[cc-community] [asheesh at creativecommons.org: Re: A comment from Noah Slater]
Complex
complex.confusion at gmail.com
Thu May 15 15:20:20 EDT 2008
Yeah, I wasn't going to ding you for that one.
-- cc
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 1:52 PM, Parker Higgins <parkerhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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