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. > > > 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
