[erlang-questions] 'cannot' /= 'can not'

[Raimo Niskanen]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 03:11:47PM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> Please have a look at and evaluate GitHub PR#1891:
> 
>   https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/1891

Fun story:  A coworker just vaguely remembered that the technical writer(s)
we had working on the documentation in late 2016 maybe made this kind of
changes, and surely enough they did change "can not" into "cannot".

This did not stick in all developers' memory, though, since at least 6 of
us has re-introduced "can not"s after that.

It is actually a hard one, I think especially for Swedes, since we have an
ongoing language war/debate about people splitting Swedish words that
should be concatenated due to influence from English so the safe bet for a
Swede is that in proper English it is probably not one word.

I asked around me and the most common reaction is: "cannot" - is that even
a proper word? I would have written "can not"!

And this is from people born in the 60:s through the 90:s, at least.

So it will take a while for this detail to become common truth, at
least in Sweden...

We will work on it, but it will take time.

Best Regards
/ Raimo


> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 11:02:43AM +0200, empro2@REDACTED wrote:
> > This is only the most recent occurrence that finally
> > makes me write this:
> > 
> > <quote>
> > [erlang-questions] Patch package OTP 20.3.8.3 released
> > Tue, 24 Jul 2018 09:13:22 +0200
> > [...]
> > Note! The kernel-5.4.3.2 application can *not* be applied
> >       independently of other applications on an arbitrary
> >       OTP 20 installation.
> > [...]
> > </quote>
> > 
> > If it can not be applied independently then it can also be
> > applied independently - which, in this case, is
> > probably not what is meant. But this is guesswork, relying
> > on the reader already knowing the meaning of what is
> > being said, rendering the saying it much less useful.
> > 
> > Modals are a mess (spoken languages are, after ceturies of
> > abuse like the one discussed in "[erlang-questions] Orelse
> > and andalso as short-hand for case"), but they convey
> > critical meaning.
> > 
> > Nine(?) of ten "can not"s in the Erlang docs must be
> > "cannot" to convey the correct meaning. Reading the docs has
> > already made me convert every "can not" I read into
> > "cannot" - I mean *every*, not only those in the Erlang
> > docs - and then back again (only about 1 of 10 in the
> > Erlang docs). This is a real, and substantial, waste of
> > post-orbital CPU cycles; not the conversion itself, but the
> > distraction from understanding whatever meaning the author
> > actually tries to get across.
> > 
> > If someone with authority (and authorisation) could and
> > would please write and run a script and convert all "can
> > not" -> "cannot" in all OTP strings, binaries and comments?
> > This will introduce errors, as there actually are a few,
> > rare correct "can not"s, but it will correct about 9 times
> > more of wrong ones that really need to be "cannot".
> > 
> > At least in the doc strings?
> > 
> > Please?
> > 
> > Michael
> > 
> > -- 
> > 
> > Time is not money, but money is time: life-time people have
> > spent transforming their environment.
> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> 
> / Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB
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-- 

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB