Re: A note on "non" and "non-"

Boris Motik wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As I said in my previous e-mail, I believe that in American English non-words
> should be written as nonwords. Exceptions to this rule are words that contain a
> hyphen (so you write "non-tree-like" instead of "nontree-like") and words that
> start with an uppercase letter (as you write "non-Unix" instead of "nonUnix").
> 
> The book "BUGS in Writing" by Dupre Lyn
> (http://www.amazon.com/BUGS-Writing-Revised-Guide-Debugging/dp/020137921X)
> advocates this tyle, and I believe this to be in line with the Chicago Manual of
> Style.

Ok, option 1) should have been formulated like this: use a consistent 
rule for choosing between "non-" and "non". I would support the rules 
you use.

> SS&FS, Direct Semantics, RDF Mapping, XML Syntax, Profiles, and rdf:text (i.e.,
> the documents that I'm an editor of) all use American English and follow the
> above guideline.
> 
> I do not understand what "header" you are referring to when you talk about
> "non-normative formats". If I open the Syntax document and search for "non-", I
> find only the occurrences that match the exceptions I outlined earlier.

This sentence appears at the beginning of all HTML documents, before the 
abstract:

"This document is also available in these non-normative formats: PDF 
version."

This sentence is probably put there by a script, and therefore it is not 
the responsibility of the editors of the individual documents to change 
it (I guess).

Regards,
-- 
Antoine Zimmermann
Post-doctoral researcher at:
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
National University of Ireland, Galway
IDA Business Park
Lower Dangan
Galway, Ireland
antoine.zimmermann@deri.org
http://zimmer.aprilfoolsreview.com/

Received on Wednesday, 22 April 2009 11:52:58 UTC