rh-ssg-grammar-and-language

Red Hat SSG: Grammar and Language review skill

Review documentation for grammar and language compliance with the Red Hat Supplementary Style Guide. This supplements the IBM Style Guide — Red Hat-specific rules take precedence.

Checklist

Conscious language

• No instances of "blacklist" or "whitelist" — use "blocklist/allowlist", "denylist/allowlist", or "blocklist/passlist"
• No instances of "master" or "slave" — use "primary/secondary", "source/replica", "controller/worker", or "initiator/responder"
• Replacement terms are consistent with what engineering uses in the product

Contractions

• No contractions in standard product documentation
• Contractions are acceptable only in content using "fairly conversational" or "more conversational" style (quick starts, cloud services docs)

Conversational style

• Default style is "less conversational" for most product documentation
• "Fairly conversational" style is used only for new-user content or cloud services
• "Least conversational" style is used for API documentation and expert audiences

Minimalism

• Content is action-oriented and focused on customer goals (Principle 1)
• Conceptual and background information is separated from procedural tasks
• Content is scannable: short paragraphs, short sentences, bulleted lists (Principle 2)
• Titles and headings are 3–11 words with clear, familiar keywords (Principle 3)
• No long introductions or unnecessary context; sentences are concise (Principle 4)
• Troubleshooting, error recovery, and verification steps are included where needed (Principle 5)
• No self-referential text: "This topic explains...", "This section describes...", "This document covers..."
• Verbose or inflated terms are avoided: "leverage" → "use", "utilize" → "use", "in order to" → "to", "via" → "through"

Users

• Animate users (people) use "who": "Users who want to install..."
• Inanimate users (system accounts like root, SELinux users) use "that": "Specify a user that is allowed..."
• No mixing of animate/inanimate pronouns for the same user type

Abbreviations and acronyms

• Do NOT flag command names, utility names, tool names, or executable names as undefined acronyms — these are proper nouns or literal strings, not abbreviations (for example, db2trc, ULOAD, SETUP, oc, kubectl, podman)

Homographs

• Words with multiple meanings (application, attribute, block, object, project) are not used ambiguously near each other

How to use

1. Review only changed content and necessary context
2. For each issue found, cite the relevant SSG section
3. Mark issues as required (conscious language violations, incorrect contractions) or [SUGGESTION] (minimalism improvements)

Example invocations

• "Review this file for Red Hat grammar and language issues"
• "Check conscious language compliance in modules/con_overview.adoc"
• "Do an SSG grammar review on the changed modules"

References

For detailed guidance, consult:

• Red Hat Supplementary Style Guide: Grammar and language
• IBM Style Guide (primary reference)