Re: Draft pthread_spin_lock(3) manual page

["Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk dot manpages at gmail dot com>]

Hello Pedro,

On 20 October 2017 at 12:12, Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/2017 07:06 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
>
>> I meant to reply earlier.  This is a pet English grammar peeve of
>> mine: "shall" is a _directive_.  Specifications use it because they
>> are directing the implementors to make things happen, but in
>> documentation aimed at people _using_ an interface, the appropriate
>> word is "will".  The function _will_ fail and set errno under the
>> following conditions yada yada.  That's what it does.  You, the reader
>> of this manpage, do not have to do anything to make that happen.
>
> Technical writing guidelines usually suggest staying in the
> present tense, and avoid future tense though, because with "will"
> it's not clear whether you're describing how things behave as
> currently implemented or whether you're talking about how things
> will be implemented in the future.
>
> I.e.:
>   ... foo fails and sets errno if/when ...
> instead of:
>   ... foo will fail and set errno if/when ...
>
> Here's an example:
>
>
> http://www.datacenterjournal.com/technically-write-advice-technical-writing/
>
> And here's Sandra applying that same rule throughout GCC's manual:
>
>  [[doc] extend.texi copy-editing, 1/N (verb tenses)]
>  https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-10/msg02688.html
>
> (I recalled that whole series of Sandra's as I found
> it quite instructive back then.)

Fair enough, I've fixed "will fail" in a number of pages!

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/