Re: Fix UK spelling in comments and ChangeLog entries?

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden> writes:

> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> Hi, Kenichi,
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 09:16:25PM +0900, Kenichi Handa wrote:
>>
>>> Anyway, for me (a non native English speeker), the more helpful thing
>>> is to standardise which word to use (e.g. remove/delete,
>>> replace/substitute, accept/permit/allow, preserve/retain,
>>> put/set/store, property/attribute, vector/array, go-to/move-to,
>>> cancel/undo, etc.) :-p
>>
>> NO!!  Different words have different meanings.  For example, if you
>> delete something, it's gone.  If you remove something, you can later put
>> it back again.
>>
>> You might substitute a fresh football player for a tired one, but you'd
>> replace a broken light bulb (answer, it only takes one Emacs hacker to
>> change a light bulb).
>>
>> And so on.
>>
>> There a few pairs of words indeed in English in which one means exactly
>> the same as the other.  It is surely the same in other languages.  Let us
>> strive, always, to use the most fitting word, and to preserve and retain
>> the fine control this gives us over our meanings.
>
> That is nice. For some non native English speakers it would be good to
> have a document describing those small differences.

Uh no, it is not nice.  The poetry of Emacs is at a different level than
the poetry of drama.  The language of documentation should be blunt and
to the point.  We don't want to hide differences in the subtlety of
words.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum