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Re: Linguistic quirks: beside or against myself?

Subject: Re: Linguistic quirks: beside or against myself?
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 07:38:28 -0400




nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il wrote:



Aside from the specific question of the preposition
"against", I think that Shank was merely explaining
the context to us rather than quoting a proposed
passage of technical writing.

I agree and had no intention of suggesting otherwise.


I too would write "next to", but I wouldn't consider
"against" to be improper English.

I wouldn't consider it to be improper English, either. I offered only a translation to American English, where I think "against" comes across as somewhat foreign-sounding (foreign, as in the rest of the English-speaking world, not foreign as in English as a second language). Or perhaps "against" in this sense might sound reasonably natural to an American in an accounting context (not sure about that, though).


I think that "against",
in this context, is an elegant alternative somewhere above the lowest common denominator, and generally we write to the lowest common denominator.




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Re: Linguistic quirks: beside or against myself?: From: nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il

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