Re: Colloquialisms (was: Re: [hatari-devel] Re: IDE byte swapping options)

[David Savinkoff <dsavnkff@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- On Oct 18, 2018, at 8:03 AM, Roger Burrows anodyne@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> On 18 Oct 2018 at 9:48, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> 
>> I meant "colloquial" in the sense of "should not be used in written
>> English texts like manuals", not in the sense of "unprofessional". At
>> least this is what our teachers taught us in school. Looking at some
>> pages in the internet, it seems that some agree (e.g.
>> https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9096/usage-of-contractions-like-it
>> s-and-thats-in-textbooks
>> ) while others say that it could also rather be a regional thing (e.g.
>> https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20275/are-contractions-like-didnt-
>> forbidden-in-written-english
>> ) ... I'm also not a native speaker, but as far as I can see, "it is"
>> sounds "safer" for formal texts to me.
>> 
> 
> As a native English speaker (currently living in Canada, but originally from
> the UK), I'd say that:
> 1. you would almost always use "it's" in spoken language
> 2. you would almost always use "it is" in a printed document
> 
> Online is somehow between the two, so it's hard to be dogmatic.  For me, "it
> is" creates an impression of greater accuracy & precision, but less
> friendliness.  So I would use "it's" in a FAQ, but "it is" in a manual.  But
> that's just an opinion, and "honest men may differ".
>

Contractions convey friendliness in both speaking and writing.
An authoritative  example is  "The C Programming Language"
by Kernighan and Ritchie. Both "it's" and "it is" are used often. 

> 
>> By the way, looks like we're rather informal in the manual:
>> 
>> $ grep -i " it's " manual.html | wc -l
>> 22
>> $ grep -i " it is " manual.html | wc -l
>> 11
>> 
>> ... maybe we should standardize on one of the two spellings?
>> 
> 
> I think that is definitely something that should be fixed.
> 
> Roger Burrows