whilst
whilst
(OP)
I’m a Brit now working in the USA. When I have to prepare technical documents etc the word “whilst” occasionally creeps in.
My colleagues always laugh and tend to edit it out.
What’s wrong with whilst
Anyone have any similar situations?
My colleagues always laugh and tend to edit it out.
What’s wrong with whilst
Anyone have any similar situations?





RE: whilst
:)
Regards,
Cory
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.
RE: whilst
I had the same “laugh and bafflement” reaction yesterday when I used “whilst”in a phone call with our colleges in the states, here is a good link that explains the while / whilst thing.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-whi2.htm
A clean house is a sign of a broken computer.
RE: whilst
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/whilst
Whilst? (British Commonwealth usage)
thread1010-104586
RE: whilst
Didn't realize it had come up before.
I'm just going through a red-lined doc and they want "Especial attention is to be paid to...." Changed to "Special attention is to be paid to.....".
Personally I think it loses something in the translation!
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
Since you mentioned special, I thought I might mention that Speciality is replaced with Specialty here in the USA.
Regards,
Cory
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.
RE: whilst
I leave "whilst" alone when editing documents for conference publication, which is more of an international forum, but I'd probably pull it out if the document was meant to be representing the voice of a U.S. entity.
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
One word that really bugs me though is "healthful", I hate it.
I try to live a healthy lifestyle not a healthful one.
Fortunately, it's never come up at work.
RE: whilst
Whilst thine calculation wouldst be lesser than the aforementioned number:
Thou shouldst do thine adding;
Or, according to some, mainly in formal UK communication as described in this link -
h
RE: whilst
You may not like healthful, but it is used to make a distinction. A person can be healthy if they eat food that is healthful. Healthy food has good health, but may not provide good health to its consumer.
Regards,
Cory
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
“Hold my sword whilst I run upon it.”
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
"Whilst maintaining the value of variable A adjust variable B..."
Sounds better, especially in a formal document than
"While maintaining the value of variable A adjust variable B..."
But I guess it's just me. Like I said when it's pointed out to me that I've used it I change it.
Ken
RE: whilst
"programme" and "program" have distinct and different meanings in English English though. We use the appropriate one for the given context.
RE: whilst
Chris
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 10-27-06)
RE: whilst
colour - color
grey - gray (sometimes i forgot which is which)
neighbour - neighbor
aluminium - aluminum
aeroplane - airplane
These are some of the words I have noticed in 10 years learning english.
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
Aluminium (UK)vs Aluminum (US). "Whilst" many elements finish with "ium" (potassium, strontium, barium, cadmium, Americium etc.) The americans chose to change the rules for the single case of Aluminum.
Wheres the logic in the american date format
Month/Day/Year vs the more logical Day/Month/Year
loose vs lose ?????? Did I loose something, maybe my horse; though that would be set loose.
Outta vs out of
ad infinitum
illegitimi non carborundum est.
RE: whilst
Really? It's always a pleasure to be lectured by an expert.
Platinum, Molybdenum and Tantalum spring to mind.
Davy originally named it alumium, then aluminum. but somebody else (presumably a pom) suggested aluminium to fit in with the other recently described metals.
-um is of course the latin ending for many metals, ferrum, plumbum, argentum and aurum for example.
So I think blaming the colonials for this one is a bit of a stretch.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: whilst
Obviously I cant be an expert in everything
So we can assign that particular case to being a multinational screw up.
FOETS
The truth is out there. Anyone know the URL?
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
ht
English "roots":
"A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Other Germanic languages (including Old English, Old Norse, and Dutch): 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1% "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
I always took the complex "roots" to be the main reason the language can be so darn difficult. Its also my excuse for not learning too many other languages - I already had to learn pieces of at least four!
RE: whilst
Rhyming slang (AKA - Cockney Rhyming Slang)
Berk, I believed, was shortened from The Berkley Hunt, which is rhyming slang for.....rude parts, oh dear, now I've said it.
My dad would have clumped me for saying that, even though he spent half his life in the navy. These days, the sort of language you only used to hear on the shop floor is on the TV, nightly.
A useful site:
http://www.hps.com/~tpg/ukdict/index.php
I'd be willing to bet that a majority of sub-25 years olds in the UK haven't read a book for pleasure in the last year.
Bill
RE: whilst
There is NO excuse for the american date format. I'm no fan of am/pm time either.
