Russell McMahon wrote:

> The devil is in the details 

You're right, that's where the devil is. This is probably the reason why
some don't really want to go there :)

> in this case in the text that you show as [...] I said "... here ...". 

Talking about details, I can't find a "here" in your past messages
regarding this matter :)

You said "we", though, but it wasn't quite clear who "we" is. The two
concepts ("we" and "here") have some orthogonal aspects. 


> Unless you are accustomed to NZ documents your observations are unlikely
> to be wholly relevant, notwithstanding the somewhat universality of
> legalese.

Come on, Russell... it seems you are being stubborn just for stubborn's
sake :)  Actually, you so far rather convinced me that fortnight is indeed
quite rare in formal documents in NZ, mainly because if it were being used,
you would have come out of the conditional a long time ago and cited some
funny or otherwise memorable use of it. 


Here's a bit commented history:

Me: "... maybe fortnight is not that frequent in formal (business)
language?"

You: "We have almost no formal distinctions between formal and informal
language. [...] almost any word which is acceptable English is 'good to go'
in almost any context. So 'fortnight' could be used without raising an
eyebrow in any context at all."

Comment: The distinction between formal and informal language is not what
could be used, it is what actually is used in different environments. While
the majority of words could be used in every setting, only a certain subset
is commonly used in specific situations, and there are some subsets of
commonly used words that can be associated with classes of situations. So
my comment was not about whether fortnight could be used, it was about how
frequently it is actually used in formal (business) language. You so far
have not stated that you know of a single instance where it was used in
such a situation. To me this indicates a low frequency of use (exactly
because I put value in what you write, even though it may not look like it
right now :)


Me: "I at least haven't seen it in a contract. Nor in a formal text written
in the last ten years."

You: "Unless you are accustomed to NZ documents your observations are
unlikely to be wholly relevant, notwithstanding the somewhat universality
of legalese."

Comment: I'm not sure where the restriction to NZ comes from (my original
comment to which you responded was an answer to Howard), and I'm in fact
not familiar with NZ documents. But independently of this, let's get real
finally: have you (certainly familiar with NZ documents) seen fortnight
used in a formal (business) document that was written in the last ten
years? And if so, was this so often as to classify fortnight as one of the
words commonly used in such documents that deserve their place in the
vocabulary of formal (business) language? That's been the question, right?

Gerhard

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