Spelling or Grammar

The question came up the other day at work of whether a certain class of spelling error should actually qualify as a grammatical error.  This is the class of spelling errors where the misspelling is actually a valid spelling of a different word.  The specific example given was the words "there," "their," and "they're."  Because these words all sound the same, it is quite common for inexperienced writers to use the wrong one.  One person argued that this is not a spelling error, because the word written is the correct spelling of a different word.  The argument was that the writer actually used the wrong word, and thus the error was grammar, not spelling.

Before we can answer this question, it is essential to understand how grammar and spelling fit into language as a whole.  Spelling is simple.  Spelling is the pattern of glyphs used to represent words in written language (much like spoken language uses patterns of sound).  In some languages, symbols have specific meanings.  Using the wrong symbol might dramatically change the meaning of the writing.  In other languages, symbols represent sounds.  In these languages, using the wrong glyph might change the meaning of the writing, but the misspelled word will still sound very similar to the intended word, so readers might be able to determine the intent of the writer from context.  In some languages (notably, English), only patterns of characters have meaning.  Characters may be loosely associated with sounds, but the pattern is often more important than the sounds.  In these languages, spelling and context are both important to the written language, and the sounds are most frequently used to determine how an unfamiliar word sounds (often mildly incorrectly).  By definition, spelling is purely the realm of written language.  It has no connection to spoken language aside from its use in recording it as written language.

Grammar is about structure.  The grammar of a language determines the order of words and where certain kinds of words go within that.  It can also dictate where words with similar meanings are used, for example, "is" is used with singular subjects and "are" is used with plural subjects (in English, contextual grammar covers possessiveness, plurality, gender, and tense; some languages include social status in their contextual grammar).  Grammar does not cover using the correct word, except where the correct word is dictated by structure or context.  For example, if a person says, "I am going to Grandfather's house," when they really meant to say, "I am going to Joe's house," no grammatical error was made.  The person just said the wrong word.  Misspeaking is not inherently a grammatical error.  Grammatical errors occur when words are used out of order or when a synonym of the appropriate word is used in the wrong context ("is" vs "are" or "his" vs "hers" for example).

Now that we have a basic understanding of what spelling and grammar are, let's look at the original question again.  The author has written some text.  Perhaps he accidentally wrote "there" when he meant "their."  On the surface, it looks like a simple misspelling.  The catch is that author did use a valid spelling of another word.  To the reader, the author used the wrong word.  Is this a grammatical error?  It is not.  This is not even in the realm of grammar (he could have written "truck" and it would not be a grammatical error either).  The new word may be used in a grammatically inappropriate place for the word type, but this is merely a symptom of using the wrong word.  It is also not a context sensitive synonym of the correct word.  The problem is not with grammar.  The author used the wrong written word.  The author probably regards it as a misspelling of the intended word.  To the reader, the wrong word was used.  Even in the spoken language though, it would not be a grammatical error.  In fact, in spoken English it would not be an error at all.


In spoken English, "their," "there," and "they're" are the same word.  They are the same word that just happens to have three different meanings.  In spoken language, we differentiate based on context.  Words with multiple meanings are incredibly common in spoken language.  Some written languages differentiate by using different spellings for the different meanings.  This is so common we have a word for it.  Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently.  In other words, this problem does not exist outside of the written language.  It is only a grammatical error if the correct word is an incorrectly used context specific synonym of the word actually used.  The actual word used was a totally unrelated word, in the written language, which means it cannot be a grammatical error.

I could continue to discuss the different options, but this just brought up something else we should look at.  The written language and the spoken language are different.  The spoken language has a single word with three definitions.  The written language has a different word for each of those definitions.  The fact is, they are not the same language.  In fact, they don't even use the same senses.  One is conveyed through sound, while the other is conveyed through light.  They do use very similar grammar (grammar in the spoken language tends to be looser, but aside from that they are the same).  The author is not merely writing English.  The author is translating spoken English to written English.  It also turns out that the author does not know written English as well as spoken English.  The consequence is that the author used the wrong word when he translated.  The author knew the meaning of the intended word in spoken English, but while he did know the three words it could be translated to, he did not know the meaning of those words.  He guessed and picked the wrong one.

