Re: English Grammar question

On 30.03.2011 11:08, Susanne Ebrecht wrote:
> Hello,
>
> during translation the history.sgml - I found the following sentences in
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/history.html
>
> "The design of the rule system at that time was described in /The design
> of the POSTGRES rules system/
> <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/biblio.html#STON87A>. The
> rationale and architecture of the storage manager were detailed in /The
> design of the POSTGRES storage system
> <http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M87-06.pdf>/"
>
> I am not sure if the grammar is correct here.
>
> My feeling says it should be:
>
> "is decribed" and "are detailed" instead of "was and were"
>
> I am pretty sure these books still exist.

Both would be correct, but with a slightly different meaning. What it
means now is that someone wrote a description of (= described) the
design in that book. If you change it to "is described", it means that
there is a description on the (old) design, with nothing said about when
the description was written.

The difference becomes more clear if you change the sentence to active form:

"[Some unnamed person] described the design of the rule system at that
time in /The design of the POSTGRES rules system" (was described)

vs.

"/The design of the POSTGRES rules system/ describes the design of the
rules system at that time"  (is described)

--
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com