[tz] Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-murchison-rfc8536bis-06.txt

[Brooks Harris]

On 2023-03-09 4:57 PM, Doug Ewell via tz wrote:
> Brooks Harris replied to Paul Eggert:
>
>>> PS. I see that the draft sometimes says "leap second" and sometimes
>>> "leap-second". I assume that follows some editorial rule that I don't
>>> remember. The above text might need hyphenization to fix that.
>> ITU-R Recommendation 460, the specification of the leap-second, spells
>> "leap-second" with the hyphen. I feel that's the "proper" spelling
>> because it comes from the ITU-R document.
> Most usage in American English, outside of standards documents, trends toward “leap second,“ just as it trends toward “leap year” rather than “leap-year.”
OK. I'm typically thinking of "standards documents" and in the context 
of tzdb we are often speaking in "standards" terms. Is "leap second" 
*exactly* the same as "leap-second"? I'm not as concerned with "American 
English" v.s. some other "English" and I'm surely not an expert in such 
distinctions. I hope for technical clarity in this arena. As I said, I 
*feel* "leap-second" with hyphen is the most clear because it comes from 
the source document. How its used in tzdb specs or documentation is a 
choice contributors can make.

Thanks,

-Brooks
>
> The general rule (again in American English) is to spell a compound like this as two words when using it as an ordinary noun, but hyphenate it when using it as an attributive noun. So you would have “leap-second rules” that determine the application of “leap seconds.” The attributive-noun convention (see what I did there?) is helpful to disambiguate phrases that contain long strings of nouns.
>
> See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound for more.
>
> ITU-R English is often not common, idiomatic American English, so your priorities may differ if you need to follow European English (or if you prefer old-fashioned usage, as in the base-ball game to be played to-day).
>
> --
> Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
>