Spelling error for command: `Deassign`

[nus-se-script]

Note from the teaching team: This bug was reported during the Part II (Evaluating Documents) stage of the PE. You may reject this bug if it is not related to the quality of documentation.

---

Based on the feature's explanation, I deduce that the purpose of this command is to unassign the assignment.

The use of deassign which is not an actual word may be misleading - especially to users who are not proficient in english, they may be unable to make the deduction that deassign actually means unassign.

---

_{[original: nus-cs2103-AY2324S1/pe-interim#2195] [original labels: severity.Low type.DocumentationBug]}

[lunaflight]

Team's Response

Okay, this is a great one. Love this bug report.

As a linguistics major, this is quite an interesting choice we had to make.

Assign does not have a real antonym, contrary to what you believe. *Unassign is not a real word, and neither is deassign.

Unassign comes from a backformation of the word unassigned, which is an adjective as being a state of having no assignment (and not to remove one). In fact, unassign is a chiefly computing term - jargon that only coders and people familiar with computers will use, so even proficient natives of English will not have seen this word. Deassign and unassign have roughly the same analysis, having the negative prefixes of de- and un-, attached to assign, making it obvious to natives that this is the opposite of assign, and there should be no confusion over the meaning here.

The antonym of assign is actually remove. However, we have decided to not use this word as it is too verbose and is not self-explanatory. We have opted for a strictly grammatically wrong word, to clarify our intentions and obviously mark it as the opposite of the command assign.

Hence, this is a matter of grammar and stylistic choice of English, so we have decided to classify it as not in scope.

Duplicate status (if any):

--