0001486: Are parentheticals normative or informative?

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0001486	Issue 8 drafts	Front Matter	public	2021-06-28 16:43	2021-07-08 15:09

Reporter	rhansen	Assigned To
Priority	normal	Severity	Editorial	Type	Omission
Status	Closed	Resolution	Withdrawn
Product Version	Draft 2

Name	Richard Hansen
Organization
User Reference
Section	Typographical Conventions
Page Number	xii
Line Number
Final Accepted Text


Summary	0001486: Are parentheticals normative or informative?
Description	For years, the Austin Group has operated under the assumption that stuff in parentheses is considered informative notes, not normative. However, during the 2021-06-28 telecon we couldn't find anything in POSIX or in style guides from standards bodies that made this clear to the reader. Is this uncodified lore? If stuff in parentheses is informative, what about stuff in em dashes (or spaced en dashes)? If parentheticals are informative, does this conflict with style guides from standards bodies?
Desired Action	Mention that parentheticals in parentheses are informative and parentheticals in dashes are normative (if the surrounding text is normative).
Tags	No tags attached.

rhansen 2021-07-08 15:09 manager bugnote:0005391	Response from Tom Thompson at IEEE when asked whether there is an existing rule about parentheticals being informative: I am not sure of the "rule" they refer to. IEEE SA does not consider items in parenthesis as informative. The only items we automatically consider informative in standards are the introduction, NOTES (in tables, figures, and text) Footnotes to text....Please note Footnotes in Tables and Figures are considered Normative, and Annexes clearly marked informative. With all of that being said (text in parentheses by default is not considered informative). I hope this helps clarify how IEEE SA sees informative versus normative references/ clauses. During the 2021-07-01 telecon, we decided that from now on we will treat parentheticals as normative (unless inside text that is already informative). There are existing parentheticals that are intended to be normative (examples: Issue 8 draft 2 page 30 line 1039, and page 486 line 17120), so explicitly stating that parentheticals are informative would have unintended side effects. There may also be existing parentheticals that are intended to be informative and conflict with the normative text; such cases will be fixed as they are brought to the Austin Group's attention.

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2021-06-28 16:43	rhansen	New Issue
2021-06-28 16:43	rhansen	Name	=> Richard Hansen
2021-06-28 16:43	rhansen	Section	=> Typographical Conventions
2021-06-28 16:43	rhansen	Page Number	=> xii
2021-07-08 15:09	rhansen	Note Added: 0005391
2021-07-08 15:09	rhansen	Status	New => Closed
2021-07-08 15:09	rhansen	Resolution	Open => Withdrawn