From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: "'Lawrence Mitchell'" <wence@gmx.li>,
<1476@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com>, <emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org>
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: bug#1476: 23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be (un)writable
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 05:43:19 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <007701c9554d$1a7619c0$0200a8c0@us.oracle.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <?fnord?y3h6ljuxldvb.fsf@ID-97657.user.individual.net>
> > Emacs manual, node Directory Variables.
> > Please change "unwriteable" to "unwritable".
>
> > Not very important, since this is just an invented name in
> > an example, but it can lead users to think that's the spelling
> > and thus to look for such a term in the future. Googling shows
> > that similar bugs have been logged for Scheme, Python, man
> > pages, and elsewhere.
>
> FWIW the OED says both are fine: writable, a. Also writeable.
English has no equivalent of l'Academie Francaise, and that includes the OED.
It's about general usage, in practice. Whether "both are fine" is really beside
the point. There are lots of English expressions that are fine or that are used
in some contexts by some people, but which if used generally will get you stares
of incomprehensibility most of the time.
"writeable" is relatively little used, which means that users who go looking for
matches for "writeable" will generally be handicapped wrt what they find.
Please see the bugs I referenced for other software, or google for yourself, to
see how others are handling this. Again, maybe everyone in the world is wrong,
but it's about helping users find what they need.
Google, BTW, is smart enough to return "writable" hits for a "writeable" query,
but grep, Emacs search, etc. are less forgiving.
Again though, not the most important bug.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-12-03 13:43 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <878wqykkb2.fsf@cyd.mit.edu>
2008-12-02 23:02 ` bug#1476: 23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be (un)writable Drew Adams
2008-12-02 23:48 ` Stephen Berman
2008-12-03 3:35 ` bug#1476: marked as done (23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be (un)writable) Emacs bug Tracking System
2008-12-03 11:03 ` bug#1476: 23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be (un)writable Lawrence Mitchell
2008-12-03 13:43 ` Drew Adams [this message]
2008-12-03 14:00 ` Lawrence Mitchell
2008-12-03 15:00 ` bug#1476: 23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be(un)writable Drew Adams
2008-12-03 14:08 ` bug#1476: 23.0.60; spelling of (un)writeable should be (un)writable Juanma Barranquero
2008-12-03 15:03 ` Drew Adams
2008-12-03 15:06 ` Juanma Barranquero
2008-12-03 15:25 ` Drew Adams
2008-12-03 14:13 ` Jason Rumney
2008-12-03 15:09 ` Drew Adams
2008-12-03 21:46 ` Stefan Monnier
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='007701c9554d$1a7619c0$0200a8c0@us.oracle.com' \
--to=drew.adams@oracle.com \
--cc=1476@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com \
--cc=bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org \
--cc=emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org \
--cc=wence@gmx.li \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.