Hello. I started reading through the Glossary[^1] terms to learn from the definitions, and to double check them against what I'd written elsewhere. I found myself making edits. :)
I've put the edits together into a patch. My goal was to focus on wording simplifications that are smoother to read, without big changes.
I realized I should check with others though, so this is a mid-point check-in. For now I went through terms from "A" through "I".
Here's a recap of the changes:
Changed places like “to make” to use the verb directly, i.e. “make”
When describing options for a command, changed to “option of” instead of “option to”
“system- or user-supplied”, removed the dash after system. Or I’d suggest system-supplied or user-supplied, to hyphenate both.
Changed “will access”to “access”
Changed “helps to prevent” to “helps prevent”
Changed “volume of records has been written” to “volume of records were written”
“It is required that this user exist” changed to “This user is required to exist...” (I’d also suggest “This user must exist before”) as a simplification, but that’s a bigger difference from what’s there now.
Changed “operating-system” to remove the hyphen, which is how it’s written elsewhere in the Glossary.
Many examples of “an SQL”. I changed those to “a SQL...”. For example I changed “An SQL command which” to “A SQL command that”. I'm not an English major so maybe I'm missing something here.
I often thought “that” was easier to read than “which”, and there are several examples in the patch. For example “Space in data pages that…” replaced “Space in data pages which…”
Simplifications like: “There also exist two secondary forks” to “There are two secondary forks”
I was able to build the documentation locally and preview the HTML version.
If these types of changes are helpful, and can continue a consistent style through all the terms and provide a new (larger) v2 patch.