Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 12, 2005 23:37 UTC (Fri) by njhurst (guest, #6022)
In reply to: Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw) by mmarq
Parent article: Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Sorry mmarq, but every time I start reading one of your posts[1] my eyes glaze over and I give up. Do you think you could keep your posts shorter, and work on the spelling and sentence structure? When I do fight my way through there is often a nugget of goodness, but you hurt your own case with your rambling, incoherent style.

Perhaps it would help to outline your comment first with bullet points?

Maybe I'm the only person with this problem, in which case I apologise in advance.

[1] I trained myself to not read the author until after I've read the message to try to reduce bias.

to post comments

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 13, 2005 22:58 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] (2 responses)

When subjects to comment depend on a so elaborated maze of interests, as patents, commercial interests, individual interests and idyosicrancies, and more or less 'ad hoc' methods of development, how can you expose it clearly and shortly ?

Unless, you suggest to post only banalities, and only in perfect english, and absolutely nothing politicly incorrect whatsoever !

Then anyone posts could appear, maybe on CNN or BBC, as frivilous and empty as possible, but correct and polite, because that would help Linux and open source cause... Gossh!!

Grammar, syntax, and meaningful posts.

Posted Aug 18, 2005 21:27 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Sorry, mmarq, but he has a point. Perhaps English is not your first language, in which case I applaud your efforts in posting here. Either way, though, you could use some tips in grammar and punctuation.

Take your first sentence above, for example. The first phrase, "When subjects to comment depend on a so elaborated maze of interests, ..." borders on the incomprehensible -- the meaning can be extracted, with some effort, but it is masked behind grammatical errors and inconsistencies. The phrase "to comment", for example. A verb, followed immediately by another verb ("depend"). Where's the subject? Where's the object?

From context, one can eventually deduce that you probably meant "to comment" to be part of an adjectival phrase modifying "subjects", as in "When subjects on which to comment depend on ...". Better, but a little long-winded. It could be improved by dropping the phrase, or at least setting it apart with punctuation. You'll find some disagreement amongst punctuation fanatics as to which punctuation -- commas, dashes, or parentheses -- but any of the above will improve readability. For example "When subjects, on which to comment, depend on ...".

I could go on. "[A] so elaborated maze", for example. Perhaps you meant "an elaborate maze"? Or "a maze [of twisty little passages?] so elaborate that ..."?

Certainly, some things cannot be explained briefly (as the length of this post attests), but punctuation, word choice, and word order can help to make explanations clear.

Posts (or documentation!) with poor grammar or punctuation don't help anyone any more than does code with poor grammar or syntax. I'd recommend Strunk & White's Elements of Style to anyone interested in improving themselves in this area.

Cheers.

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 19, 2005 0:09 UTC (Fri) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

It is possible to be insightful in a single sentence - and more people will read it and learn.