CANNOT is almost always preferred to 'CAN NOT'

[C-EO]

Description

I believe from hundreds of research and thousands of times that the word 'CAN NOT' is spelled wrongly.

The spelling should be **CANNOT**, no space in between.

URL: https://try.gitea.io/user/settings/account

Screenshots

Gitea Version

1.19.0+dev-273-gdfd2db569

Can you reproduce the bug on the Gitea demo site?

Yes

Operating System

No response

Browser Version

Microsoft Edge - 107.0.1418.62 (Official build) (64-bit)

[jolheiser]

As far as I know both are fine, though perhaps "cannot" is preferred.

I'd be fine with a PR for this, however I am going to close this issue as it's not necessarily a bug and also technically isn't a misspelling, it's just English being English.

[delvh]

I'd be fine with a PR for this

Done.

[zeripath]

As a native British English speaker - I can assure you that CAN NOT is valid English. However, in modern contexts it's almost always only used when you want to expressly present something as an option, usually in a sarcastic way.

For example, You can NOT get into arguments about grammar and spelling, it's far from obligatory... So yes I would argue we should switch to CANNOT over CAN NOT.

Now, generally CAN'T has been thought of as being informal - but it's definitely sneaked its way into formal arenas and is taking over from CANNOT except where you want to express emphasis or where there is no personal pronoun. It might be the case that we want: You can't do X instead of You cannot do X for at least some of the cases. However, I'm sure you would agree that the sentence CAN'T do X would be too informal in comparison to CANNOT do X (note no you in these).