Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:00:01 -0600 (MDT) From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> To: doc@freebsd.org Subject: FDP and compound words Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1207241758220.63105@wonkity.com>
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The FDP word list at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/fdp-primer/writing-style-word-list.html specifies the formats for several words that are often used as a single compound word in our documentation. For example: file system disk label mail server name server web server Actually, I think the single-word versions of at least the first two are more correct. Some searching found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_noun_and_adjective There's an excellent example: "darkroom". A darkroom is a different thing than a dark room. To me, filesystem and disklabel are singular. A filesystem is a thing, a single object, while a file system is a group of files and directories. I'm sure there's a name for the difference between the single- and double-word versions, but don't know it. Many one-word versions are enshrined in code, like the use of "nameserver" in resolv.conf. I propose changing the FDP recommendations for the two-word versions above to the single-word versions. Statistics from SGML files in /usr/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1: 628 "file system", 513 "filesystem" 28 "disk label", 65 "disklabel" 50 "mail server", 3 "mailserver" 56 "name server", 21 "nameserver" 74 "web server", 13 "webserver" Some two-word instances separated by line breaks were probably missed. After the changes to the FDP, textproc/igor can be updated to detect the two-word versions. Note: no changes are planned to "cabaņa de bicicletas", "Fahrradraum", or "Fahrradschuppen".help
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