[Lazarus] Error messages: cannot versus can't

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 17/10/2014 12:50, Giuliano Colla wrote:
> 
> Il 17/10/2014 12:21, Reinier Olislagers ha scritto:
>> On 17/10/2014 12:16, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
>>> On Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:58:21 +0200
>>> Reinier Olislagers <reinierolislagers at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Googling gives lot of pages saying that cannot is more formal than
>>> can't. And MS Word prefers cannot over can not.
>>>
>>> This means: It depends on the target audience of your application.
>> Yes, formal versus informal is part of it. Another part is
>> comprehension, e.g.
>> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb226825%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
>>
>> "Avoid contractions in technical messages. They can slow down
>> comprehension."
>>
> 
> In my experience Microsoft should be taken as a guideline of what *not*
> to do.
> The inventors of the well known dialog: Abort, Retry, Ignore should not
> have voice on what is user friendly and what's not.
I disagree. The link I posted shows sensible advice.

If you have better references, as I said, I'm very interested!