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Re: please make line-move-visual nil


From: Stephen Berman
Subject: Re: please make line-move-visual nil
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 09:40:03 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.93 (gnu/linux)

On Thu, 14 May 2009 22:32:53 -0700 David Reitter <address@hidden> wrote:

> On May 14, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>>
>>> On a more general note, I wonder why experienced users occasionally
>>> resist change in the UI in general (as it breaks things) rather than
>>> avoiding to upgrade.
>>
>> [linguistic point: "avoid" takes a noun or a gerund (which needn't be
>> round), not an infinitive.  You want "avoiding an upgrade" or "avoiding
>> upgrading" here.]
>
> You are right.  My heartfelt apologies.  Language is to me what people (me
> excluded) speak, not what some book says.  The avoid+infinitive  construction
> doesn't get any traction in a Google search (using past  tense), so I concede.

One not too rarely encountered (and to me fairly acceptable)
avoid+infinitive construction is when `avoid' is passivized with an
expletive subject: "It should be avoided to ...".  FWIW Google
(http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q="it+should+be+avoided+to"&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=undefined&fp=Frx3gI01710)
shows "about 3,380" hits.  Interestingly (and probably not
insignificantly), the same search with the German Google
(http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=cYC&q="it+should+be+avoided+to"&btnG=Suche&meta=&aq=f&oq=)
shows "ungefähr 9.520" hits (for non-German readers: the point here is used
like the comma in English).

Steve Berman





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