Re: large pool always filling up

Howard J. Rogers wrote:
> Alan wrote:

>> So you can imply, but I must be precise?
>

Solely on the grounds that an email sent to Alan regarding this specific point has bounced, I post it here.

 >So you can imply, but I must be precise?

No, that's not it Alan.

My implying does no-one harm. My questions implied that I don't think he's got a problem with his large pool. That doesn't also imply that he's an idiot, slapdash, or quick to leap to conclusions. It merely implies something about my beliefs about his large pool.

So implying is not a bad thing, provided it doesn't imply harm, hurt or injury to someone.

And your trouble in the current matter is not that you were imprecise. Quite the contrary. The words you used have a very precise, specific meaning, and I found that meaning insulting.

Where the imprecision issue arises is that you say that you meant nothing insulting by your words. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that you have used precise words imprecisely, since the insult was nonetheless felt. You have not, in short, made your actual meaning clear. And that is the precision I think you should have tried for.

It is a mistake, in other words, to juxtapose 'implying' and 'precision'   as if one is right and the other wrong. Both are fine in the right context. But the words you used in your original post were not in the right context.

Now, you may not have *meant* them to be insulting. Indeed, it seems pretty evident from your latest post in the newsgroup that you didn't even mean some of them to be directed to me at all. But what you meant to achieve, and what you actually ended up achieving, are two rather different things.

I do actually have a fairly thick skin, and my reply to your original post was tart, but restrained, precisely because I didn't want to make an almighty issue of it. I note that you have chosen to apologise in public for 'the way I took it', rather than actually for the words you used. I suspect that is as good as I'm actually going to get, even though it's an apology that actually puts me in the wrong again.

So leave it there, eh.

HJR Received on Wed Dec 01 2004 - 22:23:56 CST