I find Eli's English is better than native proficiency, especially
considering the bell curve is alive and well. I currently live in the USA
where English proficiency seems to be on a long, slow, steady downward
trend. I assumed he is a native, or near native, speaker/writer. He writes
well, and all day long on this list, about very complex topics (at least
compared to the general public), and is patient and very clear. He even
uses correct punctuation where I observe many Americans don't, or don't
bother; if they are studious enough to know it.

On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 5:01 PM Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Fri 30 Aug 2024 at 10:18pm +03, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
> > I disagree, but that is not the important aspect of this.  The
> > important aspect is that changing grammar should not make the text
> > harder to read and understand.  By mechanically changing those places
> > to be grammatically you definitely made at least some of the text more
> > awkward and hard to read.  E.g., look at this one:
>
> Let me just note that I didn't do it mechanically.  I always read the
> surrounding context if I change something like this, else I can't know
> for sure that I did it correctly.
>
> >   -The command @code{recover-file} no longer allows to display the diffs
> >   +The command @code{recover-file} no longer allows displaying the diffs
> >
> > Does this really read well to you?  Or how about this one:
> >
> >   -dnl The first variable allows to distinguish all three cases.
> >   +dnl The first variable allows distinguishing all three cases.
> >
> > "Allows distinguishing"? really?
>
> Yes -- I don't find these the slightest bit unclear, unnatural or
> difficult to read.  "allows distinguishing" doesn't stand out to me.
>
> > You should have instead reworded the text to avoid the use of these
> > constructs, making the text more clear and side-stepping the issue of
> > "allow to" entirely.
>
> Well, in this, as you are a non-native speaker, your opinion on whether
> it's clear counts for more than mine.  So I would be happy to put in the
> effort to try to make it clearer.  However, I don't think I'm capable of
> doing a good job, because they all read perfectly fine for me.
>
> My only suggestion would be "allows you to make Emacs distinguish" ?
>
> --
> Sean Whitton
>
>