[kde-doc-english] Preferred Forms

Rocco Stanzione grasshopper at linuxkungfu.org
Fri Sep 1 17:44:10 CEST 2006


Philip pointed me to a list of preferred forms of certain words:
http://people.fruitsalad.org/phil/kde/check_pref_forms/preferred_forms
that he says is unmaintained.  I'd like to take issue with "white space", 
which is listed as the preferred form and is in pretty extensive use in the 
docs.

Wikipedia has two separate entries for whitespace and "white space", for 
computer science and graphic design, respectively, and other dictionaries 
agree.  The American Heritage dictionary, for example, has no entry for 
whitespace, but its definition for "white space" is: 

"Space on a page or poster not covered by print or graphic matter. " 

Dictionary.com, citing the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing, defines 
whitespace as:

"Any contiguous sequence of spaces, tabs, carriage returns,
and/or line feeds. Whitespace might also possibly include
form feed characters. The term is common on Unix."

and "white space" as:

"the unprinted area of a piece of printing, as of a poster or newspaper page, 
or of a portion of a piece of printing, as of an advertisement; blank space: 
White space is as effective in a layout as type."

As we usually refer to whitespace as spaces, tabs and so on, I 
believe "whitespace" should be the preferred form.

Thanks,

Rocco



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