On 05/06/2017 01:56 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> On 06/05/17 22:44, Vik Fearing wrote:
>> On 05/05/2017 02:42 PM, Michael Paquier wrote:
>>> + This option is obsolete but still accepted for backwards
>>> + compatibility.
>>> Isn't that incorrect English?
>> No.
>>
>>> It seems to me that this be non-plural,
>>> as "for backward compatibility".
>> "Backwards" is not plural, it's a regional variation of "backward" (or
>> vice versa depending on which region you come from). Both are correct.
>
> I am English, born & bred, and 'Backwards' feels a lot more natural to me.
Another data point:
$ grep "backwards-comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
7
$ grep "backward-comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
3
Another important question is whether there should be a hyphen there or not?
$ grep "backward comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml |
wc -l
21
~/git-sandbox-pgsql/master (master)$ grep "backwards comp"
doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
11
It looks like the most popular spelling in our docs is "backward
compatibility". I'll go with that.
- Heikki