The actual problem is not spelling or grammar.  The language construct may have been grammatically incorrect as a result of using the wrong word, but the problem is still not a grammar error.  The error was mistranslation.  It was covered up by the assumption that spoken English and written English are the same language.

"Not a Belief System"

One of the perennial arguments between atheists and theists (especially Christians and very especially evangelical Christians) is whether or not atheism qualifies as a religion.  Theists say that not believing in God qualifies just as much as a belief as believing in God.  Atheists say that atheism is a lack of belief, and therefore does not qualify as a belief system at all, making it a lack of religion.  Ultimately though, everyone involved in this argument is wrong in some way.  The problem is that the English language (as well as many European languages) hides the truth.

The language problem that causes the confusion in this debate is the difference between active and passive negatives.  English lacks a general purpose active negative.  To compensate for this, we often use the passive negative, "not," as an active negative, and we understand it as an active or passive negative based on context.  For example, I can say, "I don't like coffee."  Because the "not" in "don't" is a passive negative, this phrase does not imply that I dislike coffee.  It merely states that I don't particularly like it.  English speakers will infer that it means I dislike coffee though.  Now, there are special purpose active negatives, for example "dislike."  These are limited to specific applications though, and there is not always an appropriate active negative for a given application.  So instead, we infer "not" to be an active negative in many contexts where it makes sense.

This applies very directly to the above mentioned atheism argument.  The problem with the argument is that "not" is being used ambiguously, and each side is inferring what they need it to mean to support their argument.  The atheists are correct when they say that "not believing in God" is not a belief system.  The theists are inferring the "not" in the phrase means specifically disbelief, not just lack of belief.  They are wrong in this, as "not" is a passive negative, not an active negative.  The atheists are wrong in claiming that atheism is merely a lack of belief in God.  The ambiguity in the interpretation of the word "not" is convenient to the arguments of both sides, but it also makes them both wrong.

There is already a word for "not believing in God."  That word is "agnosticism."  Agnostics are apathetic to the existence of God.  They do not claim that He does not exist, but they do not choose to believe in Him either.  When a person says, "I don't believe in God," they are saying that they are agnostic.  When atheists say that, they mean that they disbelieve in God, not that they are apathetic to His existence.  The meaning of the words they are saying is different from what they intend those words to mean, but it makes a convenient argument to misconstrue their intending meaning when they are trying to prove that atheism is not a belief system.  When an atheist says, "I do not believe in God," what they mean is that they disbelieve in God or that they believe that God does not exist.  When you look at the root meaning, where "not" is being used as an active negative in the phrase, "I do not believe in God," it becomes very clear that atheism is indeed a belief system, not merely a lack of belief.

When atheists argue that atheism is not a belief system, they are deliberately confusing agnosticism with atheism to support their argument.  Ultimately, both sides are confused by the lack of a general purpose active negative in English and related languages, and to be honest, most people that do not know a language that contains a general purpose active negative may never realize that this is a problem.

What the whole thing comes down to though, is that atheism is a belief system.  Whether it is a religion or not is another matter entirely, as this depends largely on how "religion" is defined.  If it is defined as a belief system, then atheism is a religion (as well as anti-vax, essential oils, and a whole range of other minor belief systems).  If religion requires some kind of deity, then it is only a belief system if you can show that secularism is a deity.  If it merely requires a higher power (with or without sentience), belief in science would be sufficient to make it a religion.  In the end, the question of whether or not atheism is a religion is still subject to debate, but there is no question that it is a belief system.

To Swear...

... is to admit defeat.

I have an enormous vocabulary, and I am something of a genius in logic.  Sometimes people pick arguments with me.  The first time they have to swear at me to make their point, I am done, because to swear is to admit defeat.  Typically, they don't understand this, so I am going to elaborate.

First, before I explain, I want to point out that the first time a person swears in an argument, they almost always open a hole in their own position.  While I consider swearing itself an admission of defeat, the holes typically opened are almost always easier to attack than the actual swearing.  With my rather large vocabulary, I never need to resort to swearing, even to insult someone in the most vile way possible (though, I stick to attacking their argument, the flaws in the argument, and the personal problems that lead to those flaws, as it is a logical fallacy to attack a person's character in ways that are totally unrelated to the argument).  It is typically unnecessary to point out the problem with swearing itself.

Now, why is swearing an admission of defeat?  Depending on the actual target of the swearing, it is one of a number of logical fallacies.  The most common one is ad hominem.  This is the logical fallacy of making a personal attack against the character of your opponent.  It is a logical fallacy, because the character of your opponent has no bearing on the validity and correctness of the argument.  When a person says "mother [extremely foul swear word that I am not going to repeat]," they are accusing their opponent of a particularly vile form of incest.  Whether this accusation is true or not, it has no bearing on the validity of the argument.  Almost as often, the swearing is directed at the argument itself.  Unless the swear word (or words) is being used literally (and makes sense in that context), the attack makes no logical sense.  This logical fallacy is called a non sequitur, which translates to "it does not follow."  For instance, "That argument is [crap spelled with an 'sh']," means nothing, and as evidence against an argument, it is a non sequitur (in fact, this could also be considered circular reasoning, "Your argument is wrong, because it is crap, because it is wrong..." which is another logical fallacy).  In nearly any other case, swearing amounts to the person making a non-sense statement because he or she cannot think of any more counter arguments that are logically valid (which also counts as a non sequitur).  In all three cases, the opponent has been reduced to either using faulty logic or giving up the argument altogether in favor of changing the subject.  These are all admissions of defeat.

The worst thing about swearing is that it is actually not that offensive.  When used in a non-literal sense or out of context, swearing is meaningless.  One religious leader once said something to the effect of, "Swearing is the sign of a weak mind trying to make a strong statement."  Swearing is most often used as an "intensifier."  An intensifier is a word or phrase used to emphasize another statement.  Swearing used as an intensifier looses all of its meaning.  It is only offensive because it is a misuse of language.  Saying a word that literally means feces to intensify a statement deliberately ignores the actual meaning of the word.  This confuses communication, which devalues it.

Now, the reason for the statement about swearing being the sign of a weak mind is quite straight forward: There is always a better way.  In verbal conversation, speaking with more emphasis is often a completely sufficient way of intensifying a statement.  In written language, italics or bold type is a good solution, and when these are not available, the judicious use of all caps can be effective (using all caps liberally makes them loose their effect, much like the excessive use of swearing).  When these are not sufficient though, a good vocabulary can beat pretty much anything.  A good vocabulary can be used to construct statements far more insulting and vile than any amount of swearing.  Likewise, a good vocabulary can get across any statement at any intensity, without a single swear word.  Even better, responding to swearing with a far more vile insult without using a single swear word is far more infuriating than just swearing back.  Let me be clear, I am not advocating being rude, insulting, or otherwise uncivil.  If you must though, do it right. 

The worst (or maybe best...) insult is not the one that your opponent immediately counters.  The worst insult is the one that your opponent does not realize was insulting until a week later (or even better, until he gets home and looks up one or more of the words you used).  There is nothing more petty than a comeback that is a week late, and there is nothing more humiliating than being the person who only realizes they have been insulted once it is far too late to ever respond.  Even one swear word can ruin the perfect insult.

The only thing better than the week-out insult is the insult that is recognized immediately, but which there is still no comeback for that is not petty.  If you want to gain some skill in this watch (or better, read) Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility (actually, any Jane Austin), and Taming of the Shrew (I am sure Shakespeare has other good stuff as well) multiple times (you will not catch all of the veiled insults the first five or so times).  The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, has some good stuff as well, but make sure to get the Stratford Festival version (none of the others do it justice).  The British upper class evidently raised this to an art form.

What are you?

"What are you?"  This is the question I asked my 5 year old daughter the other day.  As I expected, she answered, "A girl."  Even as I expected this answer, it bothered me.  My daughter identifies most strongly as her gender.  She does not immediately identify as human.  Gender exists among nearly all animal species on Earth (with a few exceptions).  My daughter identified herself as part of a group that comprises almost half of all animals.  She could have identified as human, which is much more specific.  She could have identified by her surname, which is even more narrow.  It bothered me (mildly) that she identifies herself first as female.

