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[off topic] setup



If you're likely to be annoyed by people who complain about
grammatical usage on mailing lists, then now is the time to delete
this message.

Ordinarily I don't much care about people's spelling and/or grammar in
messages on mailing lists, so long as it does not make the message
difficult to read (or unless it was written by Kenny:) -- but there
are a few certain errors which somehow manage to grate on my nerves.
One such misusage has become quite common these days, so hopefully
this message will go at least short way to get people to stop using
it.

The word "setup" does exist in the English language, but it is a NOUN,
meaning, "the way in which something is arranged," or "a hoax or
fraud."  Many people lately have been using it as a verb, meaning, "to
assemble or erect, establish, configure, or to cause."  In this form,
it is a two-word phrase, "set up."

I blame Microsoft for this, given that the install program for all
Microsoft apps is called setup.exe, which does the action described by
the phrase "set up."  This probably explains or at least contributes
to my irritation at the misusage...  In any case, I respectfully ask
that you use "set up" instead of "setup" when that is what you mean.

Thanks

-- 
---------------------------------------------------
Derek Martin          |   Unix/Linux geek
ddm at pizzashack.org    |   GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu

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