Re: [Debconf-team] [RFR] Please check the DebConf13 sponsoring brochure English version
Luca Capello wrote:
>>> Contribution in CHF &
>>> <2'000 & 2'000 & 6'000 & 12'000 & 25'000
>>
>> Apostrophes as thousand-separators? Not even with CHF! (Is there a
>> TeX trick to make them localise automatically?)
>
> According to IBM (from Wikipedia) that is how it should be done (and
> indeed UBS does that):
[...]
> However, according to SAS, the separator depends on the region:
>
> <http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/nlsref/63072/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p0eq0k53tsx9cwn1hnz4s942vxzm.htm>
How about using the international compromise standard of a thin
non-breaking space?
Still, presumably any organisation prepared to make contributions in
CHF will be familiar with Swiss LC_NUMERIC conventions.
[...]
>>> We also invite sponsors, in addition to their basic sponsorship, to
>>> sponsor a specific part of the conference. These are some of the
>>> opportunities available, please contact the sponsorship team to
>>> discuss prices and other details:
>>
>> Comma splice; upgrade it to semicolon.
>
> Mmm, I am not sure I completely understand this (sorry, you explained
"These are [...] opportunities" and "please contact [...]" are
syntactically unconnected clauses (with different subjects, for a
start); in English it's considered colloquial to splice them together
with just a comma.
> it, so I took the freedom to disagree). The sentence could be
> reformulated as:
>
> Please contact the sponsorship team to discuss prices and other
> details about the following opportunities, which are only examples:
That doesn't quite work - if they're only examples, surely I'd be
better off discussing the prices of *real* opportunities instead? So
how about going back to the old version but using a dash - would that
feel more natural?
We also invite sponsors, in addition to their basic sponsorship, to
sponsor a specific part of the conference. Here are some of the
opportunities available -- please contact the sponsorship team to
discuss prices and other details:
(This is more or less equivalent to putting the "please contact"
clause in parentheses.)
> If I write the original sentence in Italian (my mother language) and in
> French (my nowadays second language), the comma seems the natural
> punctuation: indeed, the two sentences go together.
Semantically, but not syntactically; English styleguides would also
allow it if there was a conjunction between them (but I don't think
there's one that fits) or if they formed some sort of neat rhetorical
parallel construction (much easier for a set of three).
[...]
> The former, so I added an extra serial comma. Funny enough, what I was
> thought back at school in Italy a long time ago differs from both your
> interpretation: never use a comma before a 'and' :-)
"Serial comma" is another of the cases where English punctuation
standards have diverged from the general consensus among modern
Roman-alphabet-using languages...
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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