--On Saturday, June 22, 2013 10:34 -0400 Barry Leiba <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > In RFC 2119, "SHOULD" and "RECOMMENDED" are synonymous > (they're just covering different parts of speech; they fit > differently into sentences). Changing "SHOULD" to > "RECOMMENDED" (and, of course, rewording the sentences > accordingly) doesn't affect Ben's comments on the points. FWIW, While the above is certainly true, I believe that synonym relationship is one of the poorer ideas in 2119. The problem is that 2026 assigns a rather different interpretation to "recommended" in the context of Applicability Statements (A/Ss). That was relatively unimportant when we were almost never using explicit Applicability Statements but, now that we are doing so again, I believe that it would be wise to discourage "RECOMMENDED" and "NOT RECOMMENDED" as synonyms for "SHOULD" and "SHOULD NOT" unless they are clearly necessary to avoid awkward sentences and the non-A/S intent is completely clear. john