As I guess many of you have noted, I’m not native English speaking so even if I try to write in a simple and appropriate form to the context of this blog (and I should apoligize for my mistakes), I sometimes find miself wondering how to exactly express in English what I have in mind and is of course easy to me to say in Italian… Well, one of the beauties of working in a virtual team spread across different EMEA countries (and also the possibility to get in touch with people practically from all over the world, whereaver Microsoft has an office), is the possibility of get in touch with all of those different people, languages and cultures quite easily (such as emailing, IM or ringing someone).
So, taking advantage of this opportunity, I emailed Doug to ask his opinion on the title of my blog, because I’ve been wondering for a while now it the title really makes sense in English š¤.Ā I didnāt want to use the word āramblingsā because it sounded a bit stale, and I tried to find something with a similar meaning (ārambling from a developerā) but a bit more refinedā¦ but how does it sound?
As usual Doug has been very kind (as he have been a few months ago, when thanks to his unbiased help I won a bet with a friend about which was the right form of a particular sentence in English… thanks Doug! š. By the way, that friend will has to fulfill his obligations!) and gave me an explanation:
- Rambling would more often be used in the context of talking or writing to indicate something that does not have a particular focus, direction or agenda but would also convey a light hearted attitude especially when used by you to refer to your own writing. āA developerās ramblingsā would certainly sound more natural as colloquial English than āA developerās strayingsā. Strayings is not strictly a word, as āsā should only be added to a noun to make it plural whereas straying is a verb but then the same is true of ramblings
- Strayings implies you are going off a predefined route, i.e. going off topic. (āI am walking the path to enlightenment but I keep straying offā)
- Waffling would be another one although it is used more for spoken rather thanĀ written words. All these have a slightly modest, self-deprecating tone to them, which can be a good thing for a blog title
- Ponderings or āA developer pondersā would be another option ā ponder meaning to thing about random stuff in a floaty dreamy kind of way
- Contemplations or āA developer contemplatesā would also be ok ā a bit more philoshopical sounding but fairly neutral
I made some researches in my English dictionary, and found also a few other entries for the list above:
So, what do you like most? Any other suggestion? Let me know your thoughts (and this is also a means to see how many interested readers I have… š). Let’s see is something nice comes out; and what about the prize for this contest? Well… the proudness of having helped me choosing the new title of my blog! š
Carlo