[cc-community] [asheesh at creativecommons.org: Re: A comment from Noah Slater]

Parker Higgins parkerhiggins at gmail.com
Thu May 15 13:52:53 EDT 2008


Woah, I completely hadn't yet noticed that a super-geeky grammar 
response had already gone out on this list.  I guess I'm not the only 
English geek in the room.

Complex wrote:
> 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/>
>> _______________________________________________
>> cc-community mailing list
>> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>>
>>     
>
>
>
>   


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