On 10/10/2018 23:32, Gregory Ewing wrote:
Rhodri James wrote:
I'm a great fan of erroneous spelling and this blog needs a spelling
check as this quote shows
"Mathematica exemplifies the horde of new Vandals whose pursuit of
private gain threatens a far greater pubic loss–the collapse of
social systems that took centuries to build."
OK, colour me confused. The only spelling mistake I can spot in that
is in the subject line of this thread. What am I missing?
Presumably Romer meant that it was a loss suffered by everyone,
but that's not quite what he wrote.
Sure it is. He's contrasting *private* gain with *public* loss. If there
is any ambiguity here it is whether there is a threat *of* a public
loss, or *to* a public loss ^_^
Still, there is a mistake here (and just the one) – that's not the right
way to use an en-dash.
BTW, an automatic spelling checker wouldn't have helped here.
We really need to redesign English spelling so that it has
error correction built in.
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