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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Ok, off topic question. Not an expert in grammar, but something about "Go 1.7 is released" seems wrong to me. Anyone could tell me if this is an correct usage of grammar?

Edit: Dont know why so many downvote, but it is a honest question.

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It seems right to me (American speaker). "Released" functions as an adjective, with similar meaning to "available." "Go 1.7 is available" would be grammatically correct.

"Go 1.7 has been released" would also be correct, but uses the present perfect tense.

So the question is, can "released" be used as an adjective? "The released version has a bug" seems correct to me, and "released" clearly functions as an adjective there.

All that said, the present perfect version seems clearly correct, while I can't make a great argument for the adjectival version.

It's just present tense, usually known as "historical present" tense when used in a headline like this. "Released" here might be intended as an adjective or verb; it's ambiguous, but both are valid in the sentence structure.

It's newspaper headline-style, i.e., written in present-tense.

Example from nytimes.com right now, "Bag Left Alone by Mother of Olympian Is Blown Up".

(Downvotes: Dunno why either. People are grumpy.)

I am not a native English speaker myself. But yes that fragment while correct parsed a bit weirdly in my head because "is" is often used for properties of an entity like "John is dead" and "has been" is often used for something that is done to something. Like "John has been convicted". I think it has something to do with "is" being a simple present form while "released" in one sense talks about the state of the object in which case it is fine but also in another case is the action of getting released in which case it is in the simple past tense.

Like another commenter mentioned, this style is commonly used in headlines. It's referred to as historical present tense. Here are a few resources for more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present http://www.grammar.net/presentaspast

"Is" combined with "released" does sound odd, but it's not too unusual, like in this sentence: "Heat is released into the atmosphere by cars." (From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/release)

Same, it sounds off to me. I'm also not a grammar expert but know when something sounds 'off'.

"Nintendo Wii U is released." - it just sounds strange.

"Nintendo Wii U has been released." - ok, sounds good.

"Nintendo Wii U released." - ok, sounds good.

""Nintendo Wii U has been released."

has been is Passive voice and should be avoided.

Sometimes good advice, but certainly not a rule. As Pinker points out in "A Sense of Style", passive voice lets you modify word order to emphasize what's important to the reader.

Maybe "Go 1.7 has been released" or "Go 1.7 is out"

Exactly, both would have been a fine. I am wondering if this is a grammar mistake, or general English usage difference in US and Commonwealth countries.

I'm happy as long as no one tries to say "Go 1.7 has dropped".

Isn't it the passive voice? You conjugate to be and add the past participle. "Go 1.7 is released" rather than "we have released Go 1.7". The passive voice makes Go the subject of the sentence, otherwise it would focus on who is doing the releasing which is less important in this context.

In informal writing you should avoid using the passive voice, as it sounds disconnected and boring. Technical articles can sound better in the passive voice though, and I remember my physics teachers always used to berate people for not using it. So we should have written "the experiment is performed" rather than "I performed the experiment".

Release the Hounds.... The Hounds have been released. Go is released seems fine to me.

What about it seems wrong to you?

>Go 1.7 is released

The is is redundant which may be why it doesn't scan well for you.

GO 1.7 released

Works much better, no?

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