: Re: Efficiency or correctness in communication? The language industry has a long tradition in the pursuit of correctness, based on manually drafted rules. However, the end goal has always been communicative

@BetL639

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what kind of evidence would it take to convince writers to prefer
efficiency to correctness?

Writers already prefer efficiency to correctness. That is why we use computers instead of typewriters and before that, typewriters instead of shorthand, and before that, shorthand instead of longhand. And all along we used fewer and shorter words.

Efficiency over correctness is also how English works. There are no rules in English. Nobody has ever managed the syntax. There is no single correct way of doing anything. You can’t write English for correctness. It evolves constantly for more efficiency. There are no masculine/feminine words. “Thou” was dropped. “Motor hotel” became “motel.” Words are implied all the time, like referring to a mobile phone as a “mobile” or a computing device as a “device.”

If you look at an English book from 1800, it is barely the same language as today, and it gets more efficient the newer you go.

The only check on this is comprehension, not correctness. In American English there are misunderstandings based on using too few words that you wouldn’t necessarily see in British English. In California, where I live, people act out emotions rather than describe them when telling a story. (I was like, “wow!” and he was like “no way!”)

So if you are trying to get that process to go faster, the first step might be to recognize it is already going really, really fast.

And certainly, the writers are not holding it back.

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