Since the invention of the printing press and mass-produced books in the 15th century, silent letters/syllables in written texts have unnecessarily hastened deforestation
I used to buy boxes for almost 10 years. Paper companies plant trees to replenish their supply. I bet they’ve sold off parts of their forests since the internet and “paperless” started. Lost jobs for loggers, paper mills have shut down, and then all the lost loads for truckers. Switching from bottles to cans equals less boxes. Emails and PDF is less paper. If we weren’t ordering online all the time the impact would be even greater.
Many words are written the same way. In both cases, context is what does the actual trick. If you read "the damn was 10 meters high" it goes as far as assuming a typo.
I agree and would go further, simplifying words so they more closely match how you pronounce them. So that there are not 3 completely different words, written exactly the same.
A lot of paper is wasted because we tend to use standard "document sized" paper (A4, US Letter).
For content that is not designed to fill the page (poster or whatever) it will fill a random amount of the final page and on average half of that sheet will be wasted.
If smaller paper sizes were used more often it could save a fair bit.
17 Comments
KISSmyOS@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 2y
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2y
Zerlyna@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2y
I used to buy boxes for almost 10 years. Paper companies plant trees to replenish their supply. I bet they’ve sold off parts of their forests since the internet and “paperless” started. Lost jobs for loggers, paper mills have shut down, and then all the lost loads for truckers. Switching from bottles to cans equals less boxes. Emails and PDF is less paper. If we weren’t ordering online all the time the impact would be even greater.
UmeU@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 2y
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Number358@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y
finn_der_mensch@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 2y
m l, n n
Dieterlan@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
Is this loss? /s
Kelly@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 2y
They might be silent when spoken but still offer disambiguation between words/meanings when written e.g. "dam" vs "damn".
Eheran@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
Many words are written the same way. In both cases, context is what does the actual trick. If you read "the damn was 10 meters high" it goes as far as assuming a typo.
WarmSoda@lemm.ee · 6 pts · 2y
If it was written out as "God damn that damn is 10 meters tall" People would complain that they're spelled the same way.
Kelly@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2y
Another example: "Dam that river!" vs. "Damn that river!" could be confused.
Kelly@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y
True context helps - but I wouldn't want to consciously smurfify the language.
Eheran@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
I agree and would go further, simplifying words so they more closely match how you pronounce them. So that there are not 3 completely different words, written exactly the same.
ALERT@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 2y
Ah, the famous tar.gz printing
Kelly@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
A lot of paper is wasted because we tend to use standard "document sized" paper (A4, US Letter).
For content that is not designed to fill the page (poster or whatever) it will fill a random amount of the final page and on average half of that sheet will be wasted.
If smaller paper sizes were used more often it could save a fair bit.
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 2y
Smaller paper sizes would waste a lot more paper because the margins would be a bigger portion of the sheet.
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 2y
Not sure about silent letters specifically, but we could certainly compress our language to the smallest lossless format.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2y
neptune@dmv.social · 1 pts · 2y
ASL peeps should check in on this conversation