Anecdotal data point number N+1... As an occasional implementor of IETF specs, I have to say it's much easier to check my conformance if I can just grep for "MUST" and "SHOULD". It's also easy for developers to get in the bad habit of ONLY doing those things that are clearly marked in that way. So ISTM that if you're not tagging things you want done with RFC 2119 language, then you're risking people not implementing them. On Jan 4, 2013, at 1:15 PM, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Wonderful perennial topic. :) > > As I always say when this comes up, when writing drafts I've settled > on using the 2119 keywords only in their uppercase form, and otherwise > using "need to", "ought to", "might" (etc.) to avoid all possible > confusion. Sure, it's a bit stilted, but we're not writing gorgeous > prose here, we're writing technical specifications that need to be > completely clear. > > Peter > > - -- > Peter Saint-Andre > https://stpeter.im/ > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.18 (Darwin) > Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAlDnHCQACgkQNL8k5A2w/vxKmwCfXKjDtMqQiPp4a0udOB8Q9IbA > q9QAoNiXj2r/q4yRLp0B/13m6Xxg5YN4 > =3PER > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----