Re: Usage errors that irritate you the most?

R.C. Payne wrote:
On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:52:14 +0000, Mike Lyle wrote:

John Varela wrote:
[...]
Wikipedia and Hallmark both say it's Mother's and it's hard to argue
with such distinguished authorities, but my guess is that Mothers
with no apostrophe is almost as common. I can't get Google to
distinguish the three forms.

Yes, it's a shame Google isn't run by people who have some
experience in designing a search engine: it could be really useful.

Google certainly know how to design a search engine. What they have
accepted is that many people on the internet can not write grammatical
English, and the people searching for material on the web are more
interested in content than they are in grammatical accuracy. By
neglecting any apostrophes, correct or otherwise, they get the right
content without losing the ungrammatical (but otherwise relevant).

It would be no trouble to offer clicks for "Ignore/Exact punctuation"
and "Case-sensitive/Not case-sensitive". If this would inconvenience the
unsophisticated, they could make those features options in their
Advanced Search.

So therefore they /don't/ know how to design a search engine.

--
Mike.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: My Saddest Post Over?
    ... On Sep 18, 10:56 pm, Robert Henderson ... Perhaps Google has problems with the apostrophes, ... if you check you will find that if you include an apostrophe ... USENET post to be indexed by the search engine. ...
    (uk.sport.cricket)
  • Re: [fw-wiz] (no subject)
    ... I shouldn't have said protocol but setup or design. ... "Does anyone have any ideas for blocking Google's new Google Talk ... If Google Talk was using a different IP address than the Search Engine, ... talk.google.com is an alias for talk.l.google.com. ...
    (Firewall-Wizards)
  • Re: My Saddest Post Over?
    ... Perhaps Google has problems with the apostrophes, ... if you check you will find that if you include an apostrophe ... however Andy also verified that the query didn't match anything ... USENET post to be indexed by the search engine. ...
    (uk.sport.cricket)
  • Re: Usage errors that irritate you the most?
    ... with no apostrophe is almost as common. ... it's a shame Google isn't run by people who have some ... Google certainly know how to design a search engine. ... So therefore they /don't/ know how to design a search engine. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: alternative to Google Groups?
    ... Google seems to be unable to design a search engine. ... try to find your own Usenet posts using a Google ... The second worst thing Google ever did was taking over DejaNews. ...
    (alt.usage.english)