GNU bug report logs - #23746
25.0.95; Doc fixes (grammar, typos, clarification)

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From: Noam Postavsky <npostavs <at> users.sourceforge.net>
To: Ken Brown <kbrown <at> cornell.edu>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, Stephen Berman <stephen.berman <at> gmx.net>, 23746 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#23746: 25.0.95; Doc fixes (grammar, typos, clarification)
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2016 17:09:45 -0400

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Ken Brown <kbrown <at> cornell.edu> wrote:
> On 6/12/2016 2:55 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>>
>>> From: Stephen Berman <stephen.berman <at> gmx.net>
>>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>,  23746 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>>> Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2016 19:58:27 +0200
>>>
>>> On Sat, 11 Jun 2016 16:21:19 -0400 Noam Postavsky
>>> <npostavs <at> users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> As a native English speaker, "your Lisp program may wish telling the
>>>> process" sounds obviously incorrect (though I'm not sure how to
>>>> explain why in terms of grammatical rules). Whereas, "your Lisp
>>>> program may wish to tell the process" is correct.
>>>
>>>
>>> That's one argument for this change; another is the statistical one
>>> based on the existing Emacs documentation:
>>>
>>> steve <at> rosalinde:/data/steve/git/emacs> grep -r " wish to " doc/ | wc -l
>>> 196
>>> steve <at> rosalinde:/data/steve/git/emacs> grep -r " wish [a-z]*ing " doc/
>>> doc/lispref/processes.texi:may wish telling the process the dimensions
>>>
>>> Eli, does this persuade you to accept this change too?
>>
>>
>> Sorry, no.  There's nothing wrong in the original wording in this
>> case.

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong on this. The original wording is
grammatically incorrect, please defer to people with more knowledge of
English, as I'm sure anyone would defer to you on a question regarding
Emacs' display engine.


>
>
> As a native speaker of English, I agree with Noam on this.  "may wish
> telling" sounds wrong.
>
> Ken

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