From: Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net)
Date: Thu Jun 06 2002 - 20:52:41 CDT
On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, John Stanley wrote:
> > Actually, an "address" is defined as a syntactic object in RFC 2822, and
> > the definition is repeated, for convenience, in the Collected Syntax
> > appendix of our draft.
>
> When it appears in an English sentence, most people are going to assume
> the normal everyday meaning, not the formal one found as a puzzle at the
> back of the standard.
John, this is getting ridiculous. First you say that we must be precise
and formal in our usage of the word, employing only a very narrow meaning
that even you don't use consistently. Then you say we should use the
"normal everyday" meaning.
If I write "1447 Ave. C South", "Saskatoon, Sask., Canada" on an envelope,
and show it to someone and ask them to point to the address, they will
unhesitatingly point to those two lines, without asking me whether there
actually is a 1447 Ave. C South in Saskatoon. (There isn't.) So much
for the "normal everyday" meaning.
And in fact, in a *standard*, it is quite common to precisely define a
number of otherwise-ordinary English words and phrases, and to use them
with only those particular meanings. See, for example, section 2.1 of
our draft. This is something that people reading standards simply have
to be aware of. It goes with the territory.
Henry Spencer
henry@spsystems.net