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List:       xml-dev
Subject:    Re: [xml-dev] When writing standards...
From:       Michael Kay <mike () saxonica ! com>
Date:       2023-04-11 6:50:15
Message-ID: C84043D7-6FC1-4655-9B98-DF5D831BBB28 () saxonica ! com
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> 
> 	• Write specs in plain English#
> 		• I write for people who have brains, like to think, are educated, care about \
> interop. I understand that people reading specs are not computers.# Plain English \
> is not good enough, because important permissive/volitional words like "must", \
> "should", "can", "may", "might", "will" and their negatives are ambiguous and even \
> region-dependent. Those, at least, need to be explicit and controlled. Especially \
> where there is legal intent. Furthermore, more non-native speakers read English \
> than native speakers: the pronoun "it", in particular, is a tarball of confusion. \
> But "plain English" without "it" is just not plain. 

I think the role of a spec is to communicate clearly and precisely. There's a very \
fine balance between making it readable and making it precise, and it's very easy to \
find specs that have got this balance wrong, in either direction. Formalisms (such as \
BNF) play a key role in achieving precision, and trying to specify a grammatical \
structure "in plain English" without such formalisms would be a serious mistake.

Michael Kay
Saxonica


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