I suspect this is a result of language.  Boys are "he," and girls are "she" in English.  There is no singular neutral pronoun.  The consequence of this is that children learn very young that gender identity is essential to communication.  Now, I am not saying this is bad, though it is especially problematic to writers, who feel forced to either use very bad grammar (using "they" or "their" as a singular pronoun") or use ugly constructs like "he/she" or "his or her."  I am glad that my daughter identifies as female, because she is female.  I do not, however, feel comfortable that she identifies as female before anything else.

My daughter is 5 years old.  This is a difficult age, because she does not know what she wants to do with her life.  I am in my 30s, and my response to the question I posed to her might be "a computer scientist," "a video game developer," or any number of other things that I qualify as (maybe "a father" or "a husband" would be the most appropriate answers, though I might even say "a child of God" depending on my mood).  At 5 years old, it is pretty unusual to have enough experience in anything to identify yourself as a practitioner of that thing.  I suppose she could have said, "a kid," but that is even worse than "a girl," because it is transient, while gender is permanent (yes, we have procedures to change that, but none of them can change genetic gender).

As I said before, it only bothers me mildly that she identifies first as female (when I asked her again, she said "I don't know," which I am more comfortable with).  I think that identifying as a specific gender is healthy and important.  It is also good that she recognizes her gender, because gender is important in our culture (admittedly, even when it sometimes should not be).  Identifying with her gender is important to success, however, I think it would be better for her to identify as gender only after something else.  Maybe she could identify as a hard worker first.  That is definitely useful.  She might identify as being very intelligent and a good problem solver.  I would especially support this one.

While I think that gender is an essential trait, I do not think that is enough to justify it as a primary identifier.  Gender is something we have no control over.  I think it would be better to identify as something which we have control over.  I don't go around telling people this, but I am highly intelligent.  I do not believe that this is an accident.  Maybe I did get some genetic luck that is helping, but I choose to study things and do things that will make me smarter and better educated.  I know people who are genetically gifted but are still ultimately pretty dumb, because they do not choose to be smart (I know a guy with an IQ around 140 who is a deadbeat druggie with very little education, by choice).  On the other hand, while I do identify as male (secondary to many other things), I do not identify as "a man."  This is because, whenever I hear the phrase "be a man," it is typically said by someone who swears, drinks, and is rude and disrespectful to other people.  If that is a man, I am certainly not one.  I am genetically male though, so I do identify as male.  (Note that I do not "hang out with the guys," and nearly my entire life, I have had more female friends than male friends.  I tend to view men as jerks until the prove otherwise.)

What am I going to do about this?  Perhaps nothing.  In my experience, leading by example is far more effective, where it is possible.  I hope my daughter sees me identifying as many things beyond my gender.  I will probably tell her, at some point, that people who do science are scientists, and people who do electronics are electrical engineers, and so on.  I won't do this to convince her to identify as something other than her gender though.  I'll do this in the natural progression of teaching her, and I would have done it even if I had not had this experience.  Ultimately, I think that she will learn that she can choose what she wants to be and then identify as whatever that is.  What does bother me is that many parents encourage their children to identify as their gender.  I suspect much of the sexism and gender discrimination in our society (both ways) stem from people who identify as their gender before anything else.

Failing Education

I regularly come across evidence that our education system is failing.  I am not just talking about test scores or students who have to retake classes.  I am also not just talking about public education.  I am talking about education across the board.  The particular evidence I want to look at today is written language skills.  Written language is an extremely important part of communication, and researchers are finding that its importance is increasing as more and more communication takes place in the form of emails, text messages, and written posts on various forms of social media.  Originally, it was predicted that audio technology would obsolete written communication except in legal and scientific fields, but now they are finding this is wrong.  Text messaging is wildly more popular than voice calls, and many people use their smart phones for reading and writing on social media than they do for voice phone calls.  Writing skills are becoming more important than nearly any other communication skill.

Today I came across a posting for a product being sold online.  The product was some kind of partially prepared meat.  Specifically it was pork.  The product description included the following text (original formatting is preserved):

The finest cuts of "All Natural" Pork...

