Re: [css3-*] Review of functional syntax in CSS

On Jan 27, 2012, at 8:22 AM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Spelling arguments come up on a regular basis and, not being a native speaker, always puzzle me.
> 
> What's puzzling?  Does the fact that you're a non-native speaker make
> spelling uniformly easy or uniformly hard?

I think many languages have much more consistent spelling than English, so it might be puzzling why literate and intelligent native English speaking adults have frequent trouble spelling certain words. But it is hard because of the inconsistencies. Like "I before E, except after C, and when sounding like A, as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh' (and about a hundred other exceptions)." If 10% of the authors type it wrong half the time, there will be a lot of hard-to-track-down parse errors, which could be avoided by using a more simply spelled word. And we also must consider how much harder it is for non-native English speakers when we chose keyword syntax.

Received on Friday, 27 January 2012 17:28:08 UTC