Hello fdclose

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:

> Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> writes:
>> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> writes:
>>> We always use [The .Nm foo utility or The .Fn foo function] instead
>>> of just .Nm or .Fn at the start of a sentence, but never (or rarely)
>>> within a sentence.
>> By "we", do you mean the FreeBSD project or your local organization?
>> Is there a specific reason the redundant wording, or is it just
>> customary?
>
> I mean the FreeBSD project, and the reason is as John stated: all
> sentences must start with a capital letter.  I've gotten so used to this
> over the past 15 years that I even do it in email and other non-FreeBSD
> written material.
>
> DES

"Because it's been that way for 15 years" is not always a justification 
(consider BIND in base, for example :).

I'll let this drop for now, but still find it interesting that it is not 
mentioned in the FDP Primer, and those style guide rules date back at 
least 15 years.  It may be that the original doc project members felt 
that capitalizing the first word of a sentence was so obvious that it 
did not need to be stated.  Or possibly, that it was a rule that could 
be usefully broken at times.