Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 05:43:39 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Pritchard <mpp@FreeBSD.org> To: asmodai@wxs.nl (Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai) Cc: sjr@home.net (Stephen J. Roznowski), freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Spelling of ASCII in man pages? Message-ID: <199909091043.FAA04400@mpp.pro-ns.net> In-Reply-To: <19990909081955.Q64229@daemon.ninth-circle.org> from Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai at "Sep 9, 1999 08:19:55 am"
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> * Stephen J. Roznowski (sjr@home.net) [990909 07:14]: > >I've noticed on several of the man pages that ASCII has various > >spellings: ASCII, Ascii, ascii. > > > >Should these be corrected to ASCII? > > Given how anal we are about FreeBSD.org we should prolly be as anal > about this. > > The best documentation is consistent. This goes double for contractions. > Contractions in documentation are a BIG no-no. Yes and no on the contraction point. I was the first person to sweep through the handbook/FAQ and kill all of the contractions. This was done to make it easier for the foreign language translators. At the time a couple of people pointed out that using contractions in technical documents isn't necessarily bad, since it help readability and makes the tone of the document a little less formal. I have a couple of tech writers guides that don't encourage their use, but they also don't discourage their use (and they do mention them, so they just didn't ignore the subject). As for man pages, I leave the contractions alone -- unless I happen to be re-wording that particular sentence/line. This is especially true of 4.4BSD-lite derived documents, since it makes it easier for us to import changes from the other BSDs. So the trade-off is that our documents might be little more stiff, but we are making it easier for the translators. That was the whole theory behind it. Then again, we changed our minds about freebsd.org. We used to always specify FreeBSD.ORG, and now we want FreeBSD.org. Doesn't matter either way, just as long as we are consistent. -Mike -- Mike Pritchard mpp@FreeBSD.org or mpp@mpp.pro-ns.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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