-1

In this Wikipedia article I found the following sentence:

By 1959, discrete transistors were considered sufficiently reliable (...)

But "by 1959" means "not later than 1959", or "before 1959", see here, and this is not the intended meaning. So I proposed the following version:

In 1959, discrete transistors started being considered sufficiently reliable (...)

But my version was rejected as incorrect. Why? Is the Oxford Dictionary wrong about it?

In my opinion the original sentence is very misleading because it can be understood that transistors were considered reliable either before 1959 or in the course of the year 1959. In both cases we do not know what happened after 1959. Were transistors still considered reliable a year later? Just because we know what really happened does not mean that the sentence is correct. The intended meaning was completely different - transistors started being considered reliable in the course of the year 1959.

ABSee
  • 9
  • 3
    One problem is that the Wiki article says transistors were deemed reliable by the time 1959 hit. Your version says they started being deemed reliable, not finalized as reliable. – Yosef Baskin Mar 01 '21 at 16:38
  • 3
    Does this answer your question? Does "notified by [date]" include the end date?. Suggest << 1959: discrete transistors are now considered sufficiently reliable .... >> – Edwin Ashworth Mar 01 '21 at 17:00
  • 4
    Presumably transistors didn't suddenly start to be considered reliable on New Year's Eve 1958! In this kind of context, by 1959 means during a period in the course of the year 1959. – Kate Bunting Mar 01 '21 at 17:00
  • When that year arrived, they had become reliable. By [limit], at the point in time that that limit occurs. – Lambie Mar 01 '21 at 18:15
  • 1
    If someone says "We'll get this finished by 6, home by 7, showered, changed, in the club by 8. Sounds like a plan." there is no suggestion that they will have to do more work after 6, no suggestion that they will have to go back to the job after 7 and no suggestion of their having to leave the club before it closes in the early hours. Similarly "The UK government has committed to the end of the sale of IC cars by 2030" does not mean that they expect IC cars to be built again in 2031. The implication is that their production should end during or before the start of 2030 and not restart. – BoldBen Mar 02 '21 at 00:16
  • @Yosef Baskin: What finalization do you mean? Transistors are not fully reliable, even today, and never will be. Nothing is fully reliable. But, somehow, we managed to built pretty reliable computers, and even self-driving cars. We should be happy if something is reliable enough. – ABSee Mar 02 '21 at 01:03
  • To the person who downvoted the question without commenting as to why: Who you are? But, seriously, my (digital) reputation on this forum is so low, that I do not have much to lose. But I am very open-minded, so please, explain the reason. Let me learn something. I will really appreciate it :-) – ABSee Mar 02 '21 at 01:39
  • I would like to correct my obvious mistake but I cannot edit my comments. Luckily I can add a new comment. So: – ABSee Mar 05 '21 at 01:26
  • I would like to correct my obvious mistake but I cannot edit my comments. Luckily I can add a new comment. So, i wrote: "we managed to built", but it should be "we managed to build". Hmm, while writing this comment I pressed the Enter key to begin a new line. Instead I accepted my comment as if I clicked on "Save edits". Well, I do not have to be perfect when even such excellent forum is full of imperfections. OMG, I am writing this comment off the top of my head, and maybe making other mistakes. But whatever I write, it will not lower my digital reputation ;-) – ABSee Mar 05 '21 at 01:40

2 Answers2

0

Despite the dictionary entries, there is no clear definition of whether "by 1959" means "before 1st January 1959" or "before 31st December 1959". The meaning is simply not intended to be that precise. (You will note that all the dictionary examples are talking about times, like 5pm, rather than years.)

I think that most people would take your first sentence as meaning "during 1959 discrete transistors were considered sufficiently reliable..." without implying whether it was precisely true at the start of the year. The phrase is intended to be a generalization anyway, so precise definitions are not going to work.

Your suggested change would make it clear that before 1959 discrete transistors were not sufficiently reliable, and in 1959 they were. The original version would be true if transistors had been considered sufficiently reliable in 1957, where your revised version would not.

DJClayworth
  • 25,795
  • Why the obvious duplication? The 'close as duplicate' function is intended to cut bloat, make searching less time-consuming. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 01 '21 at 19:29
  • @DJClayworth: Perfect. Thank you :-) – ABSee Mar 02 '21 at 02:30
  • @Edwin Ashworth: What is "the obvious duplication", my question? Was it you who downvoted my question? If so, you have every right to remain silent ;-) – ABSee Mar 02 '21 at 03:25
  • @ABSee Higher-rep contributors are the ones who should recognise when an issue has already been addressed. And when they answer even after a question has been flagged as a duplicate, without pointing out why they feel a new question is significantly different, one has to question motive. Note that Kate Bunting addressed the 'fuzziness of "by 1959" corresponding to the impossibility of citing an actual instant in time' response, but in a 'comment' as she was aware this general question had been covered before. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 02 '21 at 12:57
  • @EdwinAshworth, the question in some of its aspects duplicates the other one, but also has other aspects, so it is not a duplicate of it. I can see that there may arguably be other reasons for closing it (the answer is too obvious), but they are likely to be debatable. It is thus not so obvious that the question ought to be closed that a couple of votes for closing should lead one to treat the question as already closed. – jsw29 Mar 02 '21 at 16:14
0

The original wording ('by 1959, discrete transistors were considered sufficiently reliable') will normally be understood to imply (even though it does not say so explicitly) that there was a process of transistors becoming more and more accepted as more and more reliable; that process may have lasted several years. The OP's reading of the sentence misses that idea of a relatively lengthy process of growing acceptance.

At some point, the process crossed the threshold of their being 'considered sufficiently reliable'. Because the threshold is vague, the author of the article cannot vouch when precisely it was crossed, and has therefore chosen the wording that is compatible with its having been crossed in say, November 1958, or February 1958, or September 1957, etc., but definitely rules out its having been crossed in, say, 1960.

Is the meaning of that wording compatible with the threshold having been crossed in, say, April 1959? The wording is ambiguous in that respect, as has already been explained in DJClayworth's answer. By 1959 could be interpreted as by 1st January 1959 or as by 31st December 1959.

Now it is true that the sentence does not, strictly speaking say anything about what happened after 1959. It is logically possible that something was discovered in say, 1960, that led to them not being any more accepted as reliable. The idea of a lengthy process of their growing acceptance, however, strongly suggests (even though it, admittedly, does not logically entail) that the process was not suddenly reversed.

To see that more clearly, consider the fact that we often say to teenagers something like 'by the age of 18, you will be mature enough to . . .'. That sentence does not strictly speaking say anything about what happens after the age of 18. It does not logically entail that, at the age of 25 one will be mature enough for it. It is logically possible for the maturity to decline after the age of 20, so that at the age of 25, one is less mature than at the age of 18. But that logical possibility never crosses our mind when we utter or hear 'by the age of 18, you will be mature enough'; we all understand that sentence to conversationally implicate (even though it does not logically imply) that one will continue to be mature into the indefinite future. Analogously, almost everybody will understand the original sentence about transistors to conversationally implicate that they continued to be regarded as reliable.

jsw29
  • 8,463
  • .@jsw29: Thank you for your comprehensive answer. Of course, you are right, but the English language, like most natural languages, is very illogical, ambiguous, and hard to improve. We can only try to communicate with other people, sometimes with mixed results. And bad communication can lead to unpredictable effects, which can be (and sometimes are) even catastrophic, because we act in the real world. So, we should have a sense of mission here, in this forum ;-) – ABSee Mar 02 '21 at 03:13
  • This forum is devoted to the analysis and appreciation of how people actually communicate by English language. Unspoken assumptions, deliberate vagueness, conversational implicatures, and suchlike all play a role in that communication. Study of the language includes what linguists call pragmatics, as well as its syntax and semantics. It is not the 'mission' of this forum to impose the approach to writing that one sees in legal documents on all communication in English. – jsw29 Mar 02 '21 at 16:28