Subject: Re: [rtcweb] Uppercase question for RFC2119 words
From: Pat Thaler <[email-masked]>
To: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Cc: IETF discussion list <[email-masked]>, "Heather Flanagan \(RFC Series Editor\)" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, IESG <[email-masked]>, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 10:12:36 -0700
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>

"must" has multiple meanings - it can indicate a requirement but it also
can be used to state the inevitable: e.g., "What goes up must come down."

Though in general, I'm not a fan of writing in all caps, "MUST" removes the
ambiguity indicating that it is to be understood as defined, rather than
having its regular English meaning.

All caps for the words also helps the requirement statements stand out when
scanning through a document.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Adam Roach <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On 3/30/16 11:32, Dave Cridland wrote:
>
>> Finally, I'd note in passing that "bill" and "Bill", "will" and "Will",
>> "heather" and "Heather", all have different semantics based on case - not
>> that this is particular relevant.
>>
>
> It's actually quite relevant, since it shows that we already have
> significant cases in which merely changing letter case can alter meaning
> nontrivially. There's a somewhat bawdy example of this that you can find by
> typing "capitalization matters" into Google Image Search. (Probably not
> safe to do in many workplaces).
>
> It kind of takes the wind out of arguments that people will miss the
> difference between letter cases.
>
> /a
>
>