| If enough people say it wrong long enough, does that make it right? [message #474467] |
Mon, 06 September 2010 11:23  |
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Barbara Boehmer
Messages: 9104
Registered: November 2002
Location: California, USA
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In this thread:
http://www.orafaq.com/forum/t/161319/0/unread/43710/#msg_474425
Littlefoot mentioned that many people misuse CSV to mean something other than the comma-separated values that it stands for, using it to means values separated by any delimiter. I agree that this is a common point of view. This is one of many examples where if enough people say something wrong long enough, people consider it right.
When I was a kid, I was taught to say "isn't", not "ain't", because I was told that "ain't" is incorrect, but now some dictionaries include "ain't". I wonder if someday somebody will be saying that "isn't" is wrong because nobody says that anymore. Most of the differences between the American language and the original English language consist of incorrect usage of English that have become part of American. The more this continues, the more different the languages become, and the harder it becomes to understand one another.
This concept of if you do something wrong long enough it becomes right extends to other things besides language. If you camp out on somebody's land illegally, it is trespassing, but if you get away with it for seven years, you then own that portion of the land or have established a right-of-way to pass through it that cannot be fenced off by the original owner of the land.
Most of these things, whether language or laws, do not seem right to me. I have always been inclined to try to correct the the incorrect usage in the hopes of stopping the spread. The more things we allow where when people say one thing they could mean that or something else, the more confusing communications get.
So what makes something right, the way it was originally, the way most people use it currently, or the way that makes most sense or what? What do the rest of you think?
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| Re: If enough people say it wrong long enough, does that make it right? [message #474488 is a reply to message #474475] |
Mon, 06 September 2010 13:43  |
ThomasG
Messages: 3212
Registered: April 2005
Location: Heilbronn, Germany
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Senior Member |
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Forsooth! Yon lass raiseth a point. Shall we make arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them? 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But, prithee, as man thinketh, God (or the mob) steereth.
In the CSV case it was probably dozens of implementations that named them "CSV Files" (Like Excel), and then replaced the comma with something else when they were ported to languages that use the comma as decimal seperator. (The German Version of Excel for example only opens "CSV" files correctly automatically when they are semicolon-separated, unless you use the import wizard to manually set the separator to comma.)
There's somewhat of a dilemma between sticking to the correct terms, but not get too stuck when the basis for those terms changes. For the CSV part I have started to refer to them as "Character Separated Values" in my projects whenever they somehow have to fit the CSV acronym for some reason and I can't use DSV for Delimiter Separated Values. (Like when I have to write a .CSV file with ; a seperator so that the German MS Office can handle it out of the box).
That's easier than to handle all the "How can I open as DSV file?" Support calls.
In that vein I usually stick to the "the way most people use it currently", at least when that usage has been around for years without any sign of change.
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