Re: [PATCH] Various documentation typo/grammar fixes

Marti Raudsepp <marti(at)juffo(dot)org> wrote:
> Kevin Grittner <kgrittn(at)ymail(dot)com> wrote:

>> For the initial patch, I agree with all except the first change of
>> "others'" to "other's" -- the start of the sentence uses "All", so
>> there is clearly more than one "other", so the the apostrophe
>> belongs after the "s".
>
> Not arguing against this, but all the grammar advice I've read
> suggests that "each others' " is always wrong. For example
> http://jakubmarian.com/each-others-vs-each-others-in-english/

Hmm. I checked with the Chicago Manual of Style, which is my
preferred source, and it agrees that "each others'" is always
wrong. More than that, it says that traditionalists use "each
other" when exactly two are involved and "one another" when more
than two are involved. So to be totally proper, that instance of
"each others'" should be "one another's". ("One anothers'" is also
always wrong.)

>> I think most or all of the places that the 0002- patch (i.e. and
>> e.g.) need a change to look right, but I'm not sure this goes far
>> enough. In style guides I've had to use these generally should
>> follow punctuation (left parenthesis, colon, semi-colon, comma, or
>> em dash), and be separated from any following text by punctuation
>> -- usually a comma.
>
> This matches my research too. I wrote two rules to add commas where no
> punctation was being used:

> Attached is the updated 0002 patch. I skimmed over all the differences
> and they looked good to me, but with 124 more lines touched, it's
> possible that I missed something.

I'll need a little more time to digest all of those in detail, too.
It sounds like we agree. Where a couple occurrences of "etc" are
being to abbreviate a code example we might have a special case, but
otherwise these are likely to all be the way I'm used to seeing
them.

>> In patch 0003- I agree that the change to "exactly the same" reads
>> better. I'm torn on changing the hyphens to spaces. I probably
>> wouldn't change them
>
> Agreed. I'll move the "exactly the same" hunk to patch 0001 once
> we settle the "each other" question.

Sounds like a good idea. Each patch file is then dealing with a
distinct set of issues.

--
Kevin Grittner
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