Re: [Minor] Duplicated word in "Creating a Database" tutorial

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "David G(dot) Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel(at)yesql(dot)se>, "matematica(dot)a3k(at)gmail(dot)com" <matematica(dot)a3k(at)gmail(dot)com>, "pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org" <pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: [Minor] Duplicated word in "Creating a Database" tutorial
Date: 2026-09-25 14:47:38
Message-ID: 1882415.1790347658@sss.pgh.pa.us
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"David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Friday, September 25, 2026, Daniel Gustafsson <daniel(at)yesql(dot)se> wrote:
>> It seems like a correct sentence to me, removing as per your suggestion
>> would
>> AFAICT make it grammatically incorrect.

> Probably, but wouldn’t saying “this user” instead of “that user” be equally
> correct without making the word “that” serve two roles in the paragraph and
> produce this annoying double-that construction?

It's perfectly good English as-is, and offhand I don't think using
"this" would be an improvement. It's been a long time since high
school English, but I think that "that" is actually more correct;
in context I'd take "this user" to mean your own operating-system
user ID, which was mentioned first. Note that the next sentence also
uses "that user" to refer to the same database user.

regards, tom lane

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