Re: Article on our end-users

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi!

Rocking article, thanks very much! (Well, you knew I was going to say
that, right?)

Your English is not problem that our editors won't be able to fix, I
guess. Your satisfaction about how it's written is a different thing.

My advice is to check every sentence by using the question: "Who's doing
what?" If it's hard to answer, you can improve the sentence in
most cases by rewriting it: The action (the "doing") should be early in
the sentence!

Let's have a look:

  However, to the "what is GNOME?" question, really few people will
  answer that GNOME is a community.

On the question "Who's doing what?" I'd answer you want "few people" to
"answer" something. Make this first in a sentence:

  However, really few people will answer that GNOME is a community
  when asked the "What is GNOME?" question.

Next example:

  included in the broader GNOME community lives the user community,
  which is too often forgotten.

Again, who's doing what? It's the "user community" that does "live".
So, make this:

  the user community lives inside the broader GNOME community. This is
  forgotten too often.

I've additionally splitted the sentence here.

One of the exceptions to the "Who's doing what?" rule is when you want
the one doing something at the end of the sentence. Sometimes you need
to edit the second sentence, too. Like this, for example:

  However, really few people will answer that GNOME is a community
  when asked the "What is GNOME?" question. It's the community
  who creates GNOME, who improves it, and promotes it. But there's
  also a community that uses GNOME. This is forgotten too often: The
  user community lives inside the broader GNOME community.

I can' say whether or not the reformulation did express what you wanted
to say. But I think the "Who does what?" question helps very much. It
makes one's own thoughts more clear I believe.

Let me know if you want to make another editing round yourself, or not.
I'd like to upload the article on thursday, so our editors have the
weekend for correcting typos, mistakes, and the like.

Cheers,
Claus


On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:20:31 +0200
Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> So, I'm sorry to be so late. I hope it's not too late...
> 
> Here's a real first draft of an article on our end-users. It probably
> needs some work (especially since my English is far from being
> perfect...).
> 
> The core of the article is there, but I've a hard time being satisfied
> on how it is written. Improvements & comments are welcome. If there's
> still time to modify it, I'll probably do so...
> 
> (I've cc'ed Thomas who was kind of interested in this article.)
> 
> Vincent
> 
> -- 
> Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
>