[WikiEN-l] "Well-known"

[Steve Bennett]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Clearly, though, this is a cultural matter. "Readability" in this sort
> of sense is conditioned by the expectation that the written language is
> very close to the spoken language, for example, which is something for
> which you can find widely varying types of cases if you go to different
> languages. (It is hard to imagine this thread going the same way with
> French speakers, in particular.)

Dunno. I've written technical documents in French. I'll say this:
French grammar is harder than English grammar, with more clear-cut
rules, and many French people make mistakes. They frequently use
constructions such as "Après qu'il soit là", which is technically an
error (though I seem to recall the Académie Française eventually
conceded defeat on that one...)

> On the topic, "most known" occurs frequently in enWP, rather than "best known". I would change that. And, sadly, "more known" also is common,
> rather than "better known". I think for the latter one can speak frankly
> of a grammatical error: "known" is a participle rather than an
> adjective, while "well-known" is certainly an adjective, with
> comparative and superlative forms.

Hmm. "Known" looks and behaves a lot like an adjective there. I don't
think I'd write "most known", but I wouldn't be rushing to correct it
either. I guess I'd see it as an example of poor quality writing
rather than an error as such.

Steve