Re: I18n comment: period or full stop

I think the best option is on first mention to say either "period (full 
stop)" or "full stop (period)".

Mark

L. David Baron wrote:
> On Tuesday 2006-01-24 19:34 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
>   
>> On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 ishida@w3.org wrote:
>>     
>>> Comment: You use the name "period" for the character U+002E, which is 
>>> the Unicode 1.0 name for "full stop". You might change the naming or 
>>> make the reference to the Unicode version for this naming explicit.
>>>       
>> This is an official comment on behalf of the CSS working group.
>>
>> I've made this change:
>>
>> -<p>Working with HTML, authors may use the period (U+002E,
>> -<code>.</code>) notation as an alternative to the <code>~=</code>
>> +<p>Working with HTML, authors may use the "full stop" notation
>> +(U+002E, <code>.</code>) as an alternative to the <code>~=</code>
>>  notation when representing the <code>class</code> attribute. Thus, for
>>  HTML, <code>div.value</code> and <code>div[class~=value]</code> have
>>  the same meaning. The attribute value must immediately follow the
>> -&quot;period&quot; (<code>.</code>).</p>
>> +&quot;full stop&quot; (<code>.</code>).</p>
>>
>> Please let us know if this does not satisfy your request.
>>     
>
> I'm actually opposed to this change.  If the official language of W3C
> specs is US English, it should remain "period".  I suspect many, if not
> most, US readers are unfamiliar with the term "full stop" as referring
> to a punctuation mark.  (I do distinctly remember being puzzled when
> reading a text [1] that referred to "full stop" and (I think) "pause" as
> marks of punctuation and eventually figuring out that it was referring
> to what I called "period" and "comma".  I suspect that memory is from
> when I was in high school, or perhaps even college.)  I'm not sure what
> percentage of UK readers are familiar with the term period, though.
>
> -David
>
> [1] It may have been H. W. Fowler's The King's English.
>
>   

Received on Sunday, 5 February 2006 01:39:38 UTC