Re: [PATCH 01/11] doc: trailer: fix grammar
- From
- Linus Arver <linusa@google.com>
- Date
- May 8, 2023, 19:33 UTC
- Message-ID
- <owlypm7amxdn.fsf@fine.c.googlers.com>
- In-Reply-To
- <xmqqpm7aoclp.fsf@gitster.g>
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> "Linus Arver via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:
>> From: Linus Arver <linusa@google.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Linus Arver <linusa@google.com> >> --- >> Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.txt | 2 +- >> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
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>> diff --git a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.txt >> b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.txt >> index 22ff3a603e0..e695977fbfa 100644 >> --- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.txt >> +++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.txt >> @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
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>> DESCRIPTION >> ----------- >> -Help parsing or adding 'trailers' lines, that look similar to RFC 822 >> e-mail >> +Parse or add 'trailer' lines, that look similar to RFC 822 e-mail >> headers, at the end of the otherwise free-form part of a commit >> message.
> Is that a grammatically incorrect sentence?
I think so. If we remove the dependent clauses starting with "that look similar ...", we just get
Help parsing or adding 'trailers' lines
which cannot stand on its own as an independent clause. The correct version would be
Help parse or add 'trailers' lines
which is what I first considered. However the auxiliary verb "help" here doesn't really mean much, because the interpret-trailers builtin already is _the_ authority for parsing or adding trailer lines, so I opted to remove it in my patch.
> The command does help doing these two things, but we can say the > command does these two things without closing clarity, so I do not > have an objection to the updated text
Exactly (I think you meant s/closing/losing here).
> (the only "ungrammatical" part > may be that ", that look" should probably be "that look"), but I am > not sure if "fix grammar" is a good explanation for this commit.
I think punctuation (especially with commas) can be pretty wide-ranging in terms of what is acceptable or not in terms of grammar. But looking at it again I like your version with the comma removed. I'll make the change locally for a v2 series.