From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-9.5 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,INCLUDES_CR_TRAILER,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, NICE_REPLY_A,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,URIBL_BLOCKED,USER_AGENT_SANE_1 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16C1FC433DB for ; Fri, 8 Jan 2021 13:24:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B62B3235FF for ; Fri, 8 Jan 2021 13:24:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1725791AbhAHNYd (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 Jan 2021 08:24:33 -0500 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:44728 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1726508AbhAHNYc (ORCPT ); Fri, 8 Jan 2021 08:24:32 -0500 Received: from mail-wr1-x430.google.com (mail-wr1-x430.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:4864:20::430]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9C306C0612F4 for ; Fri, 8 Jan 2021 05:23:51 -0800 (PST) Received: by mail-wr1-x430.google.com with SMTP id m5so8980232wrx.9 for ; Fri, 08 Jan 2021 05:23:51 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=cc:subject:to:references:from:message-id:date:user-agent :mime-version:in-reply-to:content-language:content-transfer-encoding; bh=KK2k4EkMKoEVQmdVu7pm+QOPbnMVmAuc9Jg4q8JL14A=; b=c7CZjqzI+f41CvGeYh1oEUadL6EKB9psKbI6qDHKeMh2/yxCP6UDxZkrPOxVzRFZNu sWfnNv/uXq/SitCVuqMWG32x2F4Okvp+tmf+LxpYVoZ0jNTFUQE+rwdc4b24qvL4F8P+ C+nPDwmPFeAlfI421I4JHUjs1WoipVtoczlOhi0O0rHwHKNNG0rWz3UzlLLIRJ4yNP26 O1QXzcjelgJKTWbpUy+f2mN/UOaMSFcPsTC63uxdZiKcSmSXvxqZTYpfgPG3ASmqpYFj gC+akPq62xQxAhIaXQzD7D0U22L/KR67/PwXsXsN3NZqaFGP/2Y6Lj7ioDbgFiuFtLSm qM5A== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:cc:subject:to:references:from:message-id:date :user-agent:mime-version:in-reply-to:content-language :content-transfer-encoding; bh=KK2k4EkMKoEVQmdVu7pm+QOPbnMVmAuc9Jg4q8JL14A=; b=j5HtTTKQEFTVcCbyNfIofnnTCZCsBAhX4ujECWpEaIRhswIrkzUPyphrAq1IuSdFLP Q7TLBWIQ4SqhLsCCfLYNtP7HnhyHR0S4PnAM1mZ89hjFMCymXkUcf1pg+2pgJwogREcX b63fOh468ISOiuC38Ml7yoCfDMXE3QiCLpCienjzAIOe7J5hMQKQBfRjfsMJ6+zj9oi0 LEF0ggyk6G+K6DsV8axQais+6+vLRnfhN17j7B5F4Bu9iWQ0aLtPJez3v5LPSmmxbEt6 /FPA0bbUVDeNGuosubebap8Zp0tP6RJ7XSEgUce6fdgN0sXS7+Um3gkeRsv7fZ8yU2Id 4oTA== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM530pi0TPyGdrItAUWxyxEv7ryUhrL3GpFv+p3glExoda3w9JJdRz HR/6qIZ5nKLdQ2YX/TI8Zg4uxJ3m/EY= X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJz+8+t+yv21EUjCFXeQe9wPjfKphp2U7DErZs2pH9aBZ1JuOQjpzPwQUgW8tVtzmsQcsD8m1A== X-Received: by 2002:a5d:6a4f:: with SMTP id t15mr3847669wrw.62.1610112229970; Fri, 08 Jan 2021 05:23:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from ?IPv6:2001:a61:244d:fe01:9fb1:d962:461a:45e8? ([2001:a61:244d:fe01:9fb1:d962:461a:45e8]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id a13sm13235191wrt.96.2021.01.08.05.23.48 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Fri, 08 Jan 2021 05:23:49 -0800 (PST) Cc: mtk.manpages@gmail.com, linux-man@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] netlink.7, tcp.7: tfix: s/acknowledgment/acknowledgement To: "Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)" References: <20210107165518.36629-1-alx.manpages@gmail.com> <59156288-13c4-ca10-ade3-5b83cd7c0902@gmail.com> From: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" Message-ID: <39255c4b-3d54-cae5-14ec-6122cfef8072@gmail.com> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 14:23:48 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <59156288-13c4-ca10-ade3-5b83cd7c0902@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org Hello Alex, On 1/8/21 12:36 PM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote: > > On 1/8/21 11:29 AM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >> Hi Alex, >> >> On 1/7/21 5:55 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote: >>> Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar >> >> Take a look at >> >> https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=acknowledgment%2Cacknowledgement&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3 >> >> and compare American English vs British English using the drop-down. >> >> When I inherited man-pages in 2004, it was a hodge-podge mix of >> American vs British spelling. My native spelling is the latter, >> but I value consistency and felt that things needed to be >> standardized on one or other, and in computing, American is the >> norm so that is what I settled on.hodge-podge >> >> I'm largely at piece with American spelling these days (it >> is the spelling I use in most of my writing), but I guess >> the one point that still bothers me are the American spellings >> "acknowledgment" and "judgment". They just feel wrong. > > Yup > >> >> However, I now learned from the Ngrams that even in British >> English, the spelling without "e" was historically the norm. >> So it seems that it is British English that has changed, >> not American English! >> >> I was about to say that I must decline this patch. And then >> I thought I'd take a look at the POSIX standard. It seems >> to largely follow American spelling (e.g., "color", "canceled", >> "recognize", "analog").[1] But, it uses "acknowledgement"! >> (There are even a couple of instances of "judgement" in >> the standard.) It seems like others like to have the >> extra "e' in those words... >> >> So, I'm not sure what to do with this patch. > > Hey Michael, > > D'oh, I thought it was a typo! :-) > > American English surprises me. > > Yes I prefer American English, but I've also learn_ed_ British at > school, (and learnt American through the internet), so I have a weird > hodge-podge in my head too :p > > I guess many people though it was a typo from the data you put. Also see: > > $ grep -r acknowledgement \ > |wc -l; > grep: man7/.hostname.7.swp: binary file matches > 69 > $ grep -r acknowledgment \ > |wc -l; > 23 Okay -- this gets weirder and weirder. Look more closely at what the grep found. Those instances of 'acknowledgement' are almost all in the page comments containing BSD licenses! I thought to myself, that's strange: because BSD is from California... Maybe some enthusiastic person did a global edit in the distant past to change this to British spelling in the Linux manual pages. But, it doesn't seem that way. I grepped a few thousand header files that I've assembled over the years from various OSes, and in the BSD licenses, the vast majority use 'acknowledgement'. A few use 'acknowledgment', but I suspect that those were changed after importing from other places. It seems that the underground spelling resistance was strong at Berkeley. > Nevertheless, I prefer American too, so I'd invert the patch. > What about s/acknowledgement/acknowledgment/? So, I still don't know what to do. I never much liked the "American" "*dgment", but: (1) That seems to have been the historical form that British English moved away from. (2) A couple of "American" groups (BSD, POSIX) use the "British" spelling. Cheers, Michael PS I want to join the spelling resistance :-) -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/