This document exists to clarify the nomenclature and grammatical style of the PHP Manual.
Reference
As a general rule, American English (and not British / International English) should be used. Various resources are available at http://dict.org/.
Various grammar rules, like for affect vs. effect, there vs their, can be found here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/ note: I (Sean) don't care if we choose International English over American (I _am_ Canadian, after all). I just think we should choose one or the other, and stick to it note: I (Aidan) think American english sucks, I'd prefer International. note: I (Techtonik) also think International is better, because it is the language learned in many countries as foreign. note: I (Tularis) agree that International would be better fitting. There's a reason why it's often called International after all. As Techtonik noted above, the International version is what is taught in schools here aswell (Netherlands), though people often use a combination of both American English and International English.
Examples
color, not colour
favorite, not favourite
Punctuation
Punctuation in the PHP Manual follows regular grammatical rules. When writing flowing sentences, such as in function descriptions, normal punctuation should be used. Lists, titles, and sentence fragments should not be punctuated with a period. Sentences need not have two spaces between them. Commas and apostrophes should be used appropriately.
Personalization
The PHP Manual is a technical document, and should be written so. The use of “you” is rampant in the manual, and presents an unprofessional image.
Exceptions
The only exceptions to the personalization rule are:
The PHP Tutorial
FAQs
Examples
(from strip_tags)
“You can use the optional second parameter to specify tags which should not be stripped.”
should be:
“The optional second parameter may be used to specify tags which should not be stripped.”
Quantifiers
The use of “less” vs. “fewer” can be confusing. As a general rule, “less” is used when the subject
cannot be precisely quantified.
Examples
“The new version is less buggy” is correct.
“There are less bugs in the new version” should be “There are fewer bugs in the new version.”
Chronology
When referring to a specific version of PHP, “since” should not be used. “As of” should be used in this case.
Although the new style will not have this structure (a CHANGELOG instead), it's still good to know :)
Example
As of PHP 5, the return value is an array, not bool.
General Grammar
The PHP Manual should be written with particular attention to general English grammar. Contractions should
be used appropriately. Special attention should be applied to sentence construction when using prepositions
(ie, sentences should not end in prepositions).
PHP Manual Terms
Various non-english, technical terms are used throughout the PHP Manual, without clear indication of their
appropriate spelling. The following list clears up this issue:
http://dict.org/.