English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jgbelacqua

5:00 PM

Hmm. I think the accepted answer is the correct one here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/16740/…

But it currently has fewer upvotes.

Martha

There, now it has equal upvotes. Happy? :p

jgbelacqua

@Martha :)

psmears

5:24 PM

Just come across this:

2

A: Using contracted forms ("don't", "let's") in a formal text

It is frowned upon to use contractions in formal writing. However, these "rules" or "standards" are quickly becoming guidelines. Negations are also said to be avoided in formal writing. So, "do not" shouldn't be used at all. Of course, there are times when the negated construction doesn't have th...

Has anyone else come across the idea that negations shouldn't be used in formal writing?

It's a new one on me...

Robusto

Well, in formal writing — or any writing, really — I don't know how one would advise someone not to use negation without actually using it.

Hence that is a ridiculous assertion.

Rhodri

^ What he said

psmears

:) "Refrain from the use of negation" I suppose...

Robusto

@psmears — See, it sounds like you're avoiding it. And, therefore, silly.

RegDwight

Whoa, peoples.

20

Q: Eeeek! How does this question have 28 (and growing!) close votes without being closed?

Should I use a 64Bit or 32Bit Linux for a high throughput LAMP server? has 28 close votes. Here's a screenshot from when it was on 9: All of them are for off-topic SF (this was at least true when I casted the 9th vote). How come it hasn't been closed yet?

psmears

5:30 PM

...indeed.

Robusto

The @Martha meme is gaining traction!

psmears

Though it does remind me of some of the work I do with children

Where the advice is always "no negative instructions"

Robusto

I'm wondering if the correct form of Eeeek! is four letters e or five. If only we had someone on E&U.SE who could advise us on this ... some authoritative source ...

3

psmears

Not for any sort of grammar or stylistic reason, but more because saying "Don't climb on the furniture" usually has the effect of giving the idea to the children that hadn't already thought of it...

Robusto

Don't not climb the furniture. Reverse psychology.

Rhodri

5:32 PM

@Robusto Some 1940s film heroine, perhaps?

Robusto

You're welcome.

jgbelacqua

@Robusto Yeah, that can't not work.

psmears

@Robusto I believe it depends on the context. But I'm not sure of the rules. Some advice is sorely needed...

RegDwight

@Robusto That's old news, really.

20 hours ago, by RegDwight

7

A: The Many Memes of Meta

Meme: Eeeek! Usage: Eeeek! {Observation of horrible, terrible, thing that has happened somewhere in the SE2.0 codebase}? Originator: Marti First Seen: 4 Mar. 2011 ~ Eeeek what happened to my envelope? (sorry guys, 10k only) Cultural Height: Probably still to be reached, given the increase of...

Robusto

@RegDwight — Newness of news is relative. It was new to me, ergo it was new. None of you really exist, you are all just Turing machines attached to a chat mechanism, so none of your perceptions of time matter at all anyway.

RegDwight

5:36 PM

As if anybody's perception of anything matters in the great scheme of things.

Robusto

There is no great scheme of things. It's a distributed system of small schemes.

Rhodri

@Robusto Damn, spotted.

RegDwight

That is your perception of the great scheme of things.

Robusto

Spoken like a monoschemist.

I am a polyschemist.

We can never agree on anything.

RegDwight

That suits me rather well as I have to go pick up my wife.

jgbelacqua

5:39 PM

You married her and you're still trying to pick her up?

RegDwight

So probably no talking tonight.

jgbelacqua

That's keeping it fresh.

RegDwight

Or more like lots of talking, but not to Robusto.

Robusto

@jgbelacqua — Wow. I wish I'd said that.

It's so good it should have been mine.

jgbelacqua

Ha

RegDwight

5:40 PM

@Robusto You fail.

Mar 14 at 17:14, by RegDwight

Robusto

@RegDwight — No, I am winning at the larger game, if you could but see it.

RegDwight

I'm out!

jgbelacqua

ciao

Robusto

Out of good things to say?

Rhodri

Bye then

Robusto

5:40 PM

Then why did you even enter chat in the first place?

jgbelacqua

it always comes to this in the end

Robusto

You're still here, listening, I can hear you breathing.

@RegDwight likes to announce his departure somewhat before the actual event, so he can see what bad things people are saying about him.

jgbelacqua

We all do that, don't we? Easier than organizing a funeral, these days.

psmears

@Robusto The trouble with that is...

...this

RegDwight

@RegDwight always reads the entire transcript anyhow. Unlike @Robusto, for whom @RegDwight then has to repeat all kinds of things.

Robusto

5:43 PM

@jgbelacqua — Yeah, that's the problem I have with wakes. The best party you're ever invited to is the one everyone knows you can't attend.

@psmears — Wait a minute ... I think that cartoon has been doctored.

Rhodri

@Robusto ...unlike the dog

jgbelacqua

Trying to thing of a good context to use "It's palimpsestuous."

psmears

@Robusto Say it ain't so...

Robusto

@RegDwight — You are so busted.

@psmears — I can't be sure without a thorough examination in Photoshop, but I suspect the worst.

jgbelacqua

You could find the original?

Using an Internets?

I think I'll always talk like this now?

Robusto

5:47 PM

Martha

@Robusto The number of e's in Eeeek is variable. Ideally, it should correspond to the level of eeekiness of the problem. For example, that question about the missing red boxes on the main page of StackOverflow should, in my opinion, be prefaced by "Ek". At most.

Robusto

Aha!

Busted!

@Martha — Thank you, Martha. It is great to have the inventor of the meme here to explain it in detail.

jgbelacqua

A curator of memes.

Robusto

You can't be a curator of memes. They exist only in the wild.

jgbelacqua

Wild memes are wild.

Robusto

5:50 PM

Well, "wild meme" is a redundancy. So is — before you even try to suggest it — "free-range" meme.

jgbelacqua

la même chose like that.

Robusto

And if you try to copy memes you become memetic.

Martha

THWACK!!!

jgbelacqua

If you love même chose, let it go, and if it comes back to you, copy it .

Robusto

Plus: what if la même chose changes?

jgbelacqua

5:52 PM

I've never liked the meme meme, actually, but I suspect that's a cliché.

Robusto

It's a compression of this greedy statement of selfish children: "Me me me me me!"

jgbelacqua

"selfish children" and selfish children are redundant (when they're saying "me me me")

Robusto

2

Q: Why do golfers yell: 'Fore"?

Feeling rather bogeyed, I'm looking for some fore-closure to this query - help!

meaning

T-Rex strikes again.

jgbelacqua

Ook. (Oops, meant to say "ooook.")

Robusto

Hey, no copycat memes!

jgbelacqua

5:56 PM

If a thingy comes back to you, copy it badly, and release it back into the wild?

Robusto

Ooook is so vastly inferior to Eeeek! it isn't even funny.

@jgbelacqua — "The young poet mimics; the mature poet plagiarizes." — T. S. Eliot

jgbelacqua

It's less recognizable as a meme. S'posed to be a sound.

Like 'fffffoooooouuuu"

(Which fails equally as well.)

Robusto

@jgbelacqua — I'm staring at those letters and I don't hear a thing.

jgbelacqua

The eccentric poet hollers about pants.

Robusto

And the out-of-shape hillbilly poet pants about hollers.

jgbelacqua

5:58 PM

You have to have the right props to make "fffooooouuu" speak.

Robusto

@Martha: Are you even here? I'm missing my thwack.

jgbelacqua

'billy-pants rants in unshapely hloars.

She's working? I know I am.

Anything can be an answer, if you ask the wrong question.

apropos of nothing.

answer: "pesto"

Robusto

question: What spice killed 1/3 of the human population during the Middle Ages?

Martha

@Robusto, I'm not your personal thwacking pet, perpetually at your beck and call. If you know you deserve a thwacking, you can very well thwack yourself. (Or - gasp horrors - not make the pun in the first place.)

Hmph.

jgbelacqua

@Robusto Bears?

Rhodri

6:02 PM

@Martha, now now, let's not be unreasonable here

He works hard for those thwackings, it would be wrong to deprive him.

And he is so very thwackable.

jgbelacqua

Was she telling him to thwack off?

That's how I read it.

Rhodri

I'm going to go and make tea now and pretend I didn't read that.

jgbelacqua

That's a good plan -- I think I'll do that too.

