On 3/19/2021 4:19 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >>> gc:: >>> Clean up unnecessary files and optimize the local repository. "GC" >>> - stands for "garbage collection," but this task performs many >>> + stands for "garbage collection", but this task performs many >> >> Isn't this merely an American style vs British style issue? > > Having said that, I think a lot of existing documentation (and my > gut feeling says "majority of", but I cannot claim anything like > that without actually counting [*1*]) we have tend to stick to the > "punctuation outside" British style [*2*]. > > If somebody (not me, and probably not Derrick) is willing to do the > counting and tree-wide style fixes, I am OK if we add some new text > to Documentation/CodingGuidelines to declare which style we stick > to, and enforce consistency throughout the documentation set. I'm not lining up to volunteer for this effort, but if it is truly the typical case in the Git documentation, I would agree to a change to the coding guidelines and this specific change. > [Footnote] > > *1* A quick count: > > $ git grep -e '," ' Documentation/ > > gives just a single hit. On the other hand, '", ' hits too many, > but many are sentences like > > "git clone -q", "git fetch -q", and the like are quiet. > > which is not quite fair. Right. I would use this order in these cases. > *2* After all, that is more "logical", for us CS types---opening and > closing quotes pair with each other, and the punctuation that > appears near the quoted portion is part of the larger sentence > structure. I'm willing to concede that using ", universally avoids needing a special rule, especially because phrases like If you run "git commit", then X happens. is obviously the right thing to do. I can't speak for contributors whose first language isn't English, but I can imagine that removing the difference between these cases would make it just a tiny bit easier to contribute. I can break my own habits. The only thing I ask is to make it officially part of the guidelines. Thanks, -Stolee
