Pedantry Police... (was: Re: UPDATE: Announcement from www.kubuntu.de )

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> writes:

> Now we have the apostrophe police to deal with, as well as
> there/their/they're

Most of the problems mentioned so far can be generously attributed to
"brainos", where the writers just make careless mistakes -- not
flameworthy unless I feel I'm being dis'd by too much carelessness.

My pet non-braino peeves:

  very unique:
      Something is either unique or not unique; the word
      has about lost it's meaning, even as "truly unique".

  something based thing:
      Is it "something-based thing", or "something based-thing"?
      The missing hyphen makes my brain stumble a spilt second
      and usually longer when I pause to curse the writer.

  non-proprietary, as if it means "free" or "open":
      If Linux kernel software was non-proprietary, it
      could be used in BSD kernels and wouldn't have lawsuits
      threatened about its misuse.  The term means "non-owned" or
      "in the public domain" or, more loosely, "non-restricted".
      It's better to use "free" or "open" which are either
      appropriate in some sense or sufficiently ambiguous.