Yes, but that isn't the worst problem. I made a deliberately-dumb suggestion in the hope of making a point, but obviously failed. Let me try once more... Conventions, consistently applied, are usually a good thing, even when establishing them involve arbitrary choices. The IETF community ought to understand that because ultimately many or most of our protocol standards, and certainly our focus on interoperability, are just such conventions, defined to make the Internet work better (or work at all). I appreciate Ole's examples and the implicit question of where one draws the line. In other capacities, I enjoy and learn from debates about "correct" and "not correct" (the article Christian cited at https://www.theonion.com/4-copy-editors-killed-in-ongoing-ap-style-chicago-manu-1819574341 ) is very much part of that discussion even though some of us who dislike the Chicago Manual dislike the AP one even more), as are places where Gowers says things that some reasonable people believe Fowler would have found quite surprising), but the important examples that justify having a single style norm and sticking with it are actually different. Several examples follow with the understanding that this is not a comprehensive list, but one that I hope will be sufficient that we don't have to have several days of people adding others (and my thanks to those who suggested some of these in private or on-list notes): * Is "1,000" one thousand, or is the comma a radix separator, making the string have a value of one? * Is "one billion" 10^9 or 10^12? Or is exponential notation better expressed as 10**9 or 10**12 (a question that has nothing to do with British-American distinctions)? * Do "mbps", "Mbps", "mBps", and "MBPS" describe the same unit? If not, which ones are around an order of magnitude different from the others? Note this isn't an American-British distinction either. * If I am trying to search an RFC to find a discussion of ways of showing emphasis, do I use "color" or "colour" in the search string? Or, borrowing from the LUCID discussion, if I'm trying to search for an important city in Switzerland, do I search for "Zurich" or "Zuerich" (or actually spell it correctly, as Zürich)? I note that the latter example is not an American-British English distinction but is still something that a comprehensive style guide might want to pin down. We should remember that, as we move toward fancy RFC formats and non-ASCII text, that third choice becomes possible and, while grep, emacs, and their clones have powerful regular expression functionality, it may not be quick to use. That functionality is typically not present in "find" functions in web browsers or PDF readers, making a further argument for one set of conventions. We cannot solve all of these problems, but should not make more for ourselves by encouraging different style choices or, worse, by allowing choices that are inconsistent within a given document. Bottom line: one language, one style manual, and one dictionary to be used to settle spelling arguments. That there be only one of each is far more important than which one is chosen. In particular, I don't like the Chicago Manual, especially more recent editions, and argued against that choice when it was made. I lost and, while I complain about it periodically, I work with it. Similarly, although RFC 7322 doesn't say so, my recollection is that the RFC Editor tends to prefer Merriam-Webster dictionaries, notably the _Collegiate_ (about as "American English" as they come). I don't, largely because their dictionaries have moved at bit too much away from notions of authority and toward statistically-common usage for my taste. But, in the interest of consistent conventions, I live with it. We can fantasize about the RFC Editor being able to work with several different choices of English, Style Manuals, etc., but those fantasies would ultimately make the RFC Series less useful and would almost certainly increase costs and/or the length of time it takes to get a document through the system in the process. However, the particular issue that started this discussion is actually part of a different problem. For IETF-stream documents, the document editor is typically acting on behalf of a WG or the IETF more broadly. If anyone comes later to a set of document authors or editors and says "you illiterate fools", a reasonable response is "don't blame me, the WG signed off". That is not the case for independent submissions, where there is no such community effort and, both in appearance and reality, the author really is responsible for 100% of the text, at least until we start attaching explicit disclaimers about where some of the text comes from. The question there is whether, if the rest of the document is written in American English (and accepted by the RFC Editor as such) whether the author has the right to insist that all of the document be consistent with American English rules and conventions (independent of what might or might not be valid in other places). Where the boilerplate is concerned, is to reasonable to either insist that it be in American English or that it contain an explicit disclaimer that the author is not responsible in any way for that text? best, john --On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 20:27 -0800 Ole Jacobsen <olejacobsen@xxxxxx> wrote: > > 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." > 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 >> >>