Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fix a typo in git-maintenance documentation

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 13:19:41 -0700

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

>>  gc::
>>  	Clean up unnecessary files and optimize the local repository. "GC"
>> -	stands for "garbage collection," but this task performs many
>> +	stands for "garbage collection", but this task performs many
>
> Isn't this merely an American style vs British style issue?

Having said that, I think a lot of existing documentation (and my
gut feeling says "majority of", but I cannot claim anything like
that without actually counting [*1*]) we have tend to stick to the
"punctuation outside" British style [*2*].

If somebody (not me, and probably not Derrick) is willing to do the
counting and tree-wide style fixes, I am OK if we add some new text
to Documentation/CodingGuidelines to declare which style we stick
to, and enforce consistency throughout the documentation set.

[Footnote]

*1* A quick count:

    $ git grep -e '," ' Documentation/

    gives just a single hit.  On the other hand, '", ' hits too many,
    but many are sentences like 

      "git clone -q", "git fetch -q", and the like are quiet.

    which is not quite fair.

    Don't try to do that for the comma replaced with period; you'd be
    buried by "word..."  and the like.

*2* After all, that is more "logical", for us CS types---opening and
    closing quotes pair with each other, and the punctuation that
    appears near the quoted portion is part of the larger sentence
    structure.