[systemd-devel] [PATCH] Use normal English elide in place of ellipsize

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Andrey Borzenkov at 04/02/14 15:36 did gyre and gimble:
> В Tue,  4 Feb 2014 15:31:58 +0000
> Barry Scott <barry.scott at onelan.co.uk> пишет:
> 
>> Change the messages output and also all internal
>> function names and variables to match.
> 
> As a non-native English speaker I must admit ellipsize was more
> understandable. I am not sure I would understand "elide" if it was not
> used in this context.

As a native English speaker I must admit that "elide" was a new one on me!

I asked one of my colleagues (a former English teacher) and his take on
it was that "an elision" is more commonly used to mean "joining
together" (which in the process might mean abridging some of the
components) - this is typically the usage in music notation for example
where a line joining two notes together.

I do agree that ellipsize is not a real world but it is quite descriptive.

If we do want to describe the action taken rather than the effect, then
I would use the word "truncate" here, rather than elide as this is
really what happens now as implemented.

If the logic was made smarter to not necessarily truncate at the end
(e.g. to remove vowels or similar), then "abbreviate" would be better
(although I cannot see this happening any time soon in a language
agnostic way!).

My £0.02

Col

PS, why is "abbreviate" such a long word?

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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