Style guide topic - Version of English.

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

All, 

There was some side-discussion in a recent style guide string, about the 
recommendation to use American English in the GNOME Documentation Style Guide 
(GDSG). Please correct me if I am wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any strong 
objections to using American English, more a question of highlighting the 
recommendation in the GDSG. I agree with Malcolm's point that the recommendation 
should be more obvious, so the next time I do an update of the contents, I'll 
make a clear statement about the brand of English in the early part of the book. 

Pat


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> Cc: Trevor Curtis <tcurtis somaradio ca>
> Subject: Re: Style guide feedback
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> On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:09:30AM -0500, Trevor Curtis wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:52:02PM -0800, Malcolm Tredinnick offered:
> > > > So in laymen's terms, how should we look at these menu
> > > > bar/menu-bar/menubar, color/colour debates?
> > > 
> > > No! Please, let's just decide that there's no unique correct answer and
> > > get on with writing the documentation. We've had these discussions
> > > numerous times before. What makes people think that this time we will
> > > all suddenly start agreeing? (Sorry; I find this really frustrating and
> > > futile.)
> > 
> > (I recall only one such thread, but in that respect I guess I'm new so my
> > appologies.)
> 
> Sorry .. I'm just venting. :(
> 
> > > > I'm starting to think that it would be best to write up all our docs in
> > > > Latin and then provide an online Latin->English dictionary. 
> > > 
> > > Which is why I think these debates are often so pointless ... English
> > > evolved, it was not designed and it is not even internally consistent
> > > amongst even educated speakers within the same country. So we need to
> > > just make a decision and be consistent within our own documents, as
> > > others have said.
> > 
> > But I thought you just said there isn't a correct answer?
> 
> No, no, .. the problem is that there are too many correct answers.
> Almost everything said in these threads is/was correct at some point. We
> just need to pick one. This year, preferably.
> 
> > I think adopting the US english sounds cool. I guess I missed that part
> > in the style guide.
> 
> I went looking for these recommendations just now and realised they were
> fairly well hidden.  Look at
> 
> http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/technicaldetails.html
> 
> and scroll down to the "Grammar" and "Spelling" entries.
> 
> Pat, John, somebody? Can we move those two items also be displayed
> somewhere prominently near the front of the document (maybe in the
> "Documentation for an International Audience" section)? They would seem
> to be fairly important and a bit more invasive to the entire document
> than some of the other points in that section.
> 
> Cheers,
> Malcolm
> 
> -- 
> If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
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