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Update integers-and-floating-point-numbers.md #28744

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merged 2 commits into from
Aug 20, 2018

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annainfo
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Make text style more scientific, replace "we"

Make text style more scientific, replace "we"
@@ -215,7 +215,7 @@ UInt128: [0,340282366920938463463374607431768211455]
```

The values returned by [`typemin`](@ref) and [`typemax`](@ref) are always of the given argument
type. (The above expression uses several features we have yet to introduce, including [for loops](@ref man-loops),
type. (The above expression uses several features that yet have to be introduced, including [for loops](@ref man-loops),
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I am not sure this is necessarily better. But the sentence construction is weird. Should be "features that have yet to be introduced".

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Agree with changing to "that have yet to be introduced" (Google gives "that yet have to": 79K, "that+have+yet+to" 25M)

Re removing "we":

Precedence: The most seen style for descriptive text in English might be the one from Wikipedia. The encyclopedic articles don't contain "we" outside citations.

Logic: Technically, "we" in the Julia manual is undefined. Who is "we"? Furthermore, does the reader care about that those behind "we" introduce the features, or is it sufficient that the features are introduced? If the latter is true, then "we" is superfluous.

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There are arguments in favour of a less passive voice, too. See this page for some interesting aspects to the discussion:

However, the pronoun “we” is now generally considered acceptable in contexts where it means the author and reader together, or less often, the author with the reader looking on.

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The place you link to, claims the citation comes from http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~may/VIGRE/VIGRE2010/piiUJM2up.pdf

You mean that is more authoritative than the style of the English Wikipedia?

Re "There are arguments in favour of a less passive voice, too." - Which?

@StefanKarpinski
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Thank you for the doc PR!

@StefanKarpinski StefanKarpinski merged commit ae0738e into JuliaLang:master Aug 20, 2018
KristofferC pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 21, 2018
@KristofferC KristofferC mentioned this pull request Aug 21, 2018
KristofferC pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 8, 2018
KristofferC pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 8, 2018
@KristofferC KristofferC added domain:docs This change adds or pertains to documentation and removed backport pending 1.0 labels Sep 27, 2018
KristofferC pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Feb 11, 2019
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5 participants