Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 14:14:50 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah@FreeBSD.ORG>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG>, Eric Ogren <eogren@stanford.edu>, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG, Chern Lee <chern@meow.osd.bsdi.com> Subject: Re: Style/Grammar/Writing Guidelines Message-ID: <20010614141450.G13153@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <20010613165807.A45984@meow.osd.bsdi.com>; from murray@FreeBSD.ORG on Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 04:58:07PM -0700 References: <XFMail.010613160240.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <200106132316.f5DNG2365398@bmah-freebsd-0.cisco.com> <20010613165807.A45984@meow.osd.bsdi.com>
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Murray Stokely said on Jun 13, 2001 at 16:58:07: > On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 04:16:02PM -0700, Bruce A. Mah wrote: > > Appropriate, yes, but not required, IMHO. I seem to remember from my > > technical writing class in college that this could be (is?) something > > of a religious issue. (Well, that's not what the instructor called it, > > Read through the handbook and then read through any other printed > technical publication. There is a huge difference and it becomes > apparent very quickly that the Handbook is nowhere near being ready > for shelf-exposure. We're not talking about minor grammatical nits > here (as your professor was), we're talking about very major ones. Bad grammar should be corrected. Saying "you" and "your computer" need not be. I vastly prefer the existing paragraph which Chern Lee quotes to his modified one. At the same time, for a publication quality book, I agree that the overall "look and feel" should be consistent: it will look strange if one paragraph is chatty and the next is stiff and starchy. But I think this is better fixed by one person, or two or three people, going through the whole thing pre-publication, rather than by imposing a "style guide" on everybody. And I'd vote for a chatty "look and feel" myself, over a stiff and starchy one. - Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the messagehelp
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