On Mon, 17 Aug 2015, Sean Hunt wrote: > On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 6:01 PM, omd <c.ome...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ============================== CFJ 3452 ============================== > > > > The text of Rule 1728/33 contains exactly 14 paragraphs. > > > > ======================================================================== > > G., why is the presence/absence of a blank line significant here? It's > entirely possible to separate paragraphs using indentation.
Well, R2429 calls "paragraph breaks" a subset of "whitespace", so that's the starting point. My issue is Lists. Some lists read like a single paragraph and have no line breaks, some don't. I noticed this with the new web version. For example: > When the rules calls for an Agoran decision to be made, the decision-making > process takes place in the following three stages, each described elsewhere: > (a) Initiation of the decision. (b) Voting of the people. (c) Resolution of > the decision. versus: > When the rules calls for an Agoran decision to be made, the decision-making > process takes place in the following three stages, each described elsewhere: > > (a) Initiation of the decision. > (b) Voting of the people. > (c) Resolution of the decision. It's not clear to me that the two aren't 100% identical in meaning. But I don't know my allowed Rulekeepor flexibility here, and whether condensing the list removes "paragraphs" which are "significant". So I picked a rule with several different kinds of lists, just to see if I could get a good definition of "paragraph". The "14" count was just a starting point, treating every <CR> as a new paragraph whether or not there was a blank space following. This includes considering partial clauses such as "b) At least one of the following is true:" as whole paragraphs, so it illustrates the difficulty of whitespace-based paragraph demarcation. So a way of asking more generally is: For lists, are list items paragraphs? Is the whole list one paragraph? Is it part of the preceding paragraph describing the list? What about nesting? Do the number of blank lines between list items matter? R1728 has it all. I'm pretty sure I can tell what kind of structure "honors the flow" of any Rule as a whole (and that there are several structures that could be same in meaning) but I'd like an interpretation of the Bleach rule, given that it tries to regulate... some aspect of rule structure. -G.
