[cc-community] [asheesh at creativecommons.org: Re: A comment from Noah Slater]
Complex
complex.confusion at gmail.com
Thu May 15 12:07:17 EDT 2008
a) SEMICOLONS AND COMMAS
My comment is at least a little persnickety, but this is a list of
nouns, not a list of adjectives. As such, you *could* separate them
appropriately with commas. Semicolons would be necessary if any of
these nouns contained commas.
(For example, "Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial" or the
hypothetical "Visible, prominent Attribution; Share-Alike;
Non-Commercial" where the type of attribution contains a comma.)
b) HYPENS AND DASHES (AND INTRACAPS)
You use hyphens when you need to clarify the relationship between two
words. In"Attribution Share-Alike", "Share" clearly relates to the
word Alike and not to "Attribution". However, in "Attribution, Share
Alike" I don't think the hyphen is required at all. It doesn't hurt,
but my reporter coworkers would probably leave it out.
In "Attribution - Share-Alike" or in the actual "Choose a License"
pages (which say: "...Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0..."), the hyphen between Attribution and Share Alike is clearly
being used like a dash -- as if it should be an em dash.
And IntraCaps isn't so useful, it just jams the words together so you
can avoid learning how to use commas and semicolons. Save it for
programming and marketing.
c) SHUT UP AND CONCLUDE ALREADY
I think the licensing language should be using two hyphens in place of
the intended dash, such as in: Attribution--Share Alike. And spaces
would be real nice:
Attribution -- Share Alike
But regardless, they should take the usage from the front pages
("...Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0...") and use it
everywhere else. They could modify that to a neat double-hyphen dash
afterwards.
Thanks for the chance to geek out on English.
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:21 AM, Noah Slater <nslater at bytesexual.org> wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 12:53:47PM +0100, Robert Atwood wrote:
>> Attribution; Share-Alike; Non-Commercial; etc.
>
> I don't think this is correct usage of the semicolon. The words here are being
> used as adjectives to describe the licence, in no other situation have I seen
> semicolons used to separate multiple adjectives.
>
> The other messages no this thread seemed to suggest that the long form of the
> licence name should match the abbreviated form, but I think this is
> misguided. The use of hyphens in the abbreviated form is pretty standard but the
> rules of style for fully expanded names should be considered a separate matter.
>
> I do not see the need for any punctuation between adjectives in the expanded
> licence names and cannot think of any "prior art" for this style.
>
> Does anyone have any idea how to take this forward and get something changed
> because despite what is eventually agreed upon, consistency across the licences
> is important.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Noah Slater - Bytesexual <http://bytesexual.org/>
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