Re: To waffle, ‘to waver, to vacillate, to equivocate, to dither’

Antonio Marques wrote:

Bertel Lund Hansen <gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:

jerryfriedman wrote:
 

By the way, Steve isn't the only participant in a.u.e. who doesn't
notice Subject lines.

 Certainly not.
 

I don't know how that happens,

 Automatically. And I hate it if I am 'forced' to quote something that
appears only in the subject line.
 

Never mind that in the bit that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire on what
'that' meant, it was quite explicitly said 'dither'.

The "it" there isn't idiomatic (though English has similar constructions that
do have an "it").  You could write "'dither' was quite explicitly said."
I might write something like "the meaning was explicitly 'dither'."
Also, "on" would be better as "about", or better still deleted, in my
opinion.

Of course, that type of incivility is part of the reason why historically
(a number of) sci.langers hold aueers (by default) in some measure of
contempt.

I have my prejudices, but holding the posters in a newsgroup in any
measure of contempt by default hasn't occurred to me.
--
Jerry Friedman