Re: [Bug-gnupress] What voice do we use?

[Lisa M. Opus Goldstein]

Actually, Paul, you pointed out a big problem.  The voice for the
manual has become rather scattered as different people made updates
and added sections.  This is especially noticeable in the "definitions"
sections. 

In general, I believe that we should avoid using any language to
represent the writer.  99% of the time this is easily done by
restructuring a sentence.  If there is a need for this, such as
explaining why a decision was made to follow one coding style and not
another, then the GCC Steering Committee can be introduced as the
agent of action, rather than an amorphous "we".

It is also best to avoid direct references to the reader/user.  It is
too "chatty" a style for a written reference manual.  Most of the time
the need for directly addressing the reader can be avoided by
rewriting the sentence with a different structure.

If second person cannot be avoided, it is probably best to refer to
the third person "the user", rather than "you".


-Opus







Paul A. Crable <address@hidden> wrote:
> Forgive me if I am raising an issue that has already been resolved. I
> am, after all, a newbie:
> 
> I've read through parts of the draft GCC manual and am not sure what
> voice we have adopted. In some places the author is written in first
> person plural  (we and us) while the reader is written in the second
> person singular (you). At other times both the author and reader are
> referred to in the  third person;  i.e., we refer to "the author" and
> "the reader" and use third person pronouns (he or she, him or her) to
> describe them both.
> 
> If the matter has not been resolved, I vote for the latter because it
> seems to be the convention used in most well written manuals.
> Furthermore, the former is a little too chatty and tends to
> encourages critics in their belief that free software is amateur
> software, in the worst sense of the term "amateur".
> 
> I can go either way, but I think we should all go the same way.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Lisa M. Goldstein           address@hidden
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Free Software Foundation    Fax 617-542-2652