Re: [PATCH] doc: replace jargon word "impact" with "effect"/"affect"

Michal Suchánek wrote:

Also there is no single authority on the English language. The language
is spoken in multiple distinct countries, and even within one country
there is some variation. It also evolves over time.

And this is precisely the reason why you target the least common
denominator.

Do you have **any** instance in which the sentence with "affect" reads
worse than with "impact"?

Since you can look up the meaning of the word in a general purpose
dictionary it should be an acceptable use even if it's less commonly
used in some other English-speaking parts of the world.

If you are writing classic prose, and most of your audience needs to use
the dictionary to understand what you meant, you have failed.

quoted

quoted

If you do wholesale word replacement in the project for no good reason
it only makes working with the project history harder.

I'm not sure I understand the sentiment here. As in, the Git history
will be polluted? Because the "git blame" command will only show
changes for the lines where I changed the single words.

Yes, it will be polluted. And since we have an opinion of another native
English speaker that the use of 'impact' as synonym for affect/effect is
fine this is clearly a matter of opinion.

It's not just native English speakers that read the English
documentation.

This topic somewhat interests me so I was continuing this discussion
in the hope that you either provide a specific very confusing use of the
word impact in the documentation that triggered creating this patch or
some solid evidence that the general use of word 'impact' as synonym for
affect/effect is in some way problematic but niether happened.

This is not how improvements work.

We have two options: $a, and $b. You argue that $a doesn't really
provide any advantages over $b (although it has been clearly demonstrated
that it does). But you are not providing any advantage of $b over $a
either.

Let's turn the tables around; do **you** have any evidence that "impact"
is superior to "affect" in **any** instance?

-- 
Felipe Contreras