Moral debate

[jack]

Hmm, there seems to be too much debate today. gerald_duck, robert_jones, filecoreinuse. And even extended argument about grammar and ice-cream with feanelwa and ewx not-respectively[1].

I guess I'm putting something off :)

In other news: I expected everyone to criticise my phases of the moon, but they didn't. I can never predict what will set people off ;)

[1] Would you distinguish "non-respectively" meaning "not necessarily in the order listed" and "not-respectively" meaning "not in the order listed?" Why didn't I just change the order? Because then I couldn't have this amusing footnote :)

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I would interpret it as "not in the order listed" because if you typed it in a random order and it happened to be the right one, it would be less effort to write "respectively" and not to bother with "non-respectively" to denote that you hadn't cared; so clearly the only scenario in which "non-respectively" is worth using, is the one in which they're definitely not in the order listed. Unless the list is very long and you can't read through it with a quick glance to see whether you happened to do it in the same order or not.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OTOH, you might not know and need to specify that. Imagine a maths question "If A and B are 1.54 and 12 (non-respectively) what are the possible values of [expression with A and B]."

:)