Besides the fact that the complete sentence was a fragment, not a complete sentence (this is sometimes permissible in less formal writing, like advertisements), the use of bold type is not exactly appropriate here.  In advertisement though, bold type is often used for emphasis, because it draws the eye better (in most formal writing, italics are used for emphasis, while bold type is very rarely used because it breaks visual continuity).  My problem with this is the inappropriate use of quotation marks. Quotation marks applied in that way around an adjective typically indicate that something is not what it claims, at least in informal writing (which advertising is).  So, this "All Natural" pork (yes, capitalizing "pork" is also not correct writing) must not be all pork, otherwise they would have called it All Natural pork, right?  Sadly, this is probably not true.  Whoever wrote that text probably thought that the quotation marks somehow emphasize or even strengthen the claim of all-naturalness.  Really, they imply that the person saying the words is smiling and winking as they say them, indicating that they want someone else to think the pork is all natural, when it really is not (sometimes people even make a quote mark gesture with hands to further indicate that there is innuendo involved).  This is not the most common mistake I see, but it does seem to come up frequently.

Perhaps the most common mistakes are grammatical errors.  Most (though not all) advertisements use correct spellings.  The most common misspellings are homophones, where the misspelling is actually a word that sounds the same but is not the intended word.  Spell checkers do not catch these words, but a good editor or proofreader would have.  (The worst spelling error I have seen on an ad was in Utah, where some real-estate company thought "available" was spelled "availble."  Even a pretty lame spell checker would have caught that one.)  Grammatical errors, however, indicate that the writer did not even bother to reread the text.  In most cases, grammatical errors stick out when the writing is read out loud, and any English teacher will suggest that students read their work out loud to make sure it sounds how they intended.  Right next to run of the mill grammatical errors is incomplete sentences.  These drive me nuts, because I can see that the sentence is trying to say something, but when it ends prematurely, it leaves me wondering (imagine if this sentence stopped here; what the heck does it leave me wondering; I'll be kind) where it was going.

This epidemic of poor writing skills leads to two conclusions: Either most people are too stupid to remember anything they learned in school long enough to use it, or the schools are doing a horrible job of teaching it in the first place.  Given the state of our education system, I think the evidence favors the second conclusion.  I'll admit that many people do not realize the importance of communication skills and choose not to put any effort into maintaining them, but that is a huge amount of people to accuse of stupidity or laziness, and I would prefer to give the benefit of the doubt.

Some people might wonder why this matters.  Even with rampant misspellings and grammatical errors, it is still easy to tell what most advertisements want (I'll give you a hint, they want you to give someone else your money in exchange for products of dubious value).  Communication is about getting your point across, and if they do that, does it really matter how badly they are written?  Well, yes.  Do you want to by "All Natural" pork, or would you rather buy All Natural pork (or even "All Natural pork" or All Natural "pork" where it could be a veiled reference to pork flavored cat or dog meat)?  These are two different things.  Even if the company does actually mean that it is all natural (and not fake all natural), if they cannot communicate that effectively, what else are they mis-communicating that is not so obvious?  That real-estate company certainly does not impress me with their proficiency in their job.  Maybe they only forgot an "a" in that sign.  What happens if they forget a "0" when they are selling my house (or add one when I am buying it)?  On that sign, one missing letter only makes them look inept.  On a contract, one missing letter (or digit) could be disastrous.  Misspelling and grammatical errors can change the meaning of a word or phrase.  You might notice five or ten errors in a company's advertisements over a year or two.  Consider though, how many did you miss?  How many errors were there that did not turn the text into nonsense but still managed to change the meaning significantly?  In fact, if you pay close attention, you may notice that many national retail chains post ad retractions or errata on their doors several times a year.  Most often this is because they either mis-advertised a sale price, or they mismatched a sale price with the wrong product.  Incidentally, a video game store in Utah once mis-advertised a price, and when I went to buy it, they refused to honor their advertisement, even though they had not posted any retraction.  I never bought anything there again.  Writing skills are worth customers.  When I see an ad with an obvious writing error, it makes me less willing to buy products from that company, because it makes it clear that they do not care about quality.

I may have discussed this before, but this applies outside of advertisement.  Good writing skills are also important on resumes.  I have heard arguments that throwing out poorly written resumes might lose opportunities to hire good employees.  I think this is wrong, at least in most cases.  Most businesses get far more applications than they can read.  They use fast filter techniques to reduce the pile to a manageable size.  These techniques involve things like looking for writing errors and checking qualifications.  If they fail one of these tests, they go in the garbage.  Now, I cannot claim that tossing resumes with writing errors will not eliminate qualified candidates that might do a good job.  I can claim, however, that it will not sacrifice opportunities for the business to hire good employees.  Unless the business needs almost as many employees as there are applications, filtering will leave, on average, a much more qualified selection of employees to choose from.  If someone thinks that the company lost a really good opportunity when they threw out his or her resume, that person needs an ego check, and really, the other employees would probably have hated that person's self centered, big headed attitude anyway.  In today's economy, there is always someone else who could fill the position just as well.  And, if that person has better written communication skills, they can probably even fill it better. 

Poor writing skills signal several things.  First, they signal that you are too lazy to do a good job.  Second, they signal that you really do not care about whatever you are writing for.  Third, they signal a lack of precision and attention to detail.  Forth, they signal a lack of good education (a college degree does not necessarily mean you still know anything from the classes you took, and poor writing skills is evidence that you have allowed yourself to forget at least one important subject you took classes in).  Fifth, they signal a lack of caring about quality.  When a person looks at an advertisement or a resume and sees writing errors, that person gets an impression of laziness, lack of motivation, lack of attention to detail, lack of education, and lack of quality about the person or company responsible.  That is why it matters.  Writing errors will cause people to look for a company with a better reputation or hire a person who's resume looks like he or see cares, even if technical qualifications are not quite as good.  A person or company who puts the effort into avoiding mistakes in writing can probably put the effort into becoming more proficient and more qualified.  Poor writing provides no such evidence.

I do not think this is purely an educational problem.  I am sure there are people who write poorly because they are lazy and because they are not motivated and because they do not care about attention to detail and so on, but I do think education is the root of the problem.  I have friends and family members that ask me to proofread their writing because they do care about attention to detail, but they do not have the quality English education to do a good job of it themselves.  This is not their fault.  Their lack of English education is the fault of public schools and even private universities who neglect their responsibility to properly educate their students.  (In fact, my good English education is largely the result of studying far beyond what was required in school and college and then studiously applying it until I developed strong skills.  The schools themselves just provided me with a small amount of resources to build on.)


I just want to add that I am not perfect.  I do make writing mistakes, though not typically very often.  I reread this article twice (once out loud), correcting errors along the way, before I published it, but there are probably a few still lurking in here somewhere.  I sincerely hope they are not obvious, but if they are, I take full responsibility for missing them.  If this were a professional publication, I would ask some of my friends to review it before publishing, and I would reread it at least two more times.  If it were a resume, I would probably reread it four more times.  As an informal opinion piece that I am posting on my blog (that has a fairly small readership) though, I just do not have the time to put that much effort into it.

Data Cap for Monopoly?

I just read two articles on Comcast.  The first is about its proposed acquisition of Time Warner.  Evidently, the FCC has received some opposition to allowing the acquisition, because Comcast uses some rather monopolistic practices.  More or less, Comcast and Time Warner are using their size and market share to manipulate content providers into paying for services that most ISPs gladly provide for free.  Notably, one of the complaints comes from Netflix, because Comcast and Time Warner refuse to provide direct connections for free.

Direct connections to major content providers dramatically reduce internet congestion and improve the ability of ISPs to provide good quality media streaming.  As such, ISPs that provide direct connections to major content providers benefit themselves and their customers dramatically.  Very large ISPs, like Comcast, however, use their size to force content providers to pay for these connections.  Ultimately, the content providers feel forced to comply, because without the direct connections, their services will perform poorly for customers of those ISPs.  Sadly, the customers blame the content providers, even though the fault lies entirely with their ISPs.

The second problem with Comcast is its attempt to redefine language.  According to Comcast, charging extra when a subscriber goes over a data limit is not technically a data cap.  The FCC definition of "data cap" actually includes this kind of subscription model, with a clause explicitly exempting Comcast from this definition (the FCC working group that drafted this definition includes a Comcast VP, who presumably is responsible for this clause).  Evidently Comcast's size and market share gives it the power to define language in its own terms.  Note that the term "data cap" is commonly used by ISPs and individuals to mean any data limit, whether it be a hard limit or a sort of uptier limit where extra charges are applied when the limit is exceeded.  It is clear that Comcast believes itself to have power to alter the meaning of language.

The second problem is worse than the first, but they come down to the same thing.  Comcast's motive for using data caps* is exclusively financial.  Most data caps imposed by smaller ISPs exist to combat network congestion.  Comcast is large enough that it does not have congestion problems, but they would rather charge data caps to pay for upgrades than use a portion of their already very high profits to pay for them.  There is another, more nefarious and legally questionable reason for Comcast's data caps though.  Comcast does not count data transfers to and from its own services against the caps.  This means that customers using data heavy services may feel compelled to use Comcast's services instead.  Now, I do not know exactly what services Comcast offers, but I could easily imagine some examples.  Note that even if Comcast does not offer a specific service, it could easily add it at a future date.  The first service that Comcast could offer is a video streaming service.  Video streaming from services like Hulu or Netflix are certainly data intensive, and regular use of those services could easily hit a fairly large data cap.  If Comcast offered its own video streaming service, many customers might feel like they have to use Comcast's services instead of Netflix or Hulu, to avoid paying fees for exceeding the data limit.  This applies equally to digital media sales services, like those provided by Amazon.  Digital video files are large, and can be consumed faster than streaming video (because you can download many at a time, at a faster rate than you can view them).  If Comcast offered this sort of service, a data cap would definitely give it an advantage in the market of its subscribers.

The thing that all of these problems boil down to is monopoly.  Comcast is leveraging its huge market share to force content providers to pay for services that other ISPs provide for free, because they benefit both sides equally.  This is a monopolistic practice.  Comcast uses a data cap to increase its revenue, and gets away with it because of its huge market share.  Again, this is a monopolistic practice.  Lastly, and the worst of them all, Comcast uses its market share in its ISP service to gain an unfair advantage in its other services.  This is an extremely  monopolistic practice.  In fact, large companies have frequently been punished by the government for this last practice.  The MS lawsuit over its inclusion of Internet Explorer in the US (and Windows Media Player in the EU and now in China as well) was based on the fact that MS was using its Windows market share to give it an unfair advantage over other browser (and media player, outside the US) makers. This is monopolistic because it is using the popularity of one product to sell another unrelated product (internet connectivity vs internet based service, very similarly to operating system vs application).  Further, it is not just abusing the market share of one product to sell another unrelated product (IE and Windows Media Player might seem free, but the price is included in the cost of Windows); it is actually putting customers in a position where they are effectively being fined or otherwise charged extra for using someone else's product too much.

Very few ISPs do the oppressive and monopolistic things that Comcast does.  Most ISPs now offer unlimited data in all of their non-business packages.  Most ISPs provide direct connections to content providers at no cost, because they benefit just as much or more.  Most ISPs do not have enough market share to leverage things like data caps and direct connections to rip off customers and compete unfairly with content providers.  Most ISPs do not make anywhere near the profits Comcast does.  Comcast is not doing any of this because it is necessary to remain profitable.  It is doing all of this because it wants more money and it has the power to get it.  If it acquires Time Warner, it will control even more of the internet.  We should be seriously worried about one company having this kind of power over our largest communications system (especially when that company thinks that it can just redefine language to avoid looking bad).  Comcast is already acting in ways that have been established as monopolistic and illegal in the US and most of the rest of the world.  While we should be worried, it is the government's job to protect us from this.  Not only should Comcast not be allowed to increase its monopoly by acquiring Time Warner, it should be the subject of a serious government investigation for monopolistic practices.



Here is the article on data caps definition: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/comcast-tells-government-that-its-data-caps-arent-actually-data-caps/

* If some Comcast executive reads this and suddenly feels compelled to demand that I use a different term, let it be known that I will not.  Bullying large publications might work, but I am not going to redefine language based on the delusions of grandeur of some company.