One more data point: On 14 February 2018 at 06:46, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > because the presence or absence of negation changes nothing in > American English about subject-verb-predicate matching of > number, and the proposed new text is correct. > Also true in Australian English, in so far as that's a thing. I was taught "...not all <plural> are <plural>..." or "...not every <singular> is a <singular>...". > > However, the second theory suggests a different option which, if > someone wants to advocate (and presumably do the work), I would > personally support if the RFC Editor had no objections. That > would be to allow instructions to the RFC Editor and, > presumably, a directive to XML2RFC, to specify the author's > preferred English style. > -1. I don't mind if someone "corrects" colourise nearly as much as I would mind it being different in two different documents (and so for grammar, if it can be shown that US and British grammar actually do differ.) Having a single benchmark for spelling, grammar, and universal readability makes the whole series more accessible. I do question whether that benchmark should be "standard American" (using CMoS as a proxy) or "whatever is most understandable for our audience"; but the latter lacks a formal spec, and we do like our formal specs. Cheers -- Matthew Kerwin https://matthew.kerwin.net.au/