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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Your first interpretation wasn’t the case in this specific ad, because the “minimum 5-10 year experience” was on the list of “essential experience and skills” and there was a separate list of “desirables”.

    Your second explanation just supports my original infuriation - just state the range that you’re interested in, without calling it a minimum.

    Actually, I got that job, I’m still working for the company, but to your last point, I have to say it’s hilarious how bad our communications dept is at communicating to the rest of the company.





  • Not just Amazon. I had a parcel being delivered by DPD while I was on holidays. I checked the delivery’s webpage, which said “if you’re not in, we’ll leave it with your neighbour”. Great!

    While I was on holiday, I checked the status on the day of delivery: “you weren’t in, we returned it to DPD depot”. Somewhat annoying, but the depot is only 15 minute drive from mine, I can go collect it then I’m back home.

    Checked it again when I got back home: “returned to sender”.

    The fun thing was that the item was the modem from my new internet provider, and my old provider was ceasing their services that very day.


  • I’m also a non-native speaker and I’ve also been taught to speak a certain way (“you and I are going” but “he saw you and me”; don’t split infinitives; don’t end sentences with prepositions, etc.), but then I read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct and - even more relevant here - The Sense of Style. We’ve been taught to use language a certain way, but our teachers were following the prescriptivist school of thought. You say these rules were written by native folk, but it’s often (if not usually) the native folk that say less when they “should” be saying fewer.

    I know you said it’s only mildly infuriating to you, but if proper use of language is something dear to your heart (as it is to mine) - I really recommend the above books as I think this is something not worth to get even mildly infuriated about. The border between less and fewer is fuzzier than you think and - in the words of Pinker - once you really master the distinction - that’s one fewer thing for you to worry about.

    Edit: typo