Guidelines or policy on grammar and style

[ehuss]

Should there be guidelines or policy on English grammar and style? Some examples:

• Should there be a preference for a specific external style guide, like AP Style, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.?
• Grammatic person guidelines? Voice?
  • https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19820007101.pdf
• Oxford commas.
  • ehuss's preference is yes.
• Avoid slashes for alternatives ("program/binary"), use conjunctions or rewrite it ("program or binary")
  • ehuss's preference is yes.
• Avoid qualifying something as "in Rust".
  • ehuss's preference is yes. Contributors to the Reference often start their sentences "In Rust, ...". That should always be removed. Almost every sentence in the spec is about Rust.
• Should the spec be agnostic about whether code is "compiled" or "interpreted"? Should it avoid using the term "compile"?
  • ehuss's preference: I think it would be good to avoid talking about "the compiler" or "... is compiled to ..." unless absolutely necessary.
• Any guidance on contractions?
• Phrasing for editions should be "the 20xx Edition", not "Rust 2024", not "Edition 2024"