>It's really unfortunate that some things end up becoming a debate. I prefer science. There is plenty of science involved in reading levels of text. There is Flesch-Kincaid grade level scoring built into MS Word.
>
>"The amount must be greater than or equal to zero." Reading level 4.8
>
>"The amount must not be negative." Reading level 7.6
>
>Clearly the second sentence is for a more sophisticated audience by almost 3 grade levels.
At what level is the user considered incapable of using a computer?
If you look at my blogue, I'm never complaining about messages being too convoluted or hard to understand - only when they are plain wrong, misleading or omitting the crucial bit of information (like "file not found" - which file? The moron code doesn't know which file it is looking for!).
BTW, may I answer the question from the title? I'd take both of them - the greater and the equal, and even the or. I like them all.