Grammar fix for pyplot tutorial

[brettcannon]

"an axes" -> "any axes"

[WeatherGod]

Thanks! Doc-fixes are greatly appreciated! If you find more, send 'em over.

[brettcannon]

So I have a question about using the term axes. I'm noticing that in a bunch of places it's used as a singular thing, such as "Add an axes to the figure" in the matplotlib.pyplot.axes docs. But I'm used to the plural meaning of "axes", like "add axes to the figure" because you're adding more than one axis. Which is the way you prefer? If it's the latter then I'm happy to send in PRs changing the grammar as I read through the user's guide (this has been the only consistent quirk that's throwing me as a new user with no MATLAB background if that's the reason for the phrasing choice).

[WeatherGod]

Yes, this is a perennial problem. The issue is that there is a concept of
an "axis" (i.e., the x-axis and y-axis). So, a plot is composed of 2 or
more axis-es. Hence, a plot is known as an "axes". So, we try and avoid
saying "axes" when we mean multiple "axis" (but that gets tricky). We
almost never say "axis" when we mean a single "axes".

English is a terrible programming language...

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Brett Cannon [email protected]
wrote:

So I have a question about using the term axes. I'm noticing that in a
bunch of places it's used as a singular thing, such as "Add an axes to the
figure" in the matplotlib.pyplot.axes docs
http://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.axes. But
I'm used to the plural meaning of "axes", like "add axes to the figure"
because you're adding more than one axis. Which is the way you prefer? If
it's the latter then I'm happy to send in PRs changing the grammar as I
read through the user's guide (this has been the only consistent quirk
that's throwing me as a new user with no MATLAB background if that's the
reason for the phrasing choice).

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#4963 (comment)
.

[tacaswell]

@brettcannon I hope http://matplotlib.org/faq/usage_faq.html#parts-of-a-figure clarifies things.

Grammatically would it make more sense to say "Add an axes object to the figure"?

[dopplershift]

That sounds better to me.

[WeatherGod]

And what shall be the plural of axis and axes?

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 2:08 PM, Ryan May [email protected] wrote:

That sounds better to me.

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#4963 (comment)
.

[dopplershift]

"objects"

[brettcannon]

The FAQ entry from @tacaswell does help explain why the docs use "axes" as a singular term. Is this a MATPLOTLIB thing?

Anyway, what I'll do is send a PR that tweaks the Pyplot tutorial to link to the FAQ entry so that it makes more sense to beginners.

[efiring]

On 2015/08/19 8:04 AM, Thomas A Caswell wrote:

@brettcannon https://github.com/brettcannon I hope
http://matplotlib.org/faq/usage_faq.html#parts-of-a-figure clarifies
things.

Grammatically would it make more sense to say "Add an |axes| object to
the figure"?

Maybe this should be consistently capitalized, "Axes", to be a more
explicit reference to the Axes class.