> “Download an .epub app to keep reading,” a notification in Edge classic reads when you load an EPUB document. “Microsoft Edge will no longer be supporting [sic] e-books that use the .epub file extension. Visit the Microsoft Store to see our recommended .epub apps.”
What’s wrong with this? It looks grammatically correct to me…
It seems fine to me, too, if not the most direct wording. "Microsoft Edge will no longer support e-books..." is shorter, but the existing wording isn't wrong.
I read the statement and to me, the future progressive seemed to be the most apt way to phrase it. When I tried to find examples to illustrate why, it occurred to me that the future progressive predominates when delivering bad news. For example:
"Unfortunately, we won't be renewing our contract with you"
or
"We regret to inform you that we will be going with another candidate"
Changing those to the simple future makes them sound much harsher to my ears, so I would venture that the progressive is a mechanism for softening the impact.
It's also more consistent with "no longer", which implies a progressive action. An alternative is "will not support", which is no longer indicating (or does not indicate) that it had been supporting epub for a while.
That said, "will no longer support" is more succinct and clear enough.
“support”, as the author of the article suggests, should replace “be supporting”, not just “supporting”. The simple future is called for, not the future continuous.
> To use [sic] the quoted text has to be clearly wrong
(1) You are responding to a quote about a proposed rewrite of the sentence which would be clearly wrong independent of whether the quoted text was (the “less correct” was chosen because the proposal asked if it would be “more correct”), and
(2) No, there's no such requirement for the use of “[sic]”; use for things which are not strictly incorrect but not comport to a stylistic preference of the author presenting the quote (or one that the author expects the audience to have) is common. For instance, Google's dictionary's usage example for it is “a story must hold a child's interest and “enrich his [sic] life.” What the “[sic]” flags is grammatically correct, though recently usually stylistically not-preferred.
This sort of construction is reminiscent of topic-prominent languages, e.g. Japanese, but English is a subject-prominent language and phrasing it that way would sound awkward to a native speaker.
The author is probably an English major. He was waiting all his life to finally say 'you see, my degree is not completely useless'. He would, of course, be completely and utterly wrong - both in justifying his degree, and his analysis of relnotes grammar.
What’s wrong with this? It looks grammatically correct to me…