GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 744471
Correct may/might usage in gschema strings
Last modified: 2015-02-17 08:29:10 UTC
Hi, I found three strings where the use of the word "might" is suspicious, and should possible be replaced with "may". In /data/org.gnome.evolution.bogofilter.gschema.xml.in: "Full path to a bogofilter command. If not set, then a compile-time path is used, usually /usr/bin/bogofilter. The command might not contain any other arguments." Here I think it should be "may not" in the last sentence rather than "might not". (Unless the intended meaning is that we don't know if the command has arguments or not.) See https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/modal-verbs/may-might-may-have-and-might-have , the examples for "may not" and "might not" there are quite informative. As it now is using "might not", the last sentence can be interpreted as "It is possible that the command does not contain other arguments". My apologies if I'm wrong, but my guess is that this is not the intended meaning. If it instead should use "may not" it would have the meaning "The command is not allowed to contain any other argument". The same sentence structure applies to the corresponding strings for sa-learn and spamassassin in /data/org.gnome.evolution.spamassassin.gschema.xml.in These three strings were introduced in https://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?id=0b91d60 Regards, Anders Jonsson
Thanks for a bug report. Apart of formatting, I do not see any difference at: We use may: when we are not sure about something: We use might: when we are not sure about something: Probably a typo on the site. I wanted to express in those sentences that the command is only a path to the executable file, without any other arguments. What about 'should not', will it work better?
Thanks for your reply, "should not" sounds great to me. That is clear in meaning and can't be misunderstood.
Okay, I did so: Created commit 8fe7c83 in evo master (3.13.91+)