word-choice
In technical writing, when describing how the software performs the action of completing a field on a screen, do you describe the field as being 'automatically populated' or just 'populated'? Does 'populated' inherently infer 'automatically'?
What is the difference between using these two terms, and in what situations is one preferred over the other? Are there any rules to distinguish the use?
Google N-gram Viewer suggests that unexplainable is a recent invention (at least in written form):
To a first approximation both OP's sentences are valid - certainly they both mean exactly the same. But if I'm going to get "picky", I don't much like the first one...
?I sent you a letter a few days ago, I was wondering if you have received it.
...because there's a subtle clash of tense. "I was wondering" refers to my wondering in the past, but "if you have received it" asks about your status (of having received it or not) in the present.
Thus my own preferred version is neither of OP's...
I sent you a letter a few days ago; I was wondering if you had received it.
...but to be honest, I'm only proposing that for the sake of grammar. If I needed to convey the sentiment myself I'd just ask "Have you received the letter I sent a few days ago?". It seems to me the additional verbiage is just pointless circumlocution.
Regarding the "mixed tense" issue, note that "I was wondering if you had" is twice as common as "I was wondering if you have". A preference which is even more noticeable when comparing, say, "...if you knew" with "...if you know".
Best Answer
Speaking as a programmer, which I hope is the correct context for this question.
A field that is autopopulated is one that is filled in without any user intervention. For example, if you type in a credit card number that starts with 5, the form might autopopulate the credit card type field with MasterCard. Or, you might enter your date of birth and the form autopopulates your age field. Or you might enter your ZIP code and have your city and state autopopulated.
A field that is populated is filled in, but not necessarily automatically. You might ask a user to populate all the fields for their address details, for example.