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

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 15.10.12 18:15, Colin Guthrie (gmane at colin.guthr.ie) 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.
> 
> 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.

Actually the text Andrew listed got one thing wrong too: the loser
meaning of "bzw." in the German language is actually wrong in German
too. People just use it that way, because German is too hard a language
for the German population itself... 

So, as I see it the correct German usage of "bzw." within a sentence
does actually translate 1:1 to the English usage of "respectively" at
the end of a sentence. Except that Germans don't know their own
language...

> 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.

Yes, I actually used "resp." here for a reason, to clarify that the
order of explanations is the same as the order of
strings/items/directives/words that came first...

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.