Re: Examples for double negatives AND Do we need to review the titles of our patterns?

Dear Lisa, All:

With CC to apa-chairs list ...

Please pardon me that my current schedule does not allow me to take a
look at the current Editor's Draft of Content Usable, nor the other
referenced discussion regarding double negatives. I do, nevertheless,
wish to strongly reiterate my caution against any categorical advice
against the use of double negatives.

During planning for TPAC 2021 (and possibly in a github issue--I haven't
checked there either), I cautioned against this based on the draft as of
September last as follows:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Group/group-apa-chairs/2021Sep/0015.html

"PS: Looking at the currently proposed topics for I18N got me to look at
the current Editor's Draft of Content Usable. Specifically, Sec. 4.4.3.4
claims the sentence "Time is not unlimited" is an example of a double
negative. It is not. This grammatical construction is known as the
litotes. But even more to the point is that forming double negatives is
the precise way that a negative is expressed in some languages, notably
slavic languages like Russian. In other words generalizing guidance as
in Sec. 4.4.3.4 may be of limited authoring value, which is not an APA
issue, but, imo certainly worthy of discussion with I18N for a
discussion for AGWG purposes."

I would again suggest these facts have not changed, and will not change.
Facts are indeed stubborn things:

1.)	Some languages express the negative by using double negative
construction. A categorical prohibition in Content Usable will likely
not pass I18N scrutiny.

2.)	Please inform yourselves on the difference between the litotes
and double negatives. You don't want to come off appearing ill schooled.

Best,

Janina



Lisa Seeman writes:
> I was looking at
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oKFdfFN-98QZX2vaS77ElheXS_ruKhtObUHEsJjKpp4/edit#
> on
> double negitives.
> 
> 
> Our wording in content useable  was avoid double negative to express a
> positive. This came after a lot of thought and back and forth. Do you want
> to discuss what I remember from the conversation? We found that avoiding
> double negatives did not work internationally and was very inconsistent
> even in English.
> 
> The title of the pattern was shortened to fit in the nav bar, but it is the
> wording of the pattern and not the title that is important. However the
> fact that we go confused between the two suggests that we need to be more
> careful with patten names. Can we add that to the structure conversation?
> 
> All the best
> 
> Lisa

-- 

Janina Sajka (she/her/hers)
https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Received on Thursday, 21 July 2022 09:37:38 UTC