Add a note to the style guide about abbreviations#1844
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resolves python#1824 After the section on specific terms, but before "simple language", add a section that explains that documentation should spell out acronyms, preferring the "<full-spelling> (<acronym>)" format.
Documentation build overview
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Hi Stephen, this issue was originally specific to
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Oh, I hadn't even thought to put it in the role usage docs! 🤦 I want to keep some explanation of the rationale. I'll move things as you suggest, and I think the "some assistive technology" note will end up with the roles. Edit done! LMK if it needs more tuning. |
The role is documented in with other sphinx roles. In order for the rst to read easily, one line of non-semantic whitespace was added to a list. The acronym usage note is moved to the end of "Use simple language"
Maybe... I like "Use simple language". It has two virtues:
I could probably be convinced, but we can discuss outside of this PR. 😁 |
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As I said, that's for another day ;-) I also have to catch up on the Discord discussion. Thanks for the changes, it's what I had in mind. |
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All commit authors signed the Contributor License Agreement. |
Co-authored-by: Stan Ulbrych <89152624+StanFromIreland@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Stan Ulbrych <stan@python.org>
| Don't use Latin abbreviations like "e.g." or "i.e." where English words will do, | ||
| such as "for example" or "that is." | ||
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| In general, the first time an acronym is used on a page, spell it out. |
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Ironically nothing in the devguide defines the "HTML" abbreviation which you use in the other part of this PR. And I think that's a good thing: in computing there are some terms that are more widely understood as abbreviations than as the full form, and adding the full form is more likely to distract than to help readers. HTML is one of those terms. Other examples off the top of my head are UTF-8, PNG, SVG, SQL.
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Yeah, sometimes an acronym becomes a term or word in its own right.
The guidance should be read as flexible in this respect.
We added the "In general" to try to succinctly cover this. Do you feel it needs more explanation? We can try another arrangement if the current text looks too strong.
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The current text will likely lead people to comment that you need to say "Hyper-Text Markup Language". I'd suggest wording like "Commonly understood acronyms such as HTML or UTF-8 do not need to be expanded."
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Hat tip to @hugovk for this! Not only the issue (#1824), but also his comments preceding it made this easy to write.
This as a draft because it conflicts with #1828, which is already approved and should ideally merge first.
Once that's done, the exact positioning of this content in the page may change.
Open question: should this be converted to be a subsection of "Use simple language" or "Specific words"?
resolves #1824
After the section on specific terms, but before "simple language", add a section that explains that documentation should spell out acronyms, preferring the
"<full-spelling> (<acronym>)"format.