Re: [PATCH] doc: replace jargon word "impact" with "effect"/"affect"

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Varun Varada wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 at 04:24, Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@suse.de> wrote:
> > while using "will not impact" in an incorrect or unclear way may be a
> > problem the word "impact" in itself is not "jargon".
> 
> The word means "to have a strong or marked effect on" (v.) and "a
> strong or market influence" (n.) when used figuratively; it is not
> synonymous with "affect" and "effect", respectively, as shown even by
> all of the entries you've cited. Using it as such is the incorrect
> part, so those are the instances I've changed in the diff.

There are two ways impact can be used as a verb: transitive and
intransitive, but git doesn't seem to be using the intransitive form. In
the transitive form it usually means to strike "the car impacted the
tree". But it can also mean to have a desired effect "reducing CO2
emissions impacted climate change".

None of these are used in the documentation, we have things like:

  the index does not impact the outcome

Which is clearly wrong (unless we are talking about possitive outcome of
the outcome, which makes no sense).

As a noun it can mean a siginificant or major effect: "the impact of
science".

However, the documentation is not using it that way:

  the runtime impact of tracking all omitted objects

The noun usage is less wrong than the verb usage, but it's still wrong.

The verb usage could be corrected by changing "the index does not
impact", to "the index does not have an impact on".

But why bother? The word "affect" is a much superior choice.

I'm in favor of this change.

-- 
Felipe Contreras