Re: Bug#584508: typo in in message
Ralf Treinen wrote:
> Disclaimer: I am not a native english speaker either. AFAIK, the rule
> is purely phonetic: you replace "a" by "an" when the next word is
> pronounced starting with a vowel: "an instance, an armour, an
> estimation", and so on. The interesting case is when a word's spelling
> starts with a consonant, but is pronounced starting with a vowel.
> For instance, "an XML document". This has nothing to do with acronym
> or not, it is just due to the fact that the letter "x" in isolation is
> pronounced "eks", starting with a vowel. Similar are "an s", "an n".
> Inversely, it is "a y" (just try to say out loud "an y"!)
>
> However, this is not the case with LISP since you pronounce it as a
> single word, not as "ell-ei-ess-pee". Hence: "A LISP terminal". In
> case of doubt just try to pronounce the phrase.
In the case of the package ltsp-client-core, it's an el tee ess pee.
Besides which, ANSI-standard Common Lisp isn't written in allcaps,
unless maybe you're calling it from FORTRAN.
We could ensure that nobody else makes this mistake by replacing
"provides the basic structure for an LTSP terminal" with "provides
the basic structure for LTSP terminals", but I doubt there's any
point.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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