I know, just toying with the metaphor of a clogged drain.
I used to be a bit of a scold about grammar and spelling myself. A lack of style bothers me more nowadays. Everyone should feel welcome to play with our language. It doesn’t take a logodaedalus to construct an unglued apothegm, and we are all the richer for it; I am more disappointed by those who don’t try.
The problem is that language is meant to facilitate communication, not a toy to be played around with. This sort of thing does nothing to help people who speak English as a second language. It just confuses them more.
In this case, the message came from the medical group my former doctor is a part of. Sure, this particular case is pretty harmless (just mildly infuriating), but just fucking around with language for fun in such settings sounds like a terrible idea to me.
I know, just toying with the metaphor of a clogged drain.
I used to be a bit of a scold about grammar and spelling myself. A lack of style bothers me more nowadays. Everyone should feel welcome to play with our language. It doesn’t take a logodaedalus to construct an unglued apothegm, and we are all the richer for it; I am more disappointed by those who don’t try.
The problem is that language is meant to facilitate communication, not a toy to be played around with. This sort of thing does nothing to help people who speak English as a second language. It just confuses them more.
In this case, the message came from the medical group my former doctor is a part of. Sure, this particular case is pretty harmless (just mildly infuriating), but just fucking around with language for fun in such settings sounds like a terrible idea to me.
You would have a point if they had said "to unstop texts from this number, reply with “start”.
But they didn’t.
They quoted the word and explicitly defined the meaning they assigned to it. There is no ambiguity.