Ardith Hinton:

AH> While  many  sources  regard  "period"  & "full stop" as
AH> synonymous, BTW, my inclination is to think of a  period
AH> as  a punctuation mark (.) which is used in various ways
AH> but may be  called  a  "full  stop"  at  the  end  of  a
AH> sentence.

This distiction between the punctuation character and one of
its functions is very useful, do hold on fast to it.

AH> I'm very careful to make such  distinctions  in  my  own
AH> writing.

I  wish  I  did,  too. We must strive to use words that best
express the  tints,  shades,  and  nuaces  of  our  intended
meaning,  lest we lose those fine niceties -- first from our
thoughts, and then from our language.

AH> However, it seems I am often  overruled  because  double
AH> spacing isn't allowed in programming jargon.

Do  you mean double spacing between sentences? That's absurd
it should not be allowed, because  *roff -- the  oldest  and
nerdiest  document-formatting  system -- has natural support
for  it.  It  was  desinged  and  implemented  by   die-hard
UNIXoids. The famous Kernighan & Ritchie participated in the
implementation and then wrote in it their masterpiece  about
C.  I  still prefer *roff to LaTeX and other modern document
processors.

AH> While it try to make my  writing  understandable  to  my
AH> audience,  I  am  constantly thwarted by programmers who
AH> believe they can make it more efficient... (sigh).

As my boss told a colleague who asked me to  help  her  with
transation   into   English,   "Anton   is  much  better  at
translating  from  Russian  into  C#."  I  know   very   few
programmers who care about their (natural) language and have
a taste for  prose.  Their  attempts  to  refactor  (to  use
programming  jargon)  your  text  may  destroy it. But their
optionion of  what  is  said  wrong  and  unclear  is  often
correct,   only  the  writer  should  be  the  one  to  make
amendments!

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