# "up-to-date" vs. "up to date" 2 messages from 2017-04-13 to 2017-04-15. Participants: Jeffrey Manian, brian m. carlson. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/45687 ## Jeffrey Manian, 2017-04-13 20:34 Subject: "up-to-date" vs. "up to date" Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CALFtnmeRxgetuCVbO8ZmVkCR302vQ2s4hTPoHxAe5NEfmjtXEg%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hello git community, This is about an issue of language style and punctuation, not anything functional. Apologies in advance if I've brought this to the wrong place. There are a bunch of situations in which git will print a message like "Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'" or "Already up-to-date." In many of these cases, including the two examples I just gave, "up to date" should not be hyphenated --- at least according to most (if not all) English-language style guides. Here are a couple posts in support of that, which also explain when it should and should not be hyphenated: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/180611/do-i-keep-myself-up-to-date-or-up-to-date-on-something http://grammarist.com/usage/up-to-date/ And the Chromium community dealing with the same issue: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-reviews/edodON6G2oY I thought about submitting a patch, but I started looking through the source code and found that "up-to-date" appears 61 times. So before I get into that I thought I would check with the community to see if this is something that's already been debated and decided. Awaiting your thoughts, Jeff Manian ``` ## brian m. carlson, 2017-04-15 04:34 Subject: Re: "up-to-date" vs. "up to date" Message-ID: <20170415043429.ymrex77bfil2qbge@genre.crustytoothpaste.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20170415043429.ymrex77bfil2qbge%40genre.crustytoothpaste.net In-Reply-To: ``` On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 04:34:16PM -0400, Jeffrey Manian wrote: > Hello git community, > > This is about an issue of language style and punctuation, not anything > functional. Apologies in advance if I've brought this to the wrong > place. > > There are a bunch of situations in which git will print a message like > "Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'" or "Already > up-to-date." > > In many of these cases, including the two examples I just gave, "up to > date" should not be hyphenated --- at least according to most (if not > all) English-language style guides. Yes, the Chicago Manual of Style agrees that "[i]f the phrasal adjective follows a verb, it is usually unhyphenated." I often keep this rule in mind when writing commit messages. > Here are a couple posts in support of that, which also explain when it > should and should not be hyphenated: > https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/180611/do-i-keep-myself-up-to-date-or-up-to-date-on-something > http://grammarist.com/usage/up-to-date/ > > And the Chromium community dealing with the same issue: > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-reviews/edodON6G2oY > > I thought about submitting a patch, but I started looking through the > source code and found that "up-to-date" appears 61 times. So before I > get into that I thought I would check with the community to see if > this is something that's already been debated and decided. To my knowledge, we haven't discussed this issue before. I'm not Junio, so I can't speak for whether a patch would ultimately be accepted, but I'm not opposed to seeing or reviewing such a patch. Generally, the rule on the list is that unless the change is very large or wide ranging, you'll find people are more likely to give you feedback on a concrete patch (including whether the idea is desirable) than on an idea in general. -- brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US +1 832 623 2791 | https://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204 ```