Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 2051 Location: Midwest, USA
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:30 pm Post subject: Wording Assistance needed
I was polishing the Selecting and Filling a Cell Range article today after finding a note in the history page from Jacqueline indicating it needed some polish.
I ran into this sentence:
Quote:
You can use the Paste Special function to perform arithmetical operations on the values of a cell range.
I know that "arithmetical operations" needs to be changed, but I'm not sure to what.
Mathematical operations doesn't seem quite right, nor does arithmetic operations.
But I'm also aware that mathematical terminology isn't my forte. Does anyone have either other suggestions or a preference for one term (arithmetic or mathmatical) over the other?
I think there's nothing at all wrong with 'arithmetical operations' as it stands, actually. 'Arithmetic' is first and foremost a noun (its lesser role as an adjective is archaic), and 'arithmetical' is the modern adjective. At least, this is the case in British English - I don't know about elsewhere.
I'd consider 'arithmetical operations' to be the most apposite and unambiguous phrase to use in this context, since arithmetic refers specifically to the science of calculation, a subset of mathematics.
I'm commenting from the standpoint of a linguist here, not as a mathematician, I should point out .
Interesting - the US English Merriam-Webster dictionary lists 'arithmetic' as primary, 'arithmetical' as secondary adjective form. My Shorter Oxford English dictionary (a big UK English tome) says the opposite. I don't have access to a Canadian English dictionary, so I don't know what the Canadian version is.
I've been giving this some more thought - to my ear/eye, if spoken out loud, 'arithMETic calculations' would sound more euphonious than 'arithMETical calculations', but when written down, it feels the other way round to me, as a Brit.
Given that the NeoOffice English-speaking user base is bound to have many more US than UK English-speakers, perhaps you should change it to 'arithmetic calculations' and we Brits will cringe and feel patronisingly superior, but be too polite to comment on it .
Can we not just say "perform arithmetic on cells" (the noun) or does that end up sounding even stranger?
Or maybe even the more generic "perform simple calculations," or does that become too non-specific?
yoxi's US dictionary is right: from what I remember of my math classes, we used "arithmetic" (the adjective) fairly often, but never "arithmetical" AFAICR.
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