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6:25pm on Thursday, 17th March, 2016:

Wording

Comment

When I installed the patch to Windows 10 last week, it took so long that I was able to dig out my camera and shoot some actual screenshots of the process. These lines are particularly interesting:



I took the first one because I noticed that the language used seemed to over-used the verb "to get". They didn't need to say "We've got some new features", they could have said "We have some new features". They then used "to get" later in the sentence (which they ended in a preposition). I thought this was merely slopping grammar, and yet...

The second sentence, from a subsequent screen, does a similar thing. It has "We've made" then "to make". It's as if there's a deliberate verbal association of what they've done with the reason they've done it, in order to reinforce it.

What do you think? Just some programmer with a weak command of English, or the results of a test on focus groups that's been translated into two dozen languages to preserve the effect?

(Well, except ending the first sentence in a preposition, which doesn't translate to Latinate languages well).




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