Comment by toss1
5 years ago
Nice example of where it is lost in lower context environments.
Most people probably just take it at face value, or read it as implied in the limitations of the medium.
I passingly notice the discrepancy but disregard it as unimportant in this context.
You seem to deeply notice the discrepancy and complain that it isn't fixed every time, preferring always verbose precision over brevity.
In a live-in-person context, it'd be easily handled in seconds of conversation or just body language and intonation. That's all lost here.
I am sensitive to claims that we know more than we do, it is true. A lot of this is pandemic-related; I see a lot of claims about what we know about the virus that seem totally uncalibrated to the strength of the evidence, and in that context, sloppy/overconfident thinking/expression has actual consequences.
That's why many linguists consider written English and spoken English to be two different languages.
“Attempting to transcribe spoken English? Yeah. Try transcribing that.”