On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 01:02:18PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > On Sat, May 13, 2017, at 14:58, Gavin Smith wrote: > > On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 01:36:00PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > > Most messages in the echo area about "impossible" user commands > > > end in a period. But not all of them. Attached patch adds the > > > missing period to some of those. I didn't do an exhaustive search, > > > so probably there are other such missing dots in other files. > > > > They should not end in a period according to the GNU Coding Standards. > > I will try to remove them. > > No no no no no! > > Oh crap, you already removed them. :| You had something nice -- > something distinctive -- and turned it into mush. :|
I couldn't find any discussion online of why the recommendation was made. You can make arguments either way but ultimately it is a question of taste. I checked Emacs Info as well and it omits the periods too. There is the same recommendation in the Emacs Lisp manual (in (elisp)Signaling Errors or https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Signaling-Errors.html). "The convention in Emacs Lisp is that error messages should start with a capital letter, but should not end with any sort of punctuation." Thus, I think it's better to be consistent with other GNU software. > I guess you are referring to the last sentence on this page: > https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Errors.html Yes. > But I think the main reason for not letting error messages end > with a period is that sometimes they are followed by a colon > plus another explanatory message. > > But the messages we are talking about here (most of them, at > least), are not such error messages. They aren't even error > messages, they are just helpful hints for the user, about > reaching the end of the document, or there being no next node > on this level. It's not just error messages: "Error messages from interactive programs, and other messages such as usage messages, should start with a capital letter." > It was nice to see that info spoke in polite, > full sentences: starting with a capital and ending with a full > stop. And now it is back to bad, improper orthography. :( Somewhat off topic, but this reminds me of a recent news story: http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/01/is-there-really-a-grammatical-error-on-the-new-five-pound-note-6608790/ > (By the way, you missed one, in indices.c, line 478.) Thanks, hhanged for consistency.
