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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • People are used to thinking about the world in terms of other people and the things that other people do. Both grammar and thought break down when you try to factor the people out of a situation. If your writing is a sea of nominalizations ("requirements" instead of "you need", "suppositions" instead of "he thinks") or passive verb-forms, you're in trouble.

    Recent bad examples I saw:

    "[module] is best used when a data import or export is required but the task cannot be completed in a single pass"

    or

    "The use of [some SQL syntax] allows this procedure to take place without requiring that the database and application program exchange the data repeatedly."

    • Yes! "The use of" is another nothing phrase that gets deleted as soon as I see it. "The use of marijuana induces a high" vs "Marijuana induces a high". "The use of [SQL syntax] allows this procedure" vs "[SQL syntax] allows this procedure".

      --Nat

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