> # Error messages should not start with a capital letter Why should error messages not start with a capital letter? Often error messages should be translatable, and when they are, the guidelines from GNU gettext [1] apply: "Use entire sentences."
And in normal English style, sentences start with a capital letter. For instance, in GNU gettext I have error messages that consist of several sentences: Input files contain messages in different encodings, %s and %s among others.\n\ Converting the output to UTF-8.\n\ To select a different output encoding, use the --to-code option.\n\ It's normal that these sentences start with a capital letter, no? Then I also have error messages consisting of a single sentence: two different charsets \"%s\" and \"%s\" in input file input file `%s' doesn't contain a header entry with a charset specification Maybe I should actually change all these error messages to start with a capital letter, for consistency? Or only those that are entire sentences, with a subject and a verb? Somewhat related: What was the point of lowercasing the sentences in the option descriptions of the usage message of 'bootstrap'? Bruno [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Preparing-Strings.html [2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=commitdiff;h=54c0573c2f6200b8b9c88a026c7bc8cfe44e0403