Clinging to fractional vs. metric , Farenheit (and to some extent "Celsius" ) vs. centigrade, and ,,,dare I say it - currencies vs. the gold standard (metric measure of course), are also examples of sound and valuable logic being cast aside by socio-political stupidity.
When a large percentage of people begin taking a lot more education and substance from their schooling and remember more facts than excuses ("when in Rome, do as the Romans do" and "get all you can ... poison the rest" for example), we may witness some better cooperation among people and nations. Inequality pushes roots everywhere.
RE: whilst
h
.
RE: whilst
Plus what's wrong with when in Rome... If I was actually in Rome then speaking English be it American or the real kind would be somewhat silly as well as rude/arogant. If one decides to move somewhere, especially another country, within reason (i.e. not breaking moral taboos etc) the onus is on you to change and adapt to fit in, not on them to change to accept you.
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
Even day/month/year isn't so sensible...the MSB should be on the left: 2006-12-04.
And fractional versus metric? I'm 1 6/7 meters tall,
and I've never found a "metric" scale that will indicate my weight in Newtons. Kilogram is a unit of mass, something that a typical bathroom scale doesn't intrinsically measure.
Now back to the original topic, already in progress...
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
Clearly not a nuts-and-bolts programmer then. LSB first vs MSB first has been a religious debate for many years.
RE: whilst
A good question.
I remember my first visit to the USA. The boss sent me to the proving ground in Yucca, Az. for a couple of weeks.
First visit, on my own and sent to the middle of, just about, nowhere.
On the drive from Las Vegas to Havasu, I took the opportunity to tour the Hoover dam. Terrific !
At the beginning of the tour, you go down into the bowels of the dam in an Art Deco style lift (elevator) and when we got to the bottom, the guide assembled us and ran through a few pieces of technical info about the dam.
The guide was probably in his sixties, had a Roy Rogers shirt and one of those string ties with a sort of clasp on it at the neck. I mustn't forget to mention the boots. I don't know where he left his horse.
When he'd finished, he asked whether there were any questions.
Like a fool, I asked "How deep is the water on the lake side of the dam".
He looked at me as if I had addressed him in an obscure dialect of Latvian.
"Scuse me?"
So I repeated the question.
He paused and thought and excused himself again.
I repeated the question, only more slowly. This time he got the gist and it turned out is was something like 450 feet.
Second problem was getting the nice waitress at the restaurant to understand me. We finally settled on a few items off the menu that she thought I'd asked for.
The people at the track weren't too bad. They liked to do their best to make us Brits look dumb, and sometimes suceeded.
It's that business about being divided by a common language, again.
Bill
RE: whilst
No, I'm not a programmer, but I still think y-m-d is more logical. If you say 04-12-2006, the most significant digit is in the middle, and unlike like time, which is sexagesimal, since the year is open-ended, there's no real base counting you can reckon on to say that you're counting in base [whatever year it is].
Cheers.
RE: whilst
The m/dd is a representation of how the dates are spoken here.
That said, I agree that m/d/y is terrible from a logical viewpoint. I am a dd/m sympathizer (not enough support around me for putting the year first other than in file and directory names) but peer pressure gets to me with the result that it's kind of random which way I write it. If I'm really looking to be unambiguous I spell out the name of the month.
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
May THE 18th, two thousand AND six.
Rule Britannia
Bill
RE: whilst
People are just more comfortable with format they grew up on.
Confusion could arise out of using a document registered or created in one country (like a birth certificate) in another using different date writing style. But it is only a matter of clarifying it there.
I also use yymmdd for file names. I do however spell out month on offical government type of documents, just to avoid confusion.
RE: whilst
I agree with you about the constant misuse of these two words - "healthy" for "healthful." I am healthy. That carrot is healthy - it was raised in conditions that prompted good size, color, vitamin content, etc. The carrot is healthful, however, for me to eat.
"Healthy" describes my state of health. "Healthful" applies to how something else is beneficial to my state of health.
RE: whilst
You had health food but not healthful food.
Anyone from the old country back me up?
RE: whilst
I can understand the distinction, but am 99% sure the British English for 'healthful' is 'good for you'.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: whilst
http
http:/
RE: whilst
RE: whilst
I tried looking up the Oxford English Dictionary, but it appears you need to pay. Bu i suppose at 20 volumes it is slightly more comprehensive than your average dictionary.
RE: whilst
RE: whilst