On log or in log?

In.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yes, life or death indeed.

I don't understand the question. Did you post this message in the group, o r on the group or to the group?

I vote for writing "to" the log.

Any of them are fine if you are asking an English question. I can't speak to what might be formally "correct".

I recall an Iranian student asking me the difference between special and es pecial and especial and especially. We looked it up and they seemed to be interchangeable. I told him that conventional usage included special over especial and especially over specially.

Thanks. Preposition use can differ in very surprising ways between languages, well, this time it does not though :-).

Dimiter

Am 11.04.2020 um 18:50 schrieb Rick C:

I believe the excessively correct version would actually be: "into" the log.

Writing "on" a log is if the log is actually a book, and it's closed, so your ink lands on its envelope. Writing "in" it is if the book is already laying open, and you just write something somwehere.

But you're composing a message on the outside,and transferring that into the log file for keeping, thus: into.

Neither! "append to the log"

I also "log" data without a preposition.

I see now I put my question in a misleading way. Obviously I know to "write to the log", append to the log etc., this was not the point.

I should have asked "is something in the log or is it on the log". Say, like something is "on the menu".

Phil understood me and his answer was what I was after though.

Dimiter

The etymology is a contraction of log-book, being a book with which you record (among other things) the speed of your vessel that you measured by throwing wooden logs over the side of the ship and seeing how fast they go out behind you.

So you would be writing 'in' the log-book and hence writing in the log.

However if it was a log-file rather than a log-book, it wouldn't be wrong to say you were writing to the log-file and hence writing to the log. (and similar for other kinds of objects that don't open and close, like a log-chart, log-board or log-sheet)

Hence either of those feel fine to me, but writing 'on' the log doesn't.

Theo

This thread is a chuckle as it proves once again that English is a strange language. In it "one parks a car in a driveway" while "driving a car on a parkway".

We don't have parkways around here. We have highways. But don't try getting high on a highway. Very frowned upon. When you are high on a highway the cops will bring you down.

Around here parkways are served by trains:

Theo

Oh it is not just English. All languages I have used (well, just 4) have plenty of lookup table rules. E.g. in German the gender is "by table", more or less like spelling is in English etc.

To a programmer it is funny that something is "on the menu" and, as it turned out, "in the log". Suspicious enough to make me ask though :-). But I did not suspect any part of Theo's explanation of how the word "log" got the meaning it has in programming today... I did know a log was some piece of wood but there is no chance I would have made the leap from piece of wood to throwing some into the water to measure boat velocity (or sort of).

Dimiter

And "downland" is gently rolling country. (With "The Downs" being uphill of the towns)

Something is in the log, or in the log file.

"On the log" brings up images of sitting round a campfire...

Somebody {G.B. Shaw or W. Churchill} reportedly said "British and Americans are two people separated by a common language" ;/

Also, remember English is a "living" (thus evolving/devolving) language. For a long term example compare the shift in meaning of "to suffer" since the 1600's.

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As long as you mentioned spelling in English, here's a question to represen t my long standing frustration with the damn language. (Thanks Britain!)

How do you spell table? How do you spell label? WTF???!!!

How can anyone expect me to memorize a bazillion arbitrary rules like this? ?? So which similar words are in the table column and how many are in the label column? No wonder hand written letters have gone by the wayside, no spell checker!

I remember the rule for the order of 'i' and 'e' when adjacant... 'I' befo re 'e' except after 'c' or when it sounds like 'a' as in neighbor and weigh ... or some other cases where no rhyming rule has been discovered and a tab le lookup is required. English has so many of these spelling rule tables t hat they each need a lable to tell them apart,,, wait each tabel needs a la bel. No, that's not right... ARRGGGHHH!

I'm done. I'm using sign language from now on. Or is it sine language? - \/\/\/\/\/-

Hah, this is the thing with non-native speakers like myself. There is always a giveaway, no matter what. May be not as funny as this logging data around the campfire but there always is :-).

Dimiter

Hmmm, perhaps sign languages have their spelling peculiarities as well, you never know.

Having a phonetic alphabet is not such a huge advantage you know. Bulgarian is strictly phonetic and a huge part of the accent Bulgarians have - even people who know English well - comes because people deem sounds which are not in (or on?....) the alphabet non-existent. This is less valid for Germans though and they do also have a fairly phonetic use of the Latin alphabet with their extensions to it.

Dimiter

More on logging here: