english grammar and patches

[me@tobin.cc (Tobin C. Harding)]

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 06:34:39AM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 09:25:26PM -0400, valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> > On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 10:27:00 +1000, "Tobin C. Harding" said:
> > > This question relates to English grammar and correct usage when
> > > writing gitlog messages and patch series cover letters.
> > >
> > > The writing of gitlog messages is covered in submitting-patches.rst,
> > > of note is the mood to use. It is not stated but I think it is
> > > a subjunctive description of the problem being addressed followed by
> > > an imperative description of what is being done in the patch. Please
> > > correct me if I am wrong.
> > >
> > > The question is: what mood to use in the cover letter.
> > 
> > Please note that most kernel hackers wouldn't recognize a subjunctive mood
> > if it bit them on the ass.  In addition, we have a large number of people
> > writing code for whom English is a second, or third, or even not well learned
> > fourth language.
> > 
> > And I'm not even convinced that even if they were able to recognize it,
> > that it would be the correct mood to use.
> > 
> > http://www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/grammar/using-the-subjunctive-mood-in-english/
> 
> I agree with these, and then there is the big fact that some
> maintainers, myself included, just ignore the 00/XX emails and don't
> really read them, as the patches themselves should contain enough
> information to understand what is happening.
> 
> But note, some maintainers really do like them, and do care.  So you
> can't ignore them.  Just do a short summary of what is going to be in
> the patch series, that's all.  No one expects a short essay with correct
> grammer, this shouldn't be a major amount of work to create it, just a
> few sentences saying what the patch series contains is all that is
> needed.

Oh cool, thank you!

Tobin