Bug 36462

Summary: dev.handbook grammar nit "try and"
Product: Documentation Reporter: Gary W. Swearingen <swear>
Component: Books & ArticlesAssignee: freebsd-doc (Nobody) <doc>
Status: Closed FIXED    
Severity: Affects Only Me    
Priority: Normal    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description Gary W. Swearingen 2002-03-29 05:00:08 UTC 
In section "2.5.2 Example of using make" of
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/x663.html
"try and explain" should be "try to explain".
================

Fix: 

See above.
How-To-Repeat: n/a
================
Comment 1 Giorgos Keramidas freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2002-03-29 15:18:31 UTC 
On 2002-03-28 20:51, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
> In section "2.5.2 Example of using make" of
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/x663.html
> "try and explain" should be "try to explain".

Good catch.  There are many places that use " try and" as you can see from the
following.  Is "try and" an acceptable thing in English syntax, or should we go
through the docs and eliminate it?

    $ cd a/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1
    $ find . -name \*sgml | xargs grep ' try and' | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u
    ./books/fdp-primer/sgml-primer/chapter.sgml
    ./books/fdp-primer/structure/chapter.sgml
    ./books/fdp-primer/translations/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/basics/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/contrib/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/cutting-edge/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml
    ./books/handbook/policies/chapter.sgml
    ./developers-handbook/policies/chapter.sgml
    ./developers-handbook/tools/chapter.sgml
    ./faq/book.sgml

Giorgos Keramidas                       FreeBSD Documentation Project
keramida@{freebsd.org,ceid.upatras.gr}  http://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/
Comment 2 Gary W. Swearingen 2002-03-29 19:03:58 UTC 
Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org> writes:

> Good catch.  There are many places that use " try and" as you can see from the
> following.  Is "try and" an acceptable thing in English syntax, or should we go
> through the docs and eliminate it?

Like I said, it's a "nit".  One hears it often and so also sees it in
e-mail, but it's in the same category as "ain't" -- much frowned upon by
the grammarians, and seldom seen in professionally-editted text.  My
American Heritage Dictionary is nearly 30 years old, but 79% of their
"Usage Panel" found an example containing "to try and force compliance"
to be "unacceptable".

I'll not comment on whether you should "go through the docs".  I just
calls 'em as I sees 'em.  But if you think that's a good thing to do,
consider also cataloging (on www.freebsd.org, preferably) a lot of these
commonly inserted nits for yearly sweeps, etc.  You could leave it for
those in-the-know, or ask there for people to send content to you
directly or just put in PRs.
Comment 3 Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2002-04-05 22:37:28 UTC 
State Changed
From-To: open->closed

I fixed the only occurence I could find under the entire doc/en* hierarchy. 
Also checked the entire source tree. 

This was the only occurence. 

Thanks!