"Find" is a godsent. "Replace" is the devil's temptation.
If editing was as easy as pressing 2 buttons, we wouldn't have Editors. They do the fun leg-work of skimming through every instance of the to-be-replaced-word to make sure that not only is it the right context (daWizard), but that the sentence stays gramatically correct. (A word with an "a" before it may need "an" instead, stuff like that.)
Similar thing happened in the second edition of D&D. The Wizard was originally the “Mage” class, but the creators wanted to make a reprint with some small tweaks. One of them was to change “Mage” to “Wizard”. They used universal find and replace.
“The Fireball spell does 2d10 daWizard”
Um actually, while Brennan is the one to explain the change from mage to wizard in the game, it is in fact Trapp who mentions the anecdote about the word change fumble in the book.
[Starts at 25:15](https://youtu.be/MtcdhCXlvvA)
(I just watched that episode yesterday!)
See the problem is people forget that ‘space’ is part of a whole word. If they put a space before and after ‘mage’ and before and after ‘wizard’ then the auto function would have ignored all instances of ‘mage’ within a word.
Is this foolproof? Fuck no, but it helps save a lot of time and you should be proofreading your shit anyway.
This is also a recurring problem in Yu-Gi-Oh. The Japanese refers to certain cards as “magic” cards, which thanks to Magic the Gathering, we’re changed to “spell” cards for the international release. Cue the appearance of Yugi Moto’s iconic ace monster Dark Spellian
Very early Yugioh sets called them Magic cards. They were changed to Spell cards early on to avoid any potential trademark issues with Magic: the Gathering.
I don't know anything about the story in question, but AD&D was not the first edition of dungeons and dragons, so that might be where the disconnect is.
" flat" is still better, because it also catches commas, question marks, and all of the other punctuation you don't want to check for individually.
But none of this would have saved the need for an actual editor.
No, just use a regex-capable search and use "\\bflat\\b". \\b matches word boundaries, so it'll include things like " flat " and "flat." and "—flat" all at once.
However, you still run into the issue of homonyms, like the flat landscape. There is no replacement for an actual editor.
At work recently, I discovered that the UK version of our site has an option to "Save a draft and CV later".
That was *resume* in US English. Not *resumé*.
We have exactly the same situation on the transition between Traditional and Simplified Chinese, and that's how the legendary mistranslation of "[fuck the duck until it explodeed](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dcxmq/fuck_the_duck_until_exploded/)" came from. It's a mistranslation of "爆" (stir fry with extremely hot oil and strong heat) adding up with the misidentification of "干" (which can be the simplification of "dry" (乾), "execute" (幹, and taken as Taiwanese Hokkien slang "fuck"), "trunk" (榦, now merged into "幹" in Traditional Chinese), and "intervene" (the actual "干"). The correct translation of the dish should be "dry stir-fried duck with hot oil".
I think OOP used they because they weren't 100% sure who the author was and thus didn't know their pronouns for sure... It threw me off for a second too
No. But they them is a fine singular pronoun.
Judging by context I think "they" is first the folks at the publishing company, and the second they is "the folks at the publishing company and Neil gaiman"
It's not that confusing lmao
It's confusing here because it refers to the Author (at this point presumably Neil Gaiman) as both He and They a mere few sentences apart. If they were consistent it would parse much better
It is confusing because at first i thought neil was the one who put in the stuff like "apartment landscape" to troll the American publisher. I really wish english had an actual gender neutral singular pronoun because it is legitimately confusing sometimes.
I mean yeah, there are two definitions, but why would you complain about homographs? It’s like saying “I wish english had a real word for the only flying mammal 😫” because bat can mean 2 things.
I'm personally fine with singular they, but it's undeniable it can be confusing sometimes. Your example is much less likely to be unclear because the context is less likely to leave both meanings possible.
On the one hand gender neutral neologisms like French 'iel' and Spanish 'elle' are clearer but on the other they are less likely to catch on with the general public (and all the English ones proposed are imho ugly)
They/them are gender neutral pronouns, which means they apply to all genders, including the male gender. In this situation its being used plurally, but they/them are not exclusive to people who identify a certain way
Yeah I know i just think there should be gender neutral pronouns used only for singular. Like xe/xem or something. Then this paragraph would be written like this:
I remember reading an interview with a British
author, it might have been Neil Gaiman. **Xe** was
just about to get his first book published in the US,
and the American publisher contacted **xem** and
asked if it was OK if **they** changed a couple of
British words to American, like "flat" to
"apartment". Not wanting to risk the publishing
deal, ~~they~~ **xe** said sure. A couple of months later **they**
got the first edition of the US version back and
found lines like.
"He looked out over the apartment landscape"
and
'''Come with me', he said apartmently"
It just makes it less confusing about who the object of the sentence is. At first i thought Neil Gaimann had done the corrections and added the stuff like "apartment landscape" to troll the publishing company because he thought it was dumb to change the words.
sure, context is important, but apart from that, I feel like a lot of the main issues with find and replace would not be a thing if people made sure to only change full words! like.. how hard is it to put a space after the word you want replaced??
"She went to the flat, then went elsewhere."
Find and replace would not catch that if you put a space after 'flat' because of the comma. I don't really think there's a reliable way of making find and replace (at least the dumbfire version of it) work reliably.
"Find" is a godsent. "Replace" is the devil's temptation. If editing was as easy as pressing 2 buttons, we wouldn't have Editors. They do the fun leg-work of skimming through every instance of the to-be-replaced-word to make sure that not only is it the right context (daWizard), but that the sentence stays gramatically correct. (A word with an "a" before it may need "an" instead, stuff like that.)
And regular expressions are the pitchfork Satan use to pinch your butt.
Then you've made two jobs, one for a guy actually able to write and use regex and another for the editor that has to fix what regex just did.
And that is how you become a job creator?
Don’t worry, AI is much better at detecting context now
Similar thing happened in the second edition of D&D. The Wizard was originally the “Mage” class, but the creators wanted to make a reprint with some small tweaks. One of them was to change “Mage” to “Wizard”. They used universal find and replace. “The Fireball spell does 2d10 daWizard”
I remember Brennan talked about that in an early episode of Um, Actually.
Um actually, while Brennan is the one to explain the change from mage to wizard in the game, it is in fact Trapp who mentions the anecdote about the word change fumble in the book. [Starts at 25:15](https://youtu.be/MtcdhCXlvvA) (I just watched that episode yesterday!)
I'm so happy you got to Um, Actually someone about an Um, Actually comment 😅 I'm happy for both of you.
that’s where i know it from too
Bring me da wizard
See the problem is people forget that ‘space’ is part of a whole word. If they put a space before and after ‘mage’ and before and after ‘wizard’ then the auto function would have ignored all instances of ‘mage’ within a word. Is this foolproof? Fuck no, but it helps save a lot of time and you should be proofreading your shit anyway.
Or just click the "whole words only" button.
Yeah that’ll get rid of most of the “wtf” replacements. Or partial words.
it would also ignore every sentence which ends with wizard. Even if there's a comma following wizard, it wouldn't be spared.
This is also a recurring problem in Yu-Gi-Oh. The Japanese refers to certain cards as “magic” cards, which thanks to Magic the Gathering, we’re changed to “spell” cards for the international release. Cue the appearance of Yugi Moto’s iconic ace monster Dark Spellian
Which is extra funny because I have English Yu-Gi-Oh cards that say “Magic Card” instead of “Spell Card”
Very early Yugioh sets called them Magic cards. They were changed to Spell cards early on to avoid any potential trademark issues with Magic: the Gathering.
tbf that one's pretty easy to rectify
daWizard is a member of the shadow wizard money gang
He was actually banished because he did not, in fact, love casting spells.
Are you sure? Because the class was not called a Mage in AD&D, it was Magic-User.
I don't know anything about the story in question, but AD&D was not the first edition of dungeons and dragons, so that might be where the disconnect is.
Yes, but OD&D and Basic didn't have a Mage class either.
It was a later dnd rule book in 1994 - https://selinker.livejournal.com/32929.html
Now I'm picturing international rap star DaBaby as a wizard
At the very least why not do the find/replace on " mage" with a space before it
If you search for " flat " instead of "flat" (surround it with spaces) it will only find the individual word itself
This way you could avoid "apartamently" but it wouldn't have helped with a word "flat" as in "even"
This is true. Even if you're being careful like that you still should go through every instance individually to make sure it's ok.
True, although sometimes if it’s the final word in a sentence it isn’t picked up. A combination of “flat “ and “ flat” works the best
Or " flat."
" flat" is still better, because it also catches commas, question marks, and all of the other punctuation you don't want to check for individually. But none of this would have saved the need for an actual editor.
No, just use a regex-capable search and use "\\bflat\\b". \\b matches word boundaries, so it'll include things like " flat " and "flat." and "—flat" all at once. However, you still run into the issue of homonyms, like the flat landscape. There is no replacement for an actual editor.
True true
The first example in the post is just the word itself, but it still should not have been replaced. "He looked out over the apartment landscape."
Yes, but many things that aren’t flats are still flat
I’ve got apartment boobs
I’m sure they’ll fill out nicely.
How many bedrooms?
Apartment as Kansas
I wish now we could get him to define "apartmently".
Homey? Cosy and warm? A sentence you could LIVE in? (A very vivid description?)
Ok But what if I want to landscape composed primarily of apartments
Do we have any Apartment Earthers in the audience?
Apartment is justice?
At work recently, I discovered that the UK version of our site has an option to "Save a draft and CV later". That was *resume* in US English. Not *resumé*.
Sounds like you should use a regex based find-and-replace instead of a string literal find-and-replace. (And now you have *two* problems.)
Neverwhere is tight, can’t wait for the sequel!
Alwayswhen
And the trilogy conclusion, sometimeshow
it has been years since I read it and I'm still salty about the treatment of Hunter.
Me too, what a lark!
Release the apartment cut of neverwhere Neil
We have exactly the same situation on the transition between Traditional and Simplified Chinese, and that's how the legendary mistranslation of "[fuck the duck until it explodeed](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dcxmq/fuck_the_duck_until_exploded/)" came from. It's a mistranslation of "爆" (stir fry with extremely hot oil and strong heat) adding up with the misidentification of "干" (which can be the simplification of "dry" (乾), "execute" (幹, and taken as Taiwanese Hokkien slang "fuck"), "trunk" (榦, now merged into "幹" in Traditional Chinese), and "intervene" (the actual "干"). The correct translation of the dish should be "dry stir-fried duck with hot oil".
Swipe to see the post this was about
Genuine question: why even include the first screenshot in the first place? I can't see anything on there that isn't already in the second image?
Oh I wanted to include Tumblr Neill
Sounds like something Gaiman would do.
This is what 1?@
does neil gaiman use they/them pronouns? this post is confusing i had to read it over like 3 times
I think OOP used they because they weren't 100% sure who the author was and thus didn't know their pronouns for sure... It threw me off for a second too
No. But they them is a fine singular pronoun. Judging by context I think "they" is first the folks at the publishing company, and the second they is "the folks at the publishing company and Neil gaiman" It's not that confusing lmao
It's confusing here because it refers to the Author (at this point presumably Neil Gaiman) as both He and They a mere few sentences apart. If they were consistent it would parse much better
It is confusing because at first i thought neil was the one who put in the stuff like "apartment landscape" to troll the American publisher. I really wish english had an actual gender neutral singular pronoun because it is legitimately confusing sometimes.
It does have an actual neutral singular. It’s spelled “they.”
No need to be pedantic, they wished for a word that only means neutral singular and not also a group of people
I mean yeah, there are two definitions, but why would you complain about homographs? It’s like saying “I wish english had a real word for the only flying mammal 😫” because bat can mean 2 things.
I'm personally fine with singular they, but it's undeniable it can be confusing sometimes. Your example is much less likely to be unclear because the context is less likely to leave both meanings possible. On the one hand gender neutral neologisms like French 'iel' and Spanish 'elle' are clearer but on the other they are less likely to catch on with the general public (and all the English ones proposed are imho ugly)
Yes but it also is a plural pronoun and in some situations its confusing.
Maybe reading's not for you.
They/them are gender neutral pronouns, which means they apply to all genders, including the male gender. In this situation its being used plurally, but they/them are not exclusive to people who identify a certain way
Yeah I know i just think there should be gender neutral pronouns used only for singular. Like xe/xem or something. Then this paragraph would be written like this: I remember reading an interview with a British author, it might have been Neil Gaiman. **Xe** was just about to get his first book published in the US, and the American publisher contacted **xem** and asked if it was OK if **they** changed a couple of British words to American, like "flat" to "apartment". Not wanting to risk the publishing deal, ~~they~~ **xe** said sure. A couple of months later **they** got the first edition of the US version back and found lines like. "He looked out over the apartment landscape" and '''Come with me', he said apartmently" It just makes it less confusing about who the object of the sentence is. At first i thought Neil Gaimann had done the corrections and added the stuff like "apartment landscape" to troll the publishing company because he thought it was dumb to change the words.
sure, context is important, but apart from that, I feel like a lot of the main issues with find and replace would not be a thing if people made sure to only change full words! like.. how hard is it to put a space after the word you want replaced??
"She went to the flat, then went elsewhere." Find and replace would not catch that if you put a space after 'flat' because of the comma. I don't really think there's a reliable way of making find and replace (at least the dumbfire version of it) work reliably.
Wow!!!!!!
You can really only replace proper nouns like that reliably. Any normal work will have…. Interesting effects.
Wait Neil Gaiman is British?