netdev - Re: [PATCH] NET: fix wrong English expression in comments

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Date:	Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:04:02 +0000
From:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To:	David Newall <davidn@...idnewall.com>
Cc:	Daolong Wang <ahlongxp@...il.com>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, bhutchings@...arflare.com,
	lizf@...fujitsu.com, qhfeng.kernel@...il.com,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] NET: fix wrong English expression in comments

> "Don't add nothing," is not a colloquialism; it's just bad grammar.  The

It's a matter of dialect. For historical reasons English emerged from a
mix of languages and cultures (even within the UK). In some of the
originating languages and areas a double negative is emphatic in others
it negates the negation. Thus it is a bad idea when using globally - as
nobody is quite sure what you mean.

> As with spelling errors, corrections of this sort of thing are trivial
> and a waste of time.  I'm opposed to patches like that; they add no
> value and could be said to remove "character"; if that's important.

You may be so opposed, but they can be very problematic to non-English
speakers trying to use a dictionary or to understand if they are seeing a
typo or an unknown word: thus we do fix them. This is why we have the
trivial patch maintainer for such small fixes.

TRIVIAL PATCHES
P:	Jiri Kosina
M:	trivial@...nel.org
L:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
T:	git kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial.git
S:	Maintained
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