Sunday, April 9, 2017

word choice - "regarding", "according to" or "in"



I wrote this sentence



However, if the user defines each rule (regarding/according to/in) a specific context, the algorithm will take the context into account before deciding to remove such elements.



Which are applicable and what would be the implication of each?


I myself think "regarding" means "about" and is not proper here, but I doubt between "according to" and "in", because "in" is a collocation for "context".



Answer



According to X means "doing what X expects/says to do." A context doesn't really explicitly tell you do to anything, so I wouldn't use this word (unless the kind of context you are talking about here does).


Regarding X is the equivalent of considering X, which means "to use X as a criteria in evaluation." "Regarding a specific context" thus can possibly imply that the thing regarding is outside the context, aware of it, and can ignore/switch to a different context if needed.


Your full sentence if you use "in" would be:




if the user defines each rule in a specific context



Is rule definition happening inside of a context? If it is, say this. However, it sounds like the rules are defined before the context is entered ("outside" of it), so I think "regarding" or "for" would be better.


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