Opinion sought

[venta]

[Poll #230701]

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

And, somewhere, I've got documentation to prove it. 'fraid I've no longer got access to my usual references.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the record, the earliest citation of "endian" is from Gulliver's travels, according to which end of an egg should be cracked open first.

Really must clear the crap off my home machine!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Blimey... I didn't realise it was a Real Word, as opposed to something sad comptuer users had dreamed up.

And one notional kudo to onebyone.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Dreamed up by sad computer users in explicit reference to Swift. See this paper, particularly the appendix.

I'd be interested to know if the OED has any citations between Swift and that paper other than direct discussions of Gulliver's Travels.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

The original use of the word is still the first thing that jumps into my mind when someone uses it!

(Is that sadder or not?)

[venta.livejournal.com]

beckyc -- This should be a ticky box so I can pick the top three. 1 and 2 would mean subtly different things.

Could you elaborate on that ? What would be the difference between endianity and endianness ?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Well, as an analogy, consider the words
purity
pureness
and note how you would typically use them in slightly different ways.

(OK, OK, I'm making it up ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, I don't believe I've ever used the word pureness. Can someone put it in a sentence for me ?

[(Anonymous)]

> Can someone put it in a sentence for me ?

I don't believe I've ever used the word pureness.

--
Richard
(I'll get my coat)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Haven't you? Gosh. That's probably why you were asking why you'd need both -ness and -ity then isn't it? ;-)

Try thinking of other words that come in both the "ness" and the "ity" forms then? Simpleness/Simplicity? Austerity/Austereness? Gullibility/Gullibleness?

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

Surely the adjective already comes from a noun, therefore extending it into another noun is purely bad grammar?

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that, too. Surely it's just "end"?

Is this coming from "big endian" and "little endian"?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Is this coming from "big endian" and "little endian"?

Indeed.

So if I want to write something like "we can determine the endianness of x", using "end" just won't do.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yep. As in "ten little, nine little, eight little endian..." !

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

It's always verbally referred to as endianness wherever I've worked, and a quick google shows that the double-n spelling is 4 times more prevalent than the single-n.

[(Anonymous)]

Seems to me both "endianity" and "endianness" are correct, but there's no reason in the world why you couldn't just write "byte order".

--
Richard

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

there's no reason in the world

Unless you're not talking about byte order. The concept also applies to dates, in which case 2004-01-09 is big endian, 9 January 2004 is little endian, and January 9, 2004 is middle endian. And eggs.

[venta.livejournal.com]

January 9, 2004 is middle endian

And it was all going so well.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. But if I observe that the US writes dates middle endian then no-one will know what I mean.


If, however, I point out that December 8 (as opposed to 8 December) is Just Wrong, I'm probably onto a better thing. December 8 means the 8th (instance of) December, like in Henry VII or Omen III, not the 8th (day of) December.

And if I see "best before January 04" on a US-bought lunch, would that mean it's 5 days out of date or I've got until the end of the month to eat it?

And all you BBC newsreaders: it's 11/9, not 9/11!!


--
Richard

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

That's a rare one - a proper .sig separator on LiveJournal!

(How many points must that be worth for I-Spy LJ?)

[(Anonymous)]

> How many points must that be worth for I-Spy LJ?

25

--
Richard.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Ah, Iwas confused. 'Endian', I thought, already is a noun; it's wither a little endian, or abig endian, and it's someone who believes that the egg should be big or little way up, as appropriate. I'm not very awake.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I've always thought there should be a word "Displayment"

(And how about Pompousness/pomposity - those are *real* words - do you use both?)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I think it would be bad style to use both in the same document or set of documents, since they have the same meaning.

You could use both "pompousness" and "pomp", of course, since due to a quirk of etymology they don't mean the same thing.

I also not that rather splendidly, there's no shorter precise equivalent of "pompousnesslessness".

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

The comments in this thread about words people would like to see reminds me about the tale of a Belgian official, whose name I do not remember, describing some great Euro cock-up as a "misunderstandment".