Robusto

@Martha — Hey, you're the one who started the whole thwacking meme. But I see what you're doing. You give me a sample of the product so I get hooked, and then you start charging exorbitant sums for it? I guess that makes you a thwack dealer, doesn't it?

jgbelacqua

A crack thwack dealer ; she knows how to do it.

Robusto

6:06 PM

@jgbelacqua — You provided the "answer: " ... I just provided the "question: " to it.

jgbelacqua

Oh, goody. Now I get a fish.

Or do you get the fish?

Martha

@jgbelacqua Sigh. (And Thwack!.)

jgbelacqua

Owch.

Robusto

@Martha — Watch it. She's going to start charging for those pretty soon.

jgbelacqua

Oh, wait -- I don't eat fish, I'm a humanitarian.

Robusto

6:08 PM

@jgbelacqua You only eat humans?

That's called a cannibal, not a humanitarian.

jgbelacqua

So they say. Before I eat them.

Nom nom nom.

Cerberus

Hey don't blame Martha: she is only the instrument of the General Will.

jgbelacqua

"cannibal"! You wash your mouth out.

Robusto

@Cerberus — Well, in this case she's an instrument of the Specific Won't ... as in, she won't thwack me even though I richly deserve it.

Cerberus

@Rob: Nicely put. I see no solution but masochism for you.

Brb groceries.

Robusto

6:10 PM

Since when is masochism a solution?

jgbelacqua

Depends on the question.

Such as, how do you escape bears?

a masochism.

Er....

If you mumble, it sounds almost like 'massive chasm,' or 'bread box'.

Robusto

Well, T-Rex just outed himself:

2

Q: Why do golfers yell: 'Fore"?

Feeling rather bogeyed, I'm looking for some fore-closure to this query - help!

meaning

Read his comment to my comment.

jgbelacqua

Oooph.

Gotta run -- ciao.

Martha

Re: cannibalism -- Y'all should be grateful. There's this lovely picture of the niece chowing down on her daddy's nose, but it's not anywhere on my work machine or in my email.

Rhodri

@Robusto sigh. He probably thinks he's so funny.

Robusto

6:19 PM

Yeah. He won't stop, either.

Rhodri

I'd try becoming his Internet boyfriend, but he probably wouldn't realise he was supposed to be scared.

6

Q: Word for a person who doesn't think the rules apply to him

I'm trying to write a letter to the editor of my local paper about their report of a man who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Is there a word for this? He's a bit of an egoist, demanding to speak at city council meetings after the public hearing portion of the meeting has been closed.

single-word-requests

Answer: T-Rex

Cerberus

6:34 PM

Internet boyfriends? Where?

Rhodri

6:44 PM

Sorry darling, you're too late. I'm all Art's

@Cerberus: actually I was just commenting on your contribution to the Spatial/Special question.

Cerberus

I have already answered you ipso loco!

Though I didn't have much to say except "oh! interesting!".

Rhodri

That's about all there is to say, so thanks.

Cerberus

(Well at least I am glad you have found a decent dinosaur to have freakish kids with.)

Rhodri

Oh, except that HM the Q doesn't like it pronounced that way. My choir had stern instructions that it was her language and she wanted it pronounced the modern way.

@Cerberus (though bearing in mind his comment, him being a dinosaur makes it a past participle)

Cerberus

(Hey Jurassic Park...)

You mean Elizabeth II decided her great-etc.-grandmother's pronunciation wasn't good enough for her? Did she oppose historical pronunciation for some specific reason? It would seem silly to oppose musical practice no doubt conceived by experts in the field...?

Rhodri

6:57 PM

It did not amuse. I know no more.

Then again, experts do seem to contradict themselves every couple of decades, so maybe she's right.

Cerberus

I suppose she might be!

Rhodri

7:32 PM

I must be off, I'm afraid. I have friends expecting me and a few things to deliver before I get to them.

Also eating would be nice :-)

Martha

Yeah, stupid eating. Gets me every time.

Cerberus

Yeah. Doing it as we speak. Bye Rhodri!

F'x

8:01 PM

hi all

Cerberus

Greetings!

F'x

where is Martha's MSO enveloppe question gone? I can't find it anywhere? As it been deleted by the powers that might be