On 05/06/2017 01:56 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
On 06/05/17 22:44, Vik Fearing wrote:
On 05/05/2017 02:42 PM, Michael Paquier wrote:
+        This option is obsolete but still accepted for backwards
+        compatibility.
Isn't that incorrect English?
No.

It seems to me that this be non-plural,
as "for backward compatibility".
"Backwards" is not plural, it's a regional variation of "backward" (or
vice versa depending on which region you come from).  Both are correct.

I am English, born & bred, and 'Backwards' feels a lot more natural to me.

Another data point:

$ grep "backwards-comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
7
$ grep "backward-comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
3

Another important question is whether there should be a hyphen there or not?

$ grep "backward comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
21
~/git-sandbox-pgsql/master (master)$ grep "backwards comp" doc/src/sgml/ref/*.sgml doc/src/sgml/*.sgml | wc -l
11

It looks like the most popular spelling in our docs is "backward compatibility". I'll go with that.

- Heikki



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