Re: [PATCH 16/22] trivial: fix typo "that that" in multiple files

[David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>]

Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:

> The "that that" can read awkwardly even for native English (or, for that
> matter, American) speakers, even though it sounds quite natural in spoken
> English.

I think it sounds quite natural when you say it because you say them
differently - or at least I do.  The first 'that' is a conjunction, and the
second a determinative.  Possibly the determinative should be in italics, but
that's hard to do in plain text.

> Would it be possible to reword as for the RCU example?
> ...
> 	"likely that this process will submit another request soon, and that"

This is actually the as-iosched.txt example.

To use the RCU example:

	Therefore, as soon as a CPU is seen passing through any of these
	three states, we know that that CPU has exited any previous RCU
	read-side critical sections.

I think that in this example, "a CPU" should be paired with the "that"
determinative because you're not talking about the CPU you've got in your hand
per se, but a random CPU over there.

If you instead said "this CPU", being more specific, I think that's when you'd
use the "this" determinative:

	Therefore, as soon as this CPU is seen passing through any of these
	three states, we know that this CPU has exited any previous RCU
	read-side critical sections.

Of course, I'm not a qualified linguist - I know enough to make stuff up and
hopefully make it sound plausible.

David