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Comment by randomifcpfan | Hacker News Reader

“You should consider using this in your requirements” implies that this is not a hard rule, it’s just an ignorable suggestion. It would be interesting to audit gov.uk web pages over time to see whether this advice is being followed.

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Having

> You should consider

Is Gov UK's way of allowing people internally to point to it and say 'Well, did you consider it?'.

UK Digital don't have any direct power to force change - they have to use sensible advice and internal process to encourage better design.

Don't forget the rules of British English that make it very clear that the grammatical construction: "you should consider" means "you must in all circumstances save for the immediate alternate outcome being a genocide."

Thanks for explaining! That’s quite different from the US English (and RFC English) meaning of “should”.

This translation guide is usually helpful.

https://polish2english.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/55551980-...

I'm afraid I don't know what RFC English is and neither does Google.

Huh, for me the very first non-ad result for googleing RFC English is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments, which is the correct citation.

For me it was to do with Rugby Football.

To be fair, here is the RFC meaning:

   SHOULD   This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
   may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
   particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
   carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

It means you can’t simply ignore it, and instead have to have compelling reasons to justify any deviation.

Unfortunately, in many organizations, "the library we use doesn't follow this recommendation" is a valid compelling reason. Which means that in practice "SHOULD" effectively means "WOULD BE NICE IF".

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