From: Michael Witten Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 02:02:56 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/10] Docs: git tag: peoples back -> people's backs Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <4D90CD1B.4030906@nextest.com> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 13:02, Eric Raible wrote: > On 11:59 AM, Michael Witten wrote: >> Signed-off-by: Michael Witten >> --- >>  Documentation/git-tag.txt |    2 +- >>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) >> >> diff --git a/Documentation/git-tag.txt b/Documentation/git-tag.txt >> index 7844ff1..e276393 100644 >> --- a/Documentation/git-tag.txt >> +++ b/Documentation/git-tag.txt >> @@ -169,7 +169,7 @@ Sorry for the inconvenience. >>  ------------ >> >>  Does this seem a bit complicated?  It *should* be. There is no >> -way that it would be correct to just "fix" it behind peoples >> +way that it would be correct to just "fix" it behind people's >>  backs. People need to know that their tags might have been >>  changed. > > s/people's/peoples'/ Actually, "people" is already plural, and thus "people's" is the correct possessive form (as with "women" and "women's"); "peoples", on the other hand, means diffent groups of people. For instance: There are many people in China. Each of the various peoples in China has its own language; Hokkien is the language of my particular people. At least that's how I know the usage. How about changing it to "behind a person's back"? Perhaps the whole informal tone is what needs to be changed. > Or probably even better: > > /behind people's backs/automatically/ I don't feel that the word "automatically" sufficiently conveys the unexpected nature of such an event.