[systemd-devel] [PATCH] Reword sentences that contain psuedo-English "resp."

[Andrew Eikum]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 06:15:18PM +0100, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Tom Gundersen at 15/10/12 17:57 did gyre and gimble:
> > On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 6:14 PM, Andrew Eikum <aeikum at codeweavers.com> wrote:
> >> The trouble is "resp." isn't used in English, ever.
> > 
> > For what it is worth, "resp." is commonly used in mathematics. I don't
> > know about technical writing in general though.
> 
> Yeah I've seen it plenty times while going through university, so while
> it might not be used in prose, I've never had an issue with this kind of
> abbreviation being used in documentation and have always understood it's
> meaning.
> 

Counter-anecdote: In the course of using Linux since 2007 and going
through a four-year computer science degree including several classes
in cryptography and discrete mathematics, I've never seen the "word"
once. Maybe it's something that doesn't often filter over to the US,
where we get much less influence from other languages.

Before about 8 this morning, you could have swapped "resp." with
"beziehungsweise" and it would have held exactly the same meaning to
me (that is, none at all). Quoting from the link in the patch:

"""
Now I have read a query from someone on a forum with a German member
whose English is very good. However, he keeps including the
abbreviation 'resp.' in his postings, and English speakers can't make
sense of it. 
"""

Indeed, I couldn't.

> That said, the German abbreviation doesn't necessarily translate
> directly into an English one, so if there is any doubt just don't
> abbreviate it.
> 

This helps, but it's still a bizarre use of the word "respectively." I
found a similar occurrence in seteuid(2), and it reads very strangely,
although I could at least figure out its meaning, probably. The
abbreviation could mean anything: respecting? with respect to?
respectively? respectfully?  ...resplendent?

> As a general rule, I would be against replacing it with a simple "or" as
> that really can change the meaning. This is technical documentation and
> thus syntax more aligned to common prose is not always desirable.
> 

The fix there is to replace "resp." with "or" and append
"respectively" to the end of the sentence. I chose to do that or not
in my patch with discretion, where I thought it might help
disambiguate the meaning. We could definitely use that construction in
every case, if you preferred.

Andrew