In the 14.0R, 14.1R, 14.2R Release Notes, all "sponsored by" notices were parenthetic with no punctuation except as part of the name of the sponsor. Formatting differed slightly in earlier releases, e.g. 13.0R had parenthetic acknowledgements italicised but still otherwise unpunctuated. Examples from https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/relnotes/ > (Sponsored by ARM) (Sponsored by Ampere Computing) > (Sponsored by Zenarmor) (Sponsored by OPNsense) (Sponsored by Klara, Inc.) > (Sponsored by Google, Inc. via GSoC 2022) > (Sponsored by Juniper Networks, Inc.) (Sponsored by Klara, Inc.) > (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")) > (Sponsored by InnoGames GmbH) (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation) The only inconsistency in format I noticed is sometimes multiple sponsors were merged inside a single set of parentheses, though most times each sponsor got their own parentheses as above: > (Sponsored by Modirum and Klara Inc.) > (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") and The FreeBSD Foundation) In the 14.3R and 15.0R Release Notes, greater inconsistency in punctuation has appeared: full stops outside some but not all parentheses. Examples from https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/relnotes > (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation). > (Sponsored by BBOX.io). "Sponsored by X" is a fragment not a complete sentence so arguably does not need a full stop. If a full stop is preferred, every style guide I consulted on parenthetic sentences states that the punctuation should be inside, not outside, the parentheses. See e.g. the style guide of the Modern Humanities Research Association, https://www.mhra.org.uk/style/3e-section_5_3.html > When a complete sentence is within parentheses, > the final full stop should be inside the closing > parenthesis. Parentheses may be used within parentheses... I'm happy to do the donkey work of removing the inconsistencies and e.g. submit a Pull Request for https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc/blob/main/website/content/en/releases/15.0R/relnotes.adoc However, I'd like someone with greater experience of style practices here to confirm: - is the historic style of "(Sponsored by X)" preferred, or should there be a full stop outside like "(Sponsored by X)." or inside like "(Sponsored by X.)"? - is there some significance to acknowledgements formatted as "(Sponsored by X and Y)" or, as has generally been done in the past, should these be separated as "(Sponsored by X) (Sponsored by Y)"? Or the reverse, would it be preferable for the latter to be combined like the former, with serial comma for e.g. "(Sponsored by X, Y, and Z)"?
Since the document was mostly self-consistent (and consistent with the 13.0R and 14.0R relnotes), I went ahead and made a GitHub pull request with no full stop after sponsorship acknowledgements and only one sponsor per pair of parentheses. There was a similar mish-mash of formatting for the gitrefs: some in parentheses, some with full stop after, etc. I opted for the dominant formatting which was also consistent with the 13.0R and (mostly) the 14.0R relnotes. A slight difference is that 13.0R relnotes had comma-separated gitrefs, not just space-separated like 14.0R: this seems more readable and was the dominant form in the 15.0R relnotes anyway, so I changed the few space-separated instances to comma-separated. https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc/pull/568 15.0R/relnotes: format gitref/sponsor consistently Improve internal consistency based on 13.0R and 14.0R release notes. Unless written as part of a sentence, place gitrefs - after end of sentence describing the change, - without parentheses, - separated by commas, - no full stop afterwards. Sponsorships are formatted as "(Sponsored by Foo)" with - one sponsor per pair of parentheses, - no punctuation except as part of sponsor's name, - no full stop afterwards. Comma-separated gitrefs with same sponsor only need one "Sponsored by". Some other minor punctuation consistency, e.g. enforce serial comma. PR: 290841
Comment from ziaee@ on GitHub: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc/pull/568#issuecomment-3603887794 > Eventually as the relnote became fleshed out, we discovered > that there is a macro for this, and used those consistently. > We didn't know because the guy who used to do them passed. Thanks!