UPDATING readability
Mike Edenfield
kutulu at kutulu.org
Mon Oct 18 16:15:39 PDT 2004
Harti Brandt wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, David Syphers wrote:
>
> DS>On Saturday 16 October 2004 01:53 am, Matteo Riondato wrote:
> DS>> Could we change an entry from:
> DS>>
> DS>> 20041007:
> DS>> One of the syscalls the 1:1 threading library libthr uses has
> DS>> changed, thus breaking ABI compatibility. Make sure you rebuild
> DS>> this library with the kernel.
> DS>>
> DS>> to:
> DS>>
> DS>> 20041007:
> DS>> One of the syscalls used by the 1:1 threading library libthr
> DS>> has changed, thus breaking ABI compatibility. Make sure you rebuild
> DS>> this library with the kernel.
> DS>>
> DS>> I think this will improve the readability and the comprension of the
> DS>> entry by the non-native english speakers.
> DS>
> DS>I hate to be pedantic, but the original entry is preferable. In English it is
> DS>correct to avoid the passive voice when possible (though not nearly to the
> DS>extent that, say, French does). The active voice is quite appropriate here,
> DS>where the subject is clearly defined. Is there a particular reason why
> DS>non-native speakers would prefer the passive voice?
>
> The verbs are coming very late in the sentence. That's not a problem for
> german speakers :-) but from experience I know that speakers from
> languages where the verb must come near the beginning of the sentence have
> a problem with this. The omission of the 'that' makes that even harder,
> because you can't parse the sentence into grammatical units until you see
> the 'uses' at the end of the line. That forces you to roll back and
> re-parse.
Would it be appropriate to flip the order of the sentances
around? This would avoiding having two distinct
noun-phrases in the first sentance, which is where I think
the verb confusion is coming in:
20041007:
The 1:1 threading library, libthr, must be rebuilt when
building a kernel. One of the syscalls it uses has changed,
thus breaking ABI compatibility.
--
-- Mike
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