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Documentation bug: mistaken transitive verb
From: |
Garreau\, Alexandre |
Subject: |
Documentation bug: mistaken transitive verb |
Date: |
Tue, 27 Mar 2018 21:38:39 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus (5.13), GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) |
I was reading make info documentation for the second time since a quite
long time now, and I suppose my english level has improved since this
time this bugged me:
* Variables Simplify:: Variables make makefiles simpler.
After overcoming the doubt caused by the uncommon use of a conjugated
sentence as a (especially shortened) title, and realized it wasn’t a
matter of “-y”/“-ies”, I checked on Wiktionary[0] and indeed it seems
normally ”simplify” is a transitive verb, yet not exclusively since its
use as an intransitive one appears to mean “simplify self”/“become
simpler”, which I’m not sure is what the documentation is trying to say:
the long title says that *variables* make stuff simpler, not that
variables become simpler…
If I’m right here, I propose potentially “Variable simplification”
(meant as “simplification through variable”, not “simplification of
variables”), unless anybody has anything better, since it’s quite
ambiguuous as well.
[0] <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simplify#Verb>
- Documentation bug: mistaken transitive verb,
Garreau\, Alexandre <=