english grammar and patches

[Greg KH]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 09:25:26PM -0400, valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 10:27:00 +1000, "Tobin C. Harding" said:
> > This question relates to English grammar and correct usage when
> > writing gitlog messages and patch series cover letters.
> >
> > The writing of gitlog messages is covered in submitting-patches.rst,
> > of note is the mood to use. It is not stated but I think it is
> > a subjunctive description of the problem being addressed followed by
> > an imperative description of what is being done in the patch. Please
> > correct me if I am wrong.
> >
> > The question is: what mood to use in the cover letter.
> 
> Please note that most kernel hackers wouldn't recognize a subjunctive mood
> if it bit them on the ass.  In addition, we have a large number of people
> writing code for whom English is a second, or third, or even not well learned
> fourth language.
> 
> And I'm not even convinced that even if they were able to recognize it,
> that it would be the correct mood to use.
> 
> http://www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/grammar/using-the-subjunctive-mood-in-english/

I agree with these, and then there is the big fact that some
maintainers, myself included, just ignore the 00/XX emails and don't
really read them, as the patches themselves should contain enough
information to understand what is happening.

But note, some maintainers really do like them, and do care.  So you
can't ignore them.  Just do a short summary of what is going to be in
the patch series, that's all.  No one expects a short essay with correct
grammer, this shouldn't be a major amount of work to create it, just a
few sentences saying what the patch series contains is all that is
needed.

thanks,

greg k-h