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Thanks David. No, I don't believe people need to check every piece of
language to make sure it does not offend, but 'Leprosy' in particular is
a very bad disease and there is probably no one on this list who can
stand up for people who have the disease.
As to the 'draw' of the word. A more precise description of the
problem might have been in order.
-----Original Message-----
I disagree that this is an imprecise use of the language. Leprosy has
an "untouchable" connotation that I believe was probably the intent of
the person who originally posted. And, I skip a lot of threads and may
not have read this one (and responded) if the subject line hadn't
grabbed my attention. So it would seem to me to have been an
appropriate use of a term.
My apologies if this offends you, but it seems like your request is a
bit out of the ordinary. If we have to check every piece of language
we use to make sure it won't offend someone, we wouldn't be able to
use common computer language terms, such as master/slave, kill, and
abort (see archives for a thread some time back on this subject).
>
> This thread has been most informative, and helpful I'm sure, to the
> original poster and many others. However, I take issue with the use of
> the name of some serious and terrible grave disease to refer to this
> unrelated marketing problem. I myself have a terrible grave disease (a
> different one) and I think that we as technical communicators come to
> this profession because we enjoy using language in a precise way.
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