Re: Formatting lists of things

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 12:38 -0300, Raphael Higino wrote:
> Hey, Shaun. Good catch.
> 
> First a silly note (and question too): AFAIK in English you'd just use
> that last comma for disambiguation purposes, right?

Actually, in English, whether or not you include the comma
before "and" (we call it the serial comma) depends on whose
style guide you adhere to.  If you want to follow Shaun's
Guide to Perfect English (which I make up as I go along),
then you always include the serial comma. :)

--
Shaun

> On 6/22/07, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> > I've run into a localization issue in formatting DocBook,
> > and I need some input from translators to decide how best
> > to solve it.  Let's say I have a list of people's names.
> > There could be any number of people.  I need to format
> > this as inline text.  So in English, I'd do:
> >
> >   Tom and Dick
> >   Tom, Dick, and Harry
> >   Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sally
> >
> > The names, of course, don't get translated, but the
> > commas and "and" should be.  So again, this time with
> > parentheses around the potentially translatable parts:
> >
> >   Tom( and ) Dick
> >   Tom(, )Dick(, and )Harry
> >   Tom(, )Dick(, )Harry(, and )Sally
> >
> > If every language works exactly like English, then I
> > can just mark three strings for translation: ", ",
> > " and ", and ", and ".  But my guess is that they
> > aren't all like English.
> >
> > So translators, please let me know hows lists of
> > things are formatted in your language, including
> > instructions on exceptions (i.e. in English, two
> > elements are formatted differently than three or
> > more, as above).
> 
> In Portuguese (at least here in Brazil) our lists just wouldn't have
> that last comma:
> 
> Tom and Dick
> Tom, Dick and Harry
> Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally
>