Re: "unable to open file '%s'" or "unable to open the file '%s'"?
Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote:
> How should I write English messages which contain a named computer entity as
> an object or a subject? E.g.
>
> unable to open (the?) file '%s'
> unable to close (the?) directory '%s'
> (the?) file '%s' does not exist
>
If you were trying to write full grammatical sentences, it would be
$cmd is unable to open the file '%s'.
$cmd is unable to close the directory '%s'.
The file '%s' does not exist.
It's conventional to cut down messages like this into a sort of note
form, and once you've dropped the subject it's only moving a bit
further into telegraphic English to drop the articles. I would
probably include the articles myself, but if there were already error
messages that left them out I would follow that existing style.
> ... and so on. Also, is there any FAQ or reference for similar questions?
Well, there's my "English for Software Localisation" page, but the
nearest that gets is the issue of when you should say "the directory
foo" and when it's "the foo directory":
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/linux/esl.html#c2
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
Reply to: