Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 11:45:03 -0800 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: doc@FreeBSD.org Cc: Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: Spelling of "file system" Message-ID: <poy8po3e4g.8po@mail.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20040325090257.GA36775@abigail.blackend.org> (Marc Fonvieille's message of "Thu, 25 Mar 2004 10:02:57 %2B0100") References: <20040323090317.GD20372@ip.net.ua> <20040325090257.GA36775@abigail.blackend.org>
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Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org> writes: > We have: > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/fdp-primer/writing-style-word-list.html > and I read "file system". Maybe we should follow the list we wrote. "We" wrote? Who's "we"? I googled *freebsd* groups for "writing-style-word-list" and found that the only mention of it is an off-hand reference to it in one thread last December. It's CVS log has one entry from Jun'03, in which "blackend" claims to add "disk label" to "the word list", with the only clue to its origin being a Nik Clayton copyright claim. It seems that this part of the "FreeBSD Doceng Team Charter" needs a re-write: Discussion and consensus on the freebsd-doc mailing list is how the project has conducted itself, and how it is expected to conduct itself in the future. FWIW (not much), googling also found a "file system"/"filesystem" hit ratio of 1.37. BTW, if terms like "file system" are not going to be geeked into a single word of jargon, it's even more important to avoid the tendency of casual authors to omit hyphens from phrases that are apt to cause readers to stumble because of the misassociation of words. For example, the beginning of the mount_portalfs(8) manpage speaks of "the global file system namespace", which causes readers' brains to glitch if it first processes the phrase as "the global-file system-namespace" (or grouped by rote as "the global(file(system(namespace)))"). It should be "the global file-system namespace". (Which explains why people have formed lots of new words like "filesystem" -- they don't like to use hyphens.)
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