I saw that we have both word-difference and difference.
Is word-difference useful since we already have difference?
asked Oct 8, 2014 at 13:46
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3difference, word-difference, and word-choice seem to be used interchangeably, often at the same time.– user230Oct 8, 2014 at 16:37
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7Ironically, there doesn't seem to be much difference.– Damien HOct 14, 2014 at 0:05
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1@snailboat Ideally, word choice is where you have a certain context and need to find the right word to put in that context, while word difference would be the general differences between two words. Whether or not that ideal is realized is another matter.– corsiKaOct 16, 2014 at 22:35
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2 Answers
It looks like there isn't enough interest in the merge to do it or kill it, so we'll just keep things the way they are.
The tag difference is used three times more than word-difference. In my opinion, word-difference doesn't have a meaningful distinction from difference and the tags should be merged.
The description of word-difference is:
For questions about differences in meaning or use between related words or words with similar meanings.
The description of difference is:
This tag is for questions about the difference in meaning between certain words, or phrases.
I think we should rewrite the description of the difference tag to be:
For questions about differences in meaning or usage between words or phrases with similar meanings.
If you agree that word-difference should be merged into difference, up-vote this answer. If you disagree, please leave a comment or answer explaining why and down-vote this answer.
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And if we neither agree nor disagree? [difference], like [sentences], is another excuse for a bunch of totally different questions to come under the same roof. Why not get rid of both tags?– M.A.R.Oct 29, 2016 at 14:39
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@M.A.R. That's a different proposal. Merging the tags doesn't prevent us from getting rid of difference in the future.– ColleenVOct 29, 2016 at 15:34
Actually, to me it seems that difference is too broad to be useful; I am not sure word-difference is useful too. At least the latter seems to suggest it applies to words, but in both the cases, they are not defining exactly what difference the tags are for.
word-choice is much more useful, IMO, since it says the question is about which word should be used in a specific context; in other words, it specifies to which difference the OP is interested.
