Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 11:49:52 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> To: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen) Cc: cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, doc-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-doc@FreeBSD.org, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: cvs commit: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot chapter.sgml Message-ID: <20050913184952.C50B15D07@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:02:04 PDT." <gpu0gplts3.0gp@mail.opusnet.com>
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> From: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
> Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:02:04 -0700
> Sender: owner-cvs-all@freebsd.org
>
> John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> writes:
>
> > The first sentence has a mismatch between subject and verb ("The FreeBSD
> > MBR ... are"). Also, a better explanation is something more along the lines
>
> Here it is with the "...":
>
> + <para>The MBR installed by FreeBSD's installer and by boot0cfg(8)
> + are
>
> AFAIK, that is an permissible English abbreviation of this:
>
> The MBR installed by FreeBSD's installer and
> the MBR installed by boot0cfg(8) are ...
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^-------(implied)
>
> The second "by" in my sentence is the clue that I've omitted the
> second "the MBR installed" so as to not repeat it.
Th 'by' is a preposition. The prepositional phrase does not impact the
issue of the subject being singular or plural.
> If I had used "MBRs", I would have omitted the second "by" and the
> sentence would be ambiguous about weather each program installs
> multiple MBRs. But on second thought, that would probably be OK,
> since everyone knows they only install one. When I edit that file
> again, or if I get more requests, I'll probably change it, but I don't
> think it's required by the grammar.
>
> > that the MBR, strictly speaking, is just the 4-entry table at the end of the
> > first sector. The boot code prior to the MBR is not part of the MBR.
>
> Who else says that? I don't recall ever seeing the partition table
> called the MBR in 20+ years. The Master Boot Record has also been
> called the master boot sector (1,150,000 times in Google).
>
Putting on my grammarian hat, the simple subject is MBR and the simple
predicate should be singular. That is 'is', not 'are.
The example you gave is not valid because it is only grammatically
correct when there are two MBRs. One MBR - singular verb.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634
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