[Bug 12246] New: Say 'the/a BOM character' througout - there isn't different 'BOMs' (plural)

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12246

           Summary: Say 'the/a BOM character' througout - there isn't
                    different 'BOMs' (plural)
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
               URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/parsing#determining-the-c
                    haracter-encoding
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


'8.2.2.1 Determining the character encoding'  and '4.3.1 The script element'
both says:

]] This step looks for Unicode Byte Order Marks (BOMs). [[

Nearly every other place where the BOM is referred to, the spec says "a Byte
Order Mark character".  
(E.g. http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/offline#writing-cache-manifests  ]]a U+FEFF
BYTE ORDER MARK (BOM) character[[

Please use the same/similar expression here. Also, it is misleadiong to use the
plural form, because although it can be encoded in at least 3 ways,  there is
only one Byte Order Mark character.  

Hence, please change the above quote into roughly this:

    ]] This step looks for the Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) character. [[

Likewise, the '8.2.2.2 Character encodings' section currently reads:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/parsing#character-encodings-0

]] When a user agent is to use the UTF-16 encoding but no BOM has been found,
user agents must default to UTF-16LE. [[

Again 'no BOM' is not as clear as if you said 'but the BOM has not been found". 

Likewise in 4.2.5.5 Specifying the document's character encoding, it says:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/semantics.html#charset

]] If an HTML document does not start with a BOM, [[

Please say "a BOM character" or (as I would prefer) "the BOM character".

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Received on Saturday, 5 March 2011 04:53:07 UTC