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capitalization of error messages and option descriptions


From: Bruno Haible
Subject: capitalization of error messages and option descriptions
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:36:36 +0100
User-agent: KMail/1.9.9

> # Error messages should not start with a capital letter

Why should error messages not start with a capital letter?
Often error messages should be translatable, and when they are, the
guidelines from GNU gettext [1] apply:
  "Use entire sentences."

And in normal English style, sentences start with a capital letter.

For instance, in GNU gettext I have error messages that consist
of several sentences:

  Input files contain messages in different encodings, %s and %s among 
others.\n\
  Converting the output to UTF-8.\n\
  To select a different output encoding, use the --to-code option.\n\

It's normal that these sentences start with a capital letter, no?

Then I also have error messages consisting of a single sentence:

  two different charsets \"%s\" and \"%s\" in input file

  input file `%s' doesn't contain a header entry with a charset specification

Maybe I should actually change all these error messages to start with a
capital letter, for consistency? Or only those that are entire sentences,
with a subject and a verb?

Somewhat related: What was the point of lowercasing the sentences in the
option descriptions of the usage message of 'bootstrap'?

Bruno

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Preparing-Strings.html
[2] 
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=commitdiff;h=54c0573c2f6200b8b9c88a026c7bc8cfe44e0403



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