Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <meaning>
Title: The meaning of "shooting" in this sentence "Here's the HTML we're shooting to generate"
Question: I don't know what "shooting" means in this sentence:   This is where the rubber meets the road. Let's start by building a page that just spits out our DB entries in a mildly pretty form. Here's the HTML we 're shooting to  generate:  (Code snippet follows)   Could anybody enlighten me?  I met the sentence above in this  tutorial  and I think "intending", "aiming" and "would like to" are all good replacement in that context.

Answers:
sents: text: You could also use aiming .
text: Here's the HTML
text: we're aiming to generate.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/1423/user3169
score: 21
sents: text: "Here's the HTML we would like to generate.
text: " "Shooting" in this case means "trying" (i.e. if you shoot at a target, your are trying to hit it, but you may not).
text: By "shooting" for a goal, you are trying to reach it, but are not certain you will ("I'm shooting to leave here by 4:30, but the boss may ask me to stay late.").
text: In this case, there may be some reason the person believes that the goal may not be accomplished.
text: Or they are just using poor phrasing to mean "This is the HTML we are expecting to generate".
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9175/Anaksunaman
score: 8
sents: text: In the case the meaning is "Intending" I wouldn't use "shooting" in this case.
text: "Here's the HTML we're intending to generate.
text: " would sound better.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/8330/brentwpeterson
score: 5
sents: text: It's a malformation of the apparently American Idiom: "shooting for" .
text: I've never heard it phrased that way, but I have heard "shooting for" in Canada and the western US.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9197/Chris Conover
score: 3
sents: text: I am a native speaker from the UK with a lot of exposure to US English (work in IT) and I have never heard this expression before.
text: I would guess it is either a typo or a slip of the tongue.
text: The person could have English as a second language and 'shooting' in his/her language could be a standard phrase.
text: I have experienced that a lot in my time I Germany.
text: German phrases will be translated directly into English and used as if it were the Queen's English ;-)
text: As another poster suggested, 'aiming' might be a better word but 'shooting' conveys a different meaning
text: and I could only guess what was really meant.
text: It could be that 'shooting' sounds better than just 'aiming' - more pro-active!
text: See comments below
text: Here's the HTML
text: we're planning to generate...
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9172/paul
score: 1
sents: text: To be strictly pedantic/semantic, aiming and shooting are two different things.
text: Aiming is only targeting, shooting is targeting and pulling the trigger.
text: In the context of the tutorial, the author is not only aiming or intending, he's actually trying to help the reader make the attempt.
text: There are actually two cliches in the that paragraph ("rubber meets the road" and "shooting to ...
text: ").
text: The author adds cliches elsewhere, like "I know this isn't rocket science" and while I admit, it does make for interesting reading, in the end, to be clear in a tutorial, cliches are probably best replaced with concise instruction, especially if the target audience is not all from the same cultural background.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9198/Wyrmwood
score: 1
sents: text: Shooting (other than indescriminate) requires that you are aiming at something
text: and that's exactly what the phrase means and can also be said in English
text: - You're aiming to generate the HTML.
text: In this case aiming
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/4717/Michael Durrant
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
In this context, "shooting" means "aiming" or intending", as in the American idiom of "shooting for".
Aiming and shooting are different things. This is a malformed idiom. You can instead say 'aiming' or 'intending'.