in reply to Re^5: Improved instructions (fixed)
in thread Improved instructions

For the antecedent I'm looking at the previous subject, not the last word in the predicate. Subject is missing (implied "you"). Meat the the sentence is what to use. "it" is "these rule?"?

My editors were always after me to clarify pronouns such as "it" when it seemed obvious to me when I wrote it. But the changes did not make the prose worse, and usually was indeed clearer.

How about "…your post. See below for “Perl Monks Approved HTML”."

That is, use a full stop, and tell them to look below (since the original problem is that some people didn't), and spell it exactly the same as the reference below. I understand not wanting a href, but you can still mention it in prose the old-fashioned way.

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Re^7: Improved instructions (fixed)
by tye (Sage) on May 13, 2011 at 03:51 UTC
    For the antecedent I'm looking at the previous subject, not the last word in the predicate.

    I wasn't looking for the last word in the predicate. For the antecedent, I was looking for "3. (grammar) A word, phrase or clause referred to by a pronoun".

    Meat the the sentence is what to use.

    I see what you've done there: an excellent example of an unparseable sentence. ;)

    If you imagine some rule where the antecedent for "it" must be the subject of the prior statement, and the subject of the prior statement is "you", then shouldn't you be asking "Is it me?!" not «"it" is "these rule?"?» ? ;)

    How do you imagine the question fragment "there rules?" is the subject of the prior statement? If something other than said subject can be the antecedent, then why do you (by omission) reject the already offered antecedent of "your post"?

    But enough fun.

    Well, I believe the more basic problem is that "people very often don't read" (something I find completely understandable). A requirement of "looking below" certainly adds to that problem, but seems to be a secondary factor. So I'm not looking for "excellent prose" here. I want a blurb that is likely to get noticed and at least partially understood without requiring an attempt to actually read it as a sentence.

    But, yes, trying to (also) convey "look out below" is certainly an excellent suggestion. In the particular case that motivated your thread, there wasn't anything "below" to look at, of course, so it isn't actually an appropriate choice yet.

    But one of the main points that I believe Corion was trying to convey, was "Your post should be written in PerlMonks-approved HTML" and "The above examples are examples of PerlMonks-approved HTML". Your version does not convey that very strongly.

    How about?

    Use: ...
    to format your post; use "PerlMonks-approved HTML" (see below).

    I think that incorporates both points and does so much more clearly with close to a minimum of prose (after the "hints" are restored, of course).

    Thanks for the suggestion.

    - tye        

[reply]
      Use: ... to format your post; use "PerlMonks-approved HTML" (see below). I think that incorporates both points and does so much more clearly with close to a minimum of prose (after the "hints" are restored, of course).
      Yes. But I would also refer to it the same way it is named below, "Perl Monks Approved".
[reply]

        What?! You want it to be referred to grammatically incorrectly?! That seems quite inconsistent with your previous complaints. "Perl Monks Approved HTML" isn't even a noun phrase! It is a sentence talking about some action of several individuals.

        Are you worried that there are humans with pattern recognition that will fail to find "Perl Monks Approved HTML" (Tags) when searching for "PerlMonks-approved HTML"? I don't believe the vast majority of humans are so easily thwarted by such slight variations in spacing, punctuation, and capitalization.

        The node would have been retitled long ago except that there was a desire to not break links that already existed based on the old, grammatically broken title. At some point, somebody will do the inconvenient but not substantial work to grandfather the old title so the real title can be corrected.

        There is more "below" than just that one, specific link. And the purpose of the "above" text is not just to try to get the visitor to find that link. We already covered that we want to convey "please write in 'PerlMonks-approved HTML', like the above examples". And you already covered that using grammar correctly is important when trying to convey information.

        - tye        

[reply]

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