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Chris
Irresponsive or not responsive, is there a difference, is one of the two preferred?
What should I use in the following sentence?
The visual graphics, that do not give any information, are, apart from just plain irritating, also making the website [irresponsive | not responsive]
The word irresponsive is mentioned in some word lists and dictionaries, but not all. I would prefer to use irresponsive though, but that could be a Dutch false friend. Can a native speaker give his or her opinion?
Apr 4, 2014 9:51 AM
Answers · 13
1
Chris:
I'm trying to sort this out. I am not sure of responsive/ not responsive / irresponsive, is the best descriptive. Graphics do not really "respond" do they? It is people who "respond" to graphics, is that not so?
Sometimes, we can try to force words when better words can be found.
.
Can you clarify?
April 4, 2014
I've had a check, and it seems that even native speakers (and journalists, of all people!) are confusing "irresponsive" with "irresponsible".
There's "unresponsive", but this seems to apply only to humans and sometimes other living things.
"Irresponsive" works best in your sentence (I'm also guessing this is a fairly new word), although that's just my take on the situation. "Not responsive" also works, but it's a bit odd to see "not" so far towards the end of the sentence. I'd actually rewrite the whole sentence to avoid the jumble of clauses and commas.
I wonder what others think?
April 4, 2014
I think you've got a bad example there, which as you have found, is confusing the issue.
To me - irresponsive is not a word I've heard, and is (as Peachey said) likely to cause confusion with irresponsible. It sounds like a made-up word, or worse, a bastardisation.
Unresponsive is not a good word to use for websites. It would normally mean that they stopped responding, rather than just being slow to respond or slow to load.
April 4, 2014
unresponsive/non-responsive sounds like a better fit to me. Especially since this is tech related...
These visual graphics are not only uninformative and irritating but they also make the website unresponsive. (Here you need a common context that "These"' points to. It works if this sentence is part of a conversation where both sides know which visual graphics are being talked about.)
Otherwise you can write :-
The uninformative visual graphics are not only irritating but they also make the website unresponsive.
April 4, 2014
While irresponsive is not wrong I would use the word unresponsive.
April 4, 2014
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Chris
Language Skills
Dutch, English, German, Spanish
Learning Language
German
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