Some products.Topic.description strings include trailing periods, most do not

[TonnesM]

As the title says, recently a few new UI strings for Sumo landed that used trailing periods (for instance this one) whereas most others don’t have any. I think these always involve products.Topic.description strings.

Please check for consistency and fix what you think should be. Trivial, but just a punctuality issue.

[pmac]

I did some looking and there are 51 of 192 topic descriptions that end in a period. Should these all be changed to remove the period? Perhaps Madalina or Patrick have an opinion. I'll find and ask them.

[TonnesM]

If it helps: I’d say all of them would need to get rid of the period, except for ones that can be considered as 1 or 2 sentences, such as "New to Pocket? Start here." That goes for both products.Product.description (1) and products.Topic.description (51).

In addition: when a period is included and besides the inconsistent looks, some localizers may assume a string to be imperative (=instructive) instead of infinitive (descriptive, as in "How to / I want to / Here you can [action]" - similar to tooltips, menu items etc.) Without looking at the string context or ID, that could lead to wrong or at least inconsistent translations.

There may be strings that could be considered as being imperative, such as "Make Firefox yours with these customization options." or the ones starting with "Learn more about", but even then I’d recommend not doing so as they can be considered to be ambiguous. Yet feel free to only remove a number of them, as long as other ones have valid reasons to include periods.

[christinadawn0218-create]

To ensure consistency in UI strings, particularly with the "Topic description" strings that involve products, it’s important to incorporate the use of trailing periods. Here’s a recommended approach to address this issue:

Review Existing Strings:
Go through all the "Topic description" strings currently in use and identify which ones contain trailing periods and which do not.

Establish a Standard: Decide whether to use trailing periods consistently for all "Topic description" strings or don't include them entirely. Generally, if the descriptions are complete sentences, it’s common to use a trailing period. If they are fragments or phrases, leaving out the period may be preferable.

Make Adjustments:
If opting for consistency with trailing periods, add periods to all relevant strings that currently doesn't have any.
If choosing to omit trailing periods, remove them from those that have them!

Document Changes:
Keep a record of the changes made for the future to ensure that any new strings added will follow.

Communicate Changes:
Notify the team about the adjustments made to the UI strings for transparency and to check that everyone is on the same page.

By following these steps, the UI strings will be more consistent, improving overall clarity and professionalism in the user interface.