Re: [PATCH 1/2] doc: "Various Services" -> "Miscellaneous Services"

[John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>]

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On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 01:10:44PM -0400, Leo Famulari wrote:
     On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 02:18:20PM +0200, John Darrington wrote:
     > On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 01:28:01PM +0200, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
     >      John Darrington <jmd@gnu.org> skribis:
     >      
     >      > * doc/guix.texi (Services): "Various" -> "Miscellaneous"
     >      
     >      How does the meaning of these two words differ?  (I???m not a native
     >      speaker, so I???m curious.)
     > 
     > It is a subtle nuance.
     > 
     > What I understand from "Various Services" is "A group of services which I chose arbitrarily".
     > Wheras "Miscellaneous Services" means to me: "Services which don't fit into any of the
     > hitherto mentioned categories".
     > 
     > Perhaps there is no formal difference, but "various" sounds odd to me in that context.
     > I think that "miscellaneous" is more common in such use cases.
     
     I don't find this use of "various" to be confusing or strange, but
     "miscellaneous" is more idiomatic in this context.

There is no idiom involved.  Both words ("various" and "miscellaneous") are used with
their literal meanings - and both are correct.  It is just that, to me, "miscellaneous"
sounds more natural in the context it is meant.   When I see "Various Services" at
the end of this section, I thought perhaps at first it was a tutorial section giving
some examples of the services already discussed in previous subsections.

J'



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