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enchawntment!: it's a little odd that in office 2013 they changed the grammar of the confirmation message for search and replace
enchawntment!: 2010 says "x replacements were made"
enchawntment!: 2013 says "We made x replacements"
enchawntment!: I dunno if they just wanted to move away from the passive voice, or what, but I find myself thinking, "who we, Billy G?"
Stygian Syzygy: heh
enchawntment!: it's the ghost of Clippy
Stygian Syzygy: .... no
enchawntment!: well, then who is the other party to the "we"?
enchawntment!: if not some kind of embodiment of the software?
enchawntment!: actually, since English doesn't distinguish between exclusive and inclusive we, maybe I should be picturing imps or something
enchawntment!: like, not it and I made the replacements, but two or more of them, whatever they are
enchawntment!: "We made x replacements. NOW GIVE US THE SACRIFICE"
enchawntment!: 2010 says "x replacements were made"
enchawntment!: 2013 says "We made x replacements"
enchawntment!: I dunno if they just wanted to move away from the passive voice, or what, but I find myself thinking, "who we, Billy G?"
Stygian Syzygy: heh
enchawntment!: it's the ghost of Clippy
Stygian Syzygy: .... no
enchawntment!: well, then who is the other party to the "we"?
enchawntment!: if not some kind of embodiment of the software?
enchawntment!: actually, since English doesn't distinguish between exclusive and inclusive we, maybe I should be picturing imps or something
enchawntment!: like, not it and I made the replacements, but two or more of them, whatever they are
enchawntment!: "We made x replacements. NOW GIVE US THE SACRIFICE"
no subject
Date: Feb. 28th, 2016 11:30 pm (UTC)From:More seriously, I would expect it to be the "impersonal we" used to imply a first person of indeterminate number, as seen in academia (how similar this is to "As Seen On TV" is left as an exercise to the reader).
This approach to helping users actually see some of the demi-agency inherent in software is... interesting to observe gaining currency, though as usual my stock background fear is "which psychological resource is it not negotiating over which will get depleted tragedy-of-the-commons style".