The subtext of this article is hilarious: that GPG is so hard to use that someone decided that it might be less painful to just rewrite the damn thing.
It’s one of the styles of English possessive for singular words that end in an ‘s’. When making a plural word that ends in ‘s’ into a possessive, all authorities agree that you just add an apostrophe (“the employees’ salaries”). But when it’s a singular word that happens to end in an ‘s’, some styles prefer that you treat it the same way as any other singular word and add apostrope-s (“Alger Hiss’s trial”), while others prefer that you treat it in the same way as plural words ending in ‘s’, and add just apostrophe (“Alger Hiss’ trial”). Both styles are pretty common for a few centuries now I think. I tend to use the apostrophe-s style because it’s how I would speak (I’d say “hiss-es trial”, or in this case, “boats-es personal barricade”, to indicate the possessive). I guess this one is extra-weird because the person’s handle, boats, is a plural English word, but adopted as a handle for a single individual.
Agreed. If you are at the point where you disagree based on an actual reason, like in the linked rebuttal, or are even aware of other style guides, then weigh the pros and cons appropriately. If your discipline/profession/place of work doesn’t have one and you aren’t being supervised by a professor, this is a pretty good default.
I actually hesitated at wording it as rule and would have preferred guideline, but my link had it titled as rule, so take things with a grain of a salt.
In practice, I would guess most authors do something simpler than S&W and just stick to either the apostrophe-only or the apostrophe-s form, though I have no data on that. Seems a bit fiddly to recommend apostrophe-s almost always, but then carve out an exception for “ancient proper names ending in -es and -is”, a second exception specifically for Jesus, and a third one for traditional punctuation of phrases like “for righteousness’ sake”. I could imagine that working as a publication’s house style that their copyeditors enforce, but I would be surprised to find it much in the wild.
signify seems like it would be a great tool for git signatures.
But it’s written in C, which by definition can’t be used by any respectable rustlang developer ;)
The subtext of this article is hilarious: that GPG is so hard to use that someone decided that it might be less painful to just rewrite the damn thing.
It’s no secret that GPG shows its age, but the part that the author has rewritten is still only a small fraction of gnupg’s features.
agreed. another reading - the part of gpg worth using is not worth using gpg for, given the bulk that comes with it.
Was the extra “s” on purpose?
It’s one of the styles of English possessive for singular words that end in an ‘s’. When making a plural word that ends in ‘s’ into a possessive, all authorities agree that you just add an apostrophe (“the employees’ salaries”). But when it’s a singular word that happens to end in an ‘s’, some styles prefer that you treat it the same way as any other singular word and add apostrope-s (“Alger Hiss’s trial”), while others prefer that you treat it in the same way as plural words ending in ‘s’, and add just apostrophe (“Alger Hiss’ trial”). Both styles are pretty common for a few centuries now I think. I tend to use the apostrophe-s style because it’s how I would speak (I’d say “hiss-es trial”, or in this case, “boats-es personal barricade”, to indicate the possessive). I guess this one is extra-weird because the person’s handle, boats, is a plural English word, but adopted as a handle for a single individual.
Nice reply! Short of citing sources for your work, that’s about as good as it gets.
I’ll add a citation in honor or @mjn’s fine reply, Wikipedia (Wikisource) has the rule from the original Strunk & White text - Strunk and White is one of the better (and readable) style guides that most people should use for the English language.
It really depends who you ask. See for example the paper linked in https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/21/against-strunk-whites-the-elements-of-style/ for example.
Agreed. If you are at the point where you disagree based on an actual reason, like in the linked rebuttal, or are even aware of other style guides, then weigh the pros and cons appropriately. If your discipline/profession/place of work doesn’t have one and you aren’t being supervised by a professor, this is a pretty good default.
I actually hesitated at wording it as rule and would have preferred guideline, but my link had it titled as rule, so take things with a grain of a salt.
In practice, I would guess most authors do something simpler than S&W and just stick to either the apostrophe-only or the apostrophe-s form, though I have no data on that. Seems a bit fiddly to recommend apostrophe-s almost always, but then carve out an exception for “ancient proper names ending in -es and -is”, a second exception specifically for Jesus, and a third one for traditional punctuation of phrases like “for righteousness’ sake”. I could imagine that working as a publication’s house style that their copyeditors enforce, but I would be surprised to find it much in the wild.