So long as you don't extend the logic to common British usage which is weird enough for things like "Apple have announced" and "England have won the World Cup," but please spare us from "I am stood in front of..." and "We were sat there for 3 hours." Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher The Internet Protocol Journal Office: +1 415-550-9433 Cell: +1 415-370-4628 UK EE: +44 7805 977889 Docomo: +81 090 3337-9311 E-mail: olejacobsen@xxxxxx Skype: organdemo On Wed, 14 Feb 2018, Lloyd Wood wrote: > Just to reply en masse to the concerned Americans in my mailbox: > > Plurals are not a singular noun. > Still correct, still grammatical. > > If I'm comparing two lions with one wallaby, 'The lions are not a wallaby" is a valid statement. > > "Oranges are not the only fruit" > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_Are_Not_the_Only_Fruit > > We have this grammatical usage in literature... > > everything else is blah blah blah bikeshedding. > > https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding > > Lloyd Wood lloyd.wood@xxxxxxxxxxx http://about.me/lloydwood > > > > ________________________________ > From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> > To: Joe Abley <jabley@xxxxxxxxxxx>; Stewart Bryant <stewart.bryant@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx > Sent: Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 7:47 > Subject: Re: Grammatical corrections to the headers and boilerplate text > > > > > --On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 13:50 -0500 Joe Abley > <jabley@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > On 13 Feb 2018, at 03:37, Stewart Bryant > > <stewart.bryant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > >> This may be a US vs UK English thing, but I agree with LLoyd, > >> the original seems quite correct to me. > > > > I agree. The replacement text also seems fine, though. I guess > > the new text is more correct, if we're measuring correctness > > by proportion of the audience that is happy with it. > > I suggest a slightly different measure, which is tied to a long > tradition of the normative publication language of the RFC > Series being, explicitly, American English. That was, IIR, much > more strongly reflected in some of the informal documents used > after RFC 2223 and before 7322, but 7322 reflects it as a > preference for American spelling (Section 3.1) and the Chicago > Manual of Style (Section 1). The latter is definitely a > reference on American English, arguably the most extreme of them > (and, at least IMO, getting more so in recent years). > > Now, while RFC 7322 is not explicit about it, although it is > implied in the spelling discussion in Section 3.1, there is also > a long tradition of allowing authors to do things in whatever > way they like as long as the language is recognizably English > and the document is consistent throughout. So, let me suggest > two theories: > > (1) Following American English and the Chicago Manual of Style, > the current boilerplate construction is simply wrong, partially > 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. > > (2) Following the consistency rule, if the rest of an RFC is > written consistently in American English (either because the > author wrote it that way or because the Production Center > corrected it), then the boilerplate should also be consistent > with American English. Same conclusion: the proposed new text > is correct. > > 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. If that directive specified "American" > (presumably the default, at least for historical reasons) then > the boilerplate would be shifted to match that preference. If > it specified "British", then that preference would be followed > and the boilerplate would read as Lloyd and Stewart have > suggested (with other parts of the boilerplate being made > consistent). > > I do have two cautions about that plan, but they are just > cautions. First, there is a slippery slope due to the many > versions of English out there. I'm happy with the American > versus British dichotomy, but, as someone who has never been a > huge fan of the Chicago manual, I can imagine an argument for > different styles of grammatical hair-splitting based on regional > or dialect preferences. Probably we don't want to go there, > but other opinions may reasonably differ. Second, some of the > other boilerplate (not affected by the current discussion but > possibly affected if we start doing wholesale revisions to > conform to, e.g., Gowers or Fowler) could run into a problem > with assumptions that the legalese assumes US law. IANAL and > have no idea whether changes there would create any normative > problems, but have often been told that an important principle > in any litigation is not to start out by irritating the relevant > judge, including by appearing illiterate to a judge that is > sensitive to such issues. So be careful what you wish for. > > best, > john > >