Message-ID: <4D92E773.7000400@enterprisedb.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:18:59 +0300
From: Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com>
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To: Susanne Ebrecht <susanne@2ndQuadrant.com>
CC: pgsql-docs@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: English Grammar question
References: <4D92E502.9050804@2ndQuadrant.com>
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On 30.03.2011 11:08, Susanne Ebrecht wrote:
> Hello,
>
> during translation the history.sgml - I found the following sentences in
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/history.html
>
> "The design of the rule system at that time was described in /The design
> of the POSTGRES rules system/
> <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/biblio.html#STON87A>. The
> rationale and architecture of the storage manager were detailed in /The
> design of the POSTGRES storage system
> <http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M87-06.pdf>/"
>
> I am not sure if the grammar is correct here.
>
> My feeling says it should be:
>
> "is decribed" and "are detailed" instead of "was and were"
>
> I am pretty sure these books still exist.

Both would be correct, but with a slightly different meaning. What it 
means now is that someone wrote a description of (= described) the 
design in that book. If you change it to "is described", it means that 
there is a description on the (old) design, with nothing said about when 
the description was written.

The difference becomes more clear if you change the sentence to active form:

"[Some unnamed person] described the design of the rule system at that 
time in /The design of the POSTGRES rules system" (was described)

vs.

"/The design of the POSTGRES rules system/ describes the design of the 
rules system at that time"  (is described)

-- 
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com