maria-docs team mailing list archive

[Ian Gilfillan <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've also toyed with writing a style guide, but for now it remains in my 
head. Now that I know someone has been looking, I may start to put some 
of it down!

The tone in the KB is not overly formal, which in English I think this 
is a positive and helps readability, especially since many readers are 
not first-language speakers. The use of the word "you" I'm happy with, 
for example, "If you see error X, you may need to do Y" is fine.

The use of the word "I" I've tended to rewrite when coming across it, as 
I don't think this reads well. Quite a lot of the documentation though 
has been written by a developer explaining a feature they've developed 
or tested, and the older documentation especially hasn't always been 
closely looked at.

If you have specific examples you think may be too informal, or come 
across the word "I", send the links through to me and I'll take a look. 
I second Daniel that when translating to French, feel free to adjust the 
tone as required.

ian

On 01/08/2015 06:44 PM, Jean Weisbuch wrote:
> There are no details about what tone should be used on the KB pages 
> (https://mariadb.com/kb/en/meta/contributing-to-the-mariadb-knowledge-base/) 
> and many of the KB pages use an informal/personal tone with the use of 
> the first (i, we) and second person (you) which i think doesn't suit 
> very well for a enterprise-grade product documentation, at least it 
> doesn't feels right when translating pages to French.
>
> Is that intentional or not and should there be a rule about that at 
> least on documentation pages?
>
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