all, rather than knowing and trying to improve it, since it's a shortened form of an idiom that isn't even itself literally meaningful.

[info]chalepa_ta_kala

October 20 2004, 23:43:09 UTC 7 years ago

Re: The wily trope.

It's an eggcorn.

What a delightful site; thank you.

[info]hermione_lupin

November 5 2004, 08:13:03 UTC 7 years ago

Re: The wily trope.

There we go. Much like this 'bald-faced lie' I keep reading, no matter that it doesn't make a lick of sense. Curiously similar to the 'boldfaced lie' I sometimes hear.

[info]stevenredux

October 20 2004, 17:50:22 UTC 7 years ago

Send him my editor's icon.

[info]sarmisse

October 20 2004, 20:15:44 UTC 7 years ago

Perhaps he meant to write "would just as soon do away with..."

That is a real phrase, isn't it?

[info]digitalsidhe

October 20 2004, 20:57:03 UTC 7 years ago

I'm sure he did mean "just as soon". But what came out isn't exactly a typo... the O and E keys, for example, are nowhere near each other. If it said "just as soom" or "just as soob", I wouldn't have minded. (I'd have wondered if the article had been spell checked or proofread, but that's different.)

No, I think he actually meant to type "just assume"... but he should have meant to type "just as soon", dangit.

[info]jargon

October 20 2004, 22:00:47 UTC 7 years ago

The only possible, logical explanation: He was using a speech transcription system (ie Dragon NaturallySpeaking) and spoke "just as soon" so quickly that the software picked it up as "just assume".. and never reread his article for sense, just trusted his spelchekr.

[info]stevenredux

October 21 2004, 04:29:27 UTC 7 years ago

Which is no better. Worse in some ways.

It's guys like him that give guys like me (i.e., tech "journalists") a bad name. And, believe me, we don't need the help.

[info]peregrin8

October 21 2004, 05:56:56 UTC 7 years ago

Actually I've seen other cases where a relatively non-intuitive idiom gets turned into an eggcorn (many thanks to this thread for giving me that word!) by people who have heard it said but never noticed it in print. I don't think software is necessarily the culprit.

[info]feonixrift

October 20 2004, 23:30:44 UTC 7 years ago

Sorry, I got stuck at "the many".
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