I appreciate that English is a second languge for most of the Free Pascal authors, and I don't mean to criticize, but as a native English speaker, I would like to suggest a correction to one of the compiler error messages.

The message is "Wrong amount of parameters specified" It would be better to say "Wrong number of parameters specified"

The reason is that in English, "amount" is used to measure a real number, a continuously-variable quantity (e.g. "the amount of water in the bucket") whereas "number" is used to measure an integer, a countable quantity (e.g. "the number of tennis balls in the bucket").

Since the error message refers to a countable, integer quantity, it should refer to the "number of parameters" not the "amount."

I hope this is helpful, and thank you again for an excellent product.

- Rich

Hello Rich,
I am also a native English speaker. Although I am not on the Free Pascal development team. This seems to me to be a _very_ minor issue. Especially since the current term fits perfectly. "Wrong amount of parameters" is perfectly legal in the English language.

Sorry, I just get very annoyed with those who nitpick on something so terribly trivial and have that one thing not even an issue anyway.

- Matt

While I agree with you that he makes too big a thing of the "error", (it is *almost* if not quite contrived) the fact is that "wrong amount" instead of "wrong number" is a rather awkward construction in this instance. If the project directors want the finest possible product, then shouldn't this attitude also include grammar and usage? After all, many user manuals written by native speakers could also use a good once-over so why not this one? And, intelligent people in general often like to know the correct way to do a given task and don't mind being told of a mistake. Some of the non-native speakers on this list will some day work for US companies, where excellent language skills can be a big plus.

gj

Especially since the current term fits perfectly. "Wrong amount of parameters" is perfectly legal in the English language.

I beg to differ, but it is not, since "parameters" is countable, the correct word is "number", not "amount."

Sorry, I just get very annoyed with those who nitpick ...

You missed my point.  I'm not attacking the FPC developers;
I'm trying to help them.

gj bart wrote,

If the project directors want the finest possible product, then shouldn't this attitude also include grammar and usage?

Thank you, gj, you got the spirit of what I meant.

Certainly no programs will crash if this "bug" isn't fixed, and anyone using the compiler will understand what is meant, but what is the point in annoying those users who, like me, put a value on precise use of English?

- Rich

I beg to differ, but it is not, since "parameters" is countable, the correct word is "number", not "amount."

I will agree to disagree on this point since I really think it is a non-issue anyway. Perhaps Oxford English states this is the case but I still contend that either would be fine.

You missed my point. I'm not attacking the FPC developers; I'm trying to help them.

I get your point now.

-snip-

I am sorry for going off the way I did. I was just in a bad mood. Can we please close this thread now?

- Matt

I've changed the message file accordingly in the main branch.

Just out of curiosity:
I don't want to argue - I'm not an native english speaker - but what do you do with 'A huge amount of money' - something which I hear often on US TV shows ? Money is countable, so shouldn't it be 'number' then ?

Michael.

I am not English native speacker either, but "money" is uncountable, whereas "coin" is countable, just the same as "milk" is uncountable, but "litres of milk" are countable...

Aitor

I'am not a native speaker either but I guess because it is some kind of sum.

To Paraphrase

I think using the term countable was a little confusing. It's a discrete/continuous thing. 'Number of' is discrete. 'Amount of' is continuous. You can convert continuous things to discrete by breaking them up into units. Litres for water, Dollars for money etc. When you think of counting money you are counting units of money.

Of course, nothing stops people from getting this wrong. Most supermarkets have '12 Items or less' lanes instead of '12 items or fewer'. The latter is correct.

Just to be extra nitpicky. If you want to be precise I would recommend 'Incorrect number of parameters'. 'Wrong' has multiple meanings and while unlikely, it would be problematic if someone thought that the number of parameters that they had used was morally impermissible. ;-)

Actually, in English class, here in the NL, I was also taught that amount is for continuous scales.

As a British English speaker, I find the two terms interchangable. Certainly not confusing in any way. I believe the devs. should do whatever they feel right on this matter, but I'd personally leave it as it is.

Matt (not the other Matt who replied previously)

Am also a British national and English speaker but I agree with the original poster the best English is to say "Wrong number of parameters". American English speakers might disagree.

However, FPC isn't the most notorious for such slips. Digital (now Compaq now HP) had an office automation prodcut called ALL-IN-1 and one of the messages there used the word "writting". As this was Digital major software product and had more than 50% of the OA market. A nice gaff for them to make. I think we can forgive the fpc crew for using a possibly wrong word --- at least they spelt it correctly.

Matt (not the other Matt who replied previously)

We do get confusing don't we? :-)

- Matt (the other Matt) hehehe

I've changed the message file accordingly in the main branch.

Thank you.

Just out of curiosity: I don't want to argue - I'm not an native english speaker - but what do you do with 'A huge amount of money' - something which I hear often on US TV shows ? Money is countable, so shouldn't it be 'number' then ?

I have heard the expression "to count money" but your money is not always an integer. You can easily have a fraction of a Euro. Many monetary amounts are expressed to several decimal places. You can have a huge amount of money but a only huge number of coins. You can have 3.25 Euros in your pocket but not 3.25 parameters in a Pascal function call. So it's "amount of money" but "number of parameters" like "number of coins."

Matt Emson wrote

As a British English speaker, I find the two terms interchangable.

Amazingly, some English speakers don't understand the subtle difference.

Neil Graham wrote

Just to be extra nitpicky. If you want to be precise I would recommend 'Incorrect number of parameters'. 'Wrong' has multiple meanings and while unlikely, it would be problematic if someone thought that the number of parameters that they had used was morally impermissible. ;-)

I think that "Wrong" and "Incorrect" are synonyms, but I understand your point about not making a moral judgement. Perhaps "Mismatch in number of parameters" would be a good message?

I remember in the old DOS days people felt scolded by the "Bad command or file name" message.

- Rich

Amazingly some people will argue a point, even when it is so small and insignificant as this one. I'd rather see FPC released for the PowerPC processor family than have the developers wasting their time with nit-picking, pointless and time wasting like this. If you understood the error well enough to correct the grammar, you understood the error. What's the problem? Maybe each developer should write the errors in their own language. Let's see how many of us would have a problem with that..

I'm not meaning to be overly harsh, I think the term 'drop it' could be used here.

Matt

From: Full_Name
To:
Subject: Re: [fpc-pascal]Compiler uses bad English: "amount" vs "number" Date sent: Mon, 27 May 2002 16:24:43 +0100 (BST) Send reply to:

.
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Amazingly some people will argue a point, even when it is so small and insignificant as this one. I'd rather see FPC released for the PowerPC processor family than have the developers wasting their time with nit-picking, pointless and time wasting like this. If you understood

_Please_, stop this discussion (in this list, that's it). I don't know if I can speak for other FPC developers here, but personally I'm grateful for every correction in our messages. OTOH, reading this whole thread takes me much more time than simple correcting the particular message. If you feel a need to continue, you could move the thread to fpc-other.

the error well enough to correct the grammar, you understood the error. What's the problem? Maybe each developer should write the errors in their own language. Let's see how many of us would have a problem with that..

You might have a slight problem with my Czech, I guess. ;-)

Tomas

Just so you know... this was yet another Matt. :-P

Hi,

Personally I agree with the fact that it's nice to hear from people caring about using accurate English in the compiler, with the hope that this will help to reduce possible confusions derived from using bad English. Having said that, I also admit that I expected that this kind of problems should involve at most two or three messages, until it seems to be correct and agreed, and the developers make such a change. In my opinion, in this cases, the only thing one can do is to check documentation, but as (in my opinion, unfortunately) there's no English Language Academy (as there's for example, for Spanish language), the resources one can check can be partial.

On my side, and with the idea of clarifying this at all, I have checked several books by "Collins Cobuild" (Birmingham University), which in my opinion collect a useful database of (British and American, and probably others') English ussage.
As a result of the research, I was unable to determine if "AMOUNT" can be used for both countable and uncountable nouns. It can be used for uncountable nouns for sure, and in fact, all the examples I have seen were made using uncountable nouns. The only thing I've found is this: "English ussage" says:
"You do not talk about an ammount of things or people" And as an example, it says:
INCORRECT: "amount of chairs"
CORRECT: "number of chairs"
But does not mention the words "countable" or "uncountable" explicitely.

Just as an English student, I am of the opinion that "amount" is perhaps to be used with uncountable nouns, and "number" for countable, just as "much" is used for uncountable and "many" for countable. Personally, the option that I like best is Rich's one, "Mismatch in number of parameters"

Aitor

PS: "MONEY" is uncountable, according to ANY Collins cobuild reference. Please, do remember that uncountable does not mean "unmeasurable". MILK is uncountable, but you measure it by litres or paints. I suppose I pay more attention to this because in languages coming from latin the difference between countable/uncountable doesn't seem to be so important as it is in English (and I guess in German (?)).

Quoting Aitor Santamaria Merino :

I suppose I pay more attention to this because in languages coming from latin the difference between countable/uncountable doesn't seem to be so important as it is in English (and I guess in German (?)).

It's not all that important in many English dialects. Unfortunately there are some that would like English usage to stay stagnent and archaic rather than dynamic. Mind you, my own dialect takes the term 'Well smart' to mean 'very good', so I suppose it takes all types.