Re: compiler.texi: Compiling to the virtual machine

[Ken Raeburn <raeburn@raeburn.org>]

On Jan 17, 2009, at 18:12, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>>  s/e.g./e.g.,/
>>
>> To me, s/e.g./for example/ is an idempotent transformation. So if the
>> clause after "e.g." is short, no comma necessary. Otherwise you  
>> need a
>> comma for breath. But maybe it is a snooty style.
>
> I dunno, I thought the comma was sort of compulsory.
>
> A quick googling reveals that opinions diverge, but that the comma  
> after
> "e.g." is often used in American English.

My understanding is that in American usage you always put in the  
comma; leaving it out (and sometimes the periods as well) seems to be  
more common in British usage.  (Actually, I suspect that technically a  
comma should be required with "for example" as well, regardless of the  
author's breathing patterns; I've seen at least one style guide  
supporting that.)  What I've seen vary more is whether "i.e." and  
"e.g.", as (abbreviations for) Latin, should be italicized.  I  
generally use italics, in a medium that permits it, and always learned  
to do it that way, but I've seen at least one style guide recently  
that says not to bother.

Does the FSF have a style guide for this sort of thing?

... Okay, I just pulled up the GNU Coding Standards document, which  
says nothing about this but use "e.g." always in Roman or bold (in  
code examples) and with inconsistent comma usage (present in text,  
absent in code examples, so they may have been written by different  
people without attention to that detail), and "A Style Guide for GNU  
Documentation" (http://www.gnu.org/doc/Press-use/GNU-Press-styleguide.pdf 
) which also fails to address this or to even use "e.g." or "i.e.",  
but uses "etc." in plain Roman, and specifically says to use only  
logical markup, not typographical markup, with the one exception of @r  
"to cause plain, explanatory text in a table or example to be in a  
Roman font."  Since they don't touch on "e.g."/"i.e."/"etc." usage in  
the text, and the specific guideline elsewhere is "italic" and not  
"strong" or "emphasized", I wonder if what's written is really the  
intent or if they just didn't think of these cases.

Ken