what constitutes a 'complete sentence'?

Dear Peter,

You're correct that these examples aren't verb phrases (though the second
one contains a verb phrase). I don't want to make the discussion even more
pedantic (moving it in this direction was my fault), but "Paragraph" isn't
quite right, unless explained, because conventionally a paragraph consists
of sentences.

How about something like this? "One can use several complete sentences or
punctuated telegraphic phrases, but only one paragraph (that is, block of
continuous text with no intervening blank lines). The description should
end with a full stop (period)."

descriptions, and to explain how the check actually works.

Best,
 John

On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 12:20:38 +0200
 peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:

...except that there is not necessarily a verb either. What we're

looking for is something like "advertisement style" as in

UGLY MUGS 7.95.

An invaluable addition to your display cabinet. Comes in an assortment

of warts and wrinkles, crafted by professional artist Foo Yung.

However, I'm drawing blanks when searching for an established term for

it.

Could we perhaps sidestep the issue by requesting a "single descriptive

paragraph, with punctuation" or thereabouts?

----

I'm still puzzled about what threw Federico's example in the first

place. The actual code is

    if(strict && !is.na(val <- db["Description"])
       && !grepl("[.!?]['\")]?$", trimws(val)))
        out$bad_Description <- TRUE

and  I can do this

strict <- TRUE
db <- tools:::.read_description("/tmp/dd")
   if(strict && !is.na(val <- db["Description"])

+        && !grepl("[.!?]['\")]?$", trimws(val)))
+         out$bad_Description <- TRUE

out

Error: object 'out' not found

I.e., the complaint should _not_ be triggered. I suppose that something

like a non-breakable space at the end could confuse trimws(), but beyond
that I'm out of ideas.

On 07 Jul 2015, at 03:28 , John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

Dear Peter,

I think that the grammatical term you're looking for is "verb phrase."

Best,
John

On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 00:12:25 +0200
peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:

On 06 Jul 2015, at 23:19 , Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>

wrote:

On 06/07/2015 5:09 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:

On 07/07/15 07:10, William Dunlap wrote:

[Rolf Turner wrote.]

The CRAN guidelines should be rewritten so that they say what

they *mean*.

If a complete sentence is not actually required --- and it seems

abundantly clear

that it is not --- then guidelines should not say so.  Rather

they should say,

clearly and comprehensibly, what actually *is* required.

This may be true, but also think of the user when you write the

description.

If you are scanning a long list of descriptions looking for a

package to

use,
seeing a description that starts with 'A package for' just slows

you down.

Seeing a description that includes 'designed to' leaves you

wondering if the

implementation is woefully incomplete.  You want to go beyond what

CRAN

can test for.

All very true and sound and wise, but what has this got to do with
complete sentences?  The package checker issues a message saying

that it

wants a complete sentence when this has nothing to do with what it
*really* wants.

That's false.  If you haven't given a complete sentence, you might

still

pass, but if you have, you will pass.  That's not "nothing to do"

with

what it really wants, it's just an imperfect test that fails to

detect

violations of the guidelines.

As we've seen, it sometimes also makes mistakes in the other

direction.

I'd say those are more serious.

Duncan Murdoch

Ackchewly....

I don't think what we want is what we say that we want. A quick check

suggests that many/most packages use "headline speech", as in "Provides
functions for analysis of foo, with special emphasis on bar.", which seems
perfectly ok.  As others have indicated, prefixing with "This package"
would be rather useless. However, I'm at a loss as to how to describe what
it is that we want, much less how to translate it to a dozen other
languages.

-pd
--
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com