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According to the Microsoft Manual of Style it's makefiles. (lower case, one word)
Lesli
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lesli -dot- ritchie=mediware -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lesli -dot- ritchie=mediware -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Monique Semp
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 10:00 PM
To: TechWR-L
Subject: "makefiles" vs. "Makefiles" vs. "make files"
Hello, TechWR-L-ers,
So for building instructions that are applicable to a huge variety of operating systems (and so they wonât all use the usual Linux make utility, but they will all use the supplied Makefile.<os> or Makefile.<product> pre-configured make files), how would it be best to refer to the group of supplied make files:
* makefiles
* Makefiles
* make files
The last (âmake filesâ) is certainly the most generic. But given that the actual filenames are all âMakefile.<something>â, I can see the logic for referring to them as âMakefilesâ. But if the reference isnât at the start of the sentence, the upper-case makes it appear more as a proper noun, which isnât what I want to convey. (Although the actual Make utility is always uppercase, as in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_(software). And this same article seems to use âmakefileâ, lowercase, to refer to these things generically. So thatâs what Iâm leaning toward.)
Thoughts?
-Monique
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