From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752006AbcFFTJQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Jun 2016 15:09:16 -0400 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([198.137.202.9]:45117 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751101AbcFFTJP (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Jun 2016 15:09:15 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] documentation: ntb.txt correct grammar "however" To: Allen Hubbe , "'Austin S. Hemmelgarn'" , "'Ken Moffat'" , "'Justin Keller'" References: <8CC2D7F1-5F56-411B-877F-40CD04DD1FEB@gmail.com> <20160605013609.GA25079@milliways.localdomain> <011801d1c026$96f98440$c4ec8cc0$@emc.com> Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Randy Dunlap Message-ID: <5755CA56.7010202@infradead.org> Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 12:09:10 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <011801d1c026$96f98440$c4ec8cc0$@emc.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 06/06/16 12:06, Allen Hubbe wrote: > From: Austin S. Hemmelgarn >> On 2016-06-04 21:36, Ken Moffat wrote: >>> On Sat, Jun 04, 2016 at 03:34:01PM -0400, Justin Keller wrote: >>>> Correct the grammar around the word however. > >>>> -besides Netdev, however no other applications have yet been written. >>>> +besides Netdev; however, no other applications have yet been written. >>> >>> As a user of British English, the original looks fine. Your change, >>> however, looks odd - a semi-colon seems out of place. If you >>> replaced it by a full-stop it would look acceptable to me - but not >>> in any sense better than what is there at the moment. >> FWIW, the existing usage in the file is common enough in at least >> British, American, and Australian English to be borderline idiomatic >> syntax, but is technically not correct based on traditional punctuation >> rules in any of them. >> >> Personally, I'd leave it as is, especially considering that usage is >> also used by most translation services, and that proper usage of >> semicolons isn't taught much anymore even in collegiate English courses, >> so many younger individuals who speak English natively will think it >> looks odd. > > As the however-challenged author, I have no preference one way or any other about the phrasing of this line. > > To address others' concerns, perhaps I might suggest a change that resolves the correctness issue without appearing odd: change however to but. > I think that the patch is good, but the latter suggestion is sufficient and good enough also. -- ~Randy