Deck the Halls and Stopwords Have Feelings Too
After working in search for a while, someone will eventually tell you that you can't include a word in a list or dictionary because it is a stop word. What? My mother used to say things like, "we don't use words like that in our family..." But is that a stop word? Nope. When your kid runs out into the street without looking? Are those stop words? Nope. Those are expletives.
Well, in working with search there are words that many consider "garbage" or "junk" words. I am not one of those people. Every word is important. They have feelings. Every word is just different. "We need to learn to accept every word." Sorry. Another small inconsistent and socially unacceptable peeve of mine. Inoun you digress. What were we talking about?
Oh yeah. Stop words. Well, these are words that we use every day, but supposedly, they don't bring a lot of "value" to the dinner table. Like that last sentence. The, lot, a, to, are, that, who, etc, etc. (yes, etc. is usually considered a stop word). But what does this have to do with search, and more importantly, what does this have to do with deck the halls, or Christmas music? Well, I am glad you asked. An Inoun example!
Think about it. If we removed all of the stop words from Deck the Halls, the first verse would look something like this:
Deck halls boughs holly season jolly.
An interesting song, to be sure, but honestly not very much fun to sing (I personally like to sing the word bough so it kind of sounds like bowe'l, it adds a kind of nice lil sound that goes well with the fa la la's)
What is it about these words that, "so called" search experts don't like? Well, you want my opinion? "Honestly? No! Inoun, we don't!"
I am so sorry to here that (another stop word, but hear is not?), but since this is my blog, and my responsibility, and since it is full of absolutely a tonne of useless tree in the woods, woodless, words already, I am going to give it to you anyway.
It is because these, "so called" search experts don't know what to do with them. Search is hard enough without people throwing in a bunch of useless, pointless and stupid words. I mean come on! "They are the snooty, aloof, haughty, high class, exclusive, snobishly, phd carey'ing, linguists 'hear'. I wish some people where just learn Ed enough to right."
Seriously, I don't think they know what to do with them. It reminds me of the phrase, "yeah, if you want to do it the EASY way!" And that is what they do. They yank out all of these poor, helpless, unaccepted, creatures, I mean stop words, and then just focus on the noun phrases (NP). Some of them will even go so far as to "consider" verbs. Imagine that!
I am sorry. I just can't think that way. What would happen to the "oh" so important searches for rock bands like "The Who?" Or even more importantly, think about the children? What if little Billy searched for, "The Who's down in Who ville?" I can just see it now, "Billy, why are you on a site that talks about all things 'down right vile'?" "Honest mom, it just asked me, 'did you mean down right vile?' ... ... digress (sorry the stop words were yanked out.)
So the next time you come across a "so called" search expert, I suggest that you sing to them, at the top of your lungs, (even better if you can't sing), Deck The Halls. Oh, and while you are at it, just add a few extra stop words in there wherever it might make sense. Something like this:
"Deck the halls with THE boughs(pronounced bowels) of Holly. Fa la la la la, la la la la."
Ewe!
P.S. That's a stop word too. Well, not really, it is an expletive. But it could be a stop word. And that, my dear reader is a blog entry for another day.
Comments
- Anonymous
April 18, 2011
omw inoun. ily, ur blog just made my day. srsly. it was awful, the i read boughs (bowels) and a grin just stretched over my face. even stalkers have humor Inoun. thanks for the lift!