OT: "doubt" vs "question".
Patricia Shanahan wrote:
Andrew Thompson wrote:
On Aug 31, 2:06 am, Daniel Pitts
<newsgroup.spamfil...@virtualinfinity.net> wrote:
...
Just to be clear. To the average contributor in this group, "Doubt"
means you believe something is not true.
Absolutely. If you have doubts,
a) see your local shaman or
b) run a quick test to satisfy your suspicions one
way or another.
If you have a question, ask it.
I realise that language gradually changes, but this
is too much of a change for me to put up with, without
comment.
This has been discussed here before. There is at least one widely used
dialect of English in which "doubt" does mean the same as "question" in
both the USA and English dialects of English. This is an internationally
distributed and read newsgroup, not a USA specific newsgroup, so there
is no good reason to waste time insisting on the USA dialect only.
I agree that we shouldn't expect the US dialect only, but if you read my
post thoroughly, you would see my argument for avoiding "doubt". The
summary of my argument is the majority of English writers on this group
tend to understand "doubt" as questioning the truth of a statement,
rather than not knowing a statement at all.
--
Daniel Pitts' Tech Blog: <http://virtualinfinity.net/wordpress/>