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The grammatical construction "Blah Blah Considered Harmful" has always bugged me...it doesn't seem proper. Shouldn't it be something like "Blah Blah Should Be Considered Harmful"?


Think of it as a newspaper title. There's an implied "XYZ Considered Harmful [by Experts]." That is the original context, a letter written by Dijkstra to the editor of Communications of the ACM, where the editor penned the title.


Technically speaking, if anyone has ever said that Blah Blah is harmful, than it has been considered harmful. The latter construction with Should Be is a more polite form, but the former is also correct if it's ever been true once.


I know what you mean and I agree. I still think it sounds awkward.


"By the author of this piece" is implied.




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