What makes a sentence and some English style rules?

Hi all,

I am trying to rationalize some of the style in my technical reports, a couple of ideas have arisen I would like to test other people's opinions on. Then there is a fun quiz at the end.

Firstly, I often have short phrases or sentences being the complete body of a report sub-section, for example

5.1 Concessions None

The style I want to universally adopt in my legacy for posterity (viz. written reports) is to use the period (.) only at the end of sentences (and leave phrases "un-punctuated"). So I would not use "None." in the above paragraph. This I want to apply universally, so all bullet or numbered lists, tables, etc. would have the above rule applied.

//-- My question is, "What constitutes a sentence?" //--

Most of the time a sentence comprises at least a subject and a verb. However there are simple exceptions.

Observe! This is a sentence with only an (imperative) verb.

Observe this sentence! This is a sentence with a verb and object only.

What about

Appendix A : Datasheet Attached overleaf.

Is "Attached overleaf" a sentence? (Verb plus adverb). I would think so.

Then I also have this thing about equations being part of a sentence.

No one would argue that I should puntuate a sentence ending in pi, 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169 .

However one should leave an extra space before the period, so that the period can never be associated with the number.

Also, an equation is often a logical part of a sentence, for example

pi = 4 *Atan( 1) .

Thus the appropriate punctuation should be used, my convention is to use THREE spaces before the period when the equations are tab aligned on their own lines. Within the same line of sentence text one space should suffice.

This is more for the scientifically minded, notice how I did not write

pi=4*Atan(1) ,

which is how most programmers would code this. I believe it is better style to use white space to offset the logical parts of the equation as one would a text sentence. This is especially important in code. I ALWAYS use the " = " spacing in code for another reason, if one wants to find all instances in code where a variable's value changes, one need only search for the telltale string " = ". For example, consider a global variable errorStatus .

This may be used hundreds of times in a complex programme, but only assigned a numeric code in maybe a few dozen locations. When a numeric error status is returned by the programme, to find the piece of code generating it will be a lot easier if searching for "errorStatus = " rather than "errorStatus".

Another tip, (sorry I am digressing from pure English - this is the last one), this tagging technique is particularly useful for assigned values, you try and find where a macro constant is defined in one of dozens of header files spread across several folders if this constant is extensively used. It's a piece of cake if you define this

#define GOOGLE_USER "Frederik Romanov" // GOOGLE_USER = <-
Now for the quizzes :

First, what constitutes a word? Is the word question (the verb) the same as the word question (the noun)? - or are they two words? Well these are closely related, what about right (correct) and right (opposite to left). Surely these are different words spelt the same?

1) Which is the greatest set of words that are all spelt the same? For example, right has at least three different words (depending on your answer to the last paragraph) : right = opposite to left right = correct right = to bring upright .

The last two are closely related, but I say they are different words.

2) Which is the set of words, which are all spelt the same, that contains the greatest number of parts of speech? And what is the complete set of parts of speech? (I say there are eight, but I have a disagreement with Oxford Dictionary (British) and World Book Dictionary (US) ).

So long, Fred.

NSASWABOS