Incorrect acronym in "Add Vocabulary" field descriptions

Heh. Good catch!

+1. Correcting a wrong acronym that was confusing to users.

i.e. is certainly incorrect here, and the patch properly changes to e.g. My Chicago Manual of Style would argue (if it could) that e.g. really needs to be followed by a comma, though.

If we have to modify this string anyway (which puts it back up for translation), why not remove the latin abbreviations altogether, since, as has been noted, they are confusing to many people?

In some other places in core (like locale module, and perhaps others), we construct something similar to:

The name for this vocabulary. <em>Example: Tags</em>.

Yeah, that I like even better, Keith!

There might be other places where "e.g." or "i.e." are used through t(). I did a quick file search for "i.e." and found:

Comment.module

'The URL of your homepage is not valid. Remember that it must be fully qualified, i.e. of the form http://example.com/directory.'

Filter.module

'Converts line breaks into HTML (i.e. <br> and <p> tags).'

System.admin.inc

'This option makes Drupal emit "clean" URLs (i.e. without ?q= in the URL).'

Taxonomy.admin.inc

'The name for this vocabulary. i.e. "Tags".'...............'Instructions to present to the user when selecting terms. i.e. "Enter a comma separated list of words".'

Install.php

'This option makes Drupal emit "clean" URLs (i.e. without ?q= in the URL).'

Install.txt

To run the install script point your browser to the base URL of your website (i.e. http://www.example.com).

The linebreak and the clean URL description are okay, though. Both sentences reflect the correct usage of "i.e.".

Nope, that is not true. If the string is not just suboptimal but wrong, we'll get this indeed corrected.

I think we should follow something like what Keith suggested...

The install.php chunk is correct as is.
The comment.module chunk has an unneeded linebreak.
The filter.module chunk is correct as is.
The system.admin.inc chunk is correct as is.
The taxonomy.admin.inc chunk has an unneeded linebreak.

The attached patch changes the ones that are, IMO, wrong (i.e., the ones on the taxonomy form and an instance in INSTALL.txt.) and avoids using those abbreviations altogether in favor of another construct (e.g., Example: This is an example.).

For D7 and beyond, perhaps we can clean up all these instances of i.e. and e.g. up further, and standardize on some sane way of denoting example text.

No, we don't want to change all instances of "i.e." to "e.g."! Rather we want to keep these two acronyms apart and use whatever makes sense.

• "i.e." is latin and an acronym for "id est", which means "in other words".
• "e.g." stands for "exempli gratia" and means "for example".

Now, I think, if so many people don't know how to deal with this - let's avoid the acronyms, where we need to change strings anyway.

I'm a little worried about Keith Smith's suggestion. I think it's ultimately a much better solution, to standardize on markup to denote "for example" but I fear there are many, many instances in core where there are examples in the text that aren't marked up this way, and so this introduces an inconsistency.

Let's stick to just fixing the wrong abbreviation, imo.

Didn't mean to change the status.

Pancho's patch and mine are essentially the same.

I'm fine with just changing the incorrect i.e. to E.g.,.

But, webchick:
- the inconsistency is already there and my patch doesn't make it worse. What would be bad would be if we had two form descriptions on the same page that used different standards for this. But fortunately (?), both of the examples on that page were wrong, and so fixing them both doesn't make that page worse.
- the format I used (Example: xxxx) is already used in core.
- There are other examples of i.e. that I think should go away, but they'll have to go away in D7.

But hey, at the end of the day, we can just fix these two instances and worry about this in D7.

Oops. Neither did I.

And a simpler version addressing webchick's comments.

"E.g." with an uppercase "E" looks weird and is harder to understand. Let's just use a comma instead of a point - that'd be grammatically better as well.

Ok. How about one with the e.g. set off with commas (instead of just the preceding one). In the previous patch, one instance was like this but two were not.

In American usage, e.g. and i.e. are usually set off with commas (or comma and colon), and usually have periods, and are not italicized. In British English, no periods, sometimes italics, and no commas.

:) The fact that we can go twenty rounds (and counting) debating about how to do this is an indication of how badly this needs to be changed for D7.

Oh, I was talking about the commas before "e.g.". I'm happy with both.

This is weird: I could have sworn I didn't see your patch #13. That would have been already okay as well. My comment #14 was an answer to boydjd's #10. Sorry, if you thought that rather harsh comment of mine was pointing to you... :)

To much debate for such a simple fix - let's just get it committed anyway... either #20 or #21.

But if it results in a sensible standard approach being worked out for the future
Unfortunately it doesn't. Not yet. We just agreed on the least common denominator, which is okay for now.

What if we use the full word "Example"?

We had this before, but webchick was against rushing into such a decision that needs to be established as a standard. Let's just get away with something, and talk about this more detailed and more generally in D7.

boydjd: This is really annoying. Please read again my comment #14 to find out about the meaning of "i.e." versus "e.g.".
It is absolute nonsense to change all instances of "i.e." to "e.g.". In most instances of your "fix", "i.e." is absolutely correct and "e.g." would be wrong.

#20 and #21 remain to be the two options that are ready to be committed.

"for example" in English being in much heavier use than the phrase "in other words"

Sure, "apple" is also in much heavier use than "pear", still it is not the same.

Take the case:
This option makes Drupal emit "clean" URLs (i.e. without ?q= in the URL).
"i.e." means here "in other words" or "that means" or "to be more specific".
If we'd replace that be "e.g.", we'd say "for example". The point is: we are not just giving an example for clean URLs, rather we are giving the definition of clean URLs.

Another case:
Converts line breaks into HTML (i.e. <br> and <p> tags
Same as above. We are not giving just two examples for line breaks that are converted, rather we are defining line breaks that are converted to HTML by listing all instances, which happen to be two in this case.

A third one:
The URL of your homepage is not valid. Remember that it must be fully qualified, i.e. of the form 'http://example.com/directory'.
Same here. We are not just giving an arbitrary example of a fully qualified URL, we are defining what is meant by "fully qualified".

Hope this is sufficiently clear now.

... Just because I'm already subscribed, and can't ignore this thread even if I want to ...

"i.e." - "id est" translates closer to "that is (to say)", or "specifically".
It's not just "in other words" which implies just a vague re-phrasing. It is the answer, not an answer.

As Arancaytar in #7 and Pancho in #30 say, sometimes "i.e." is quite correct.

As many other folk have said, it's remarkable that this grammar is tripping up so many people, so we are probably good to dispense with all such abbreviations :-)

Marking #21 RTBC. In British English, we would not normally use a comma after e.g., (apart from then of course, damn!), but if this is standard usage in American English, then that's what should go in.

Oh, well. Committed #21, although this again breaks two strings for translations. I understand on the other hand that the texts modified were quite misleading. Needs to be committed to 7.x as well.

Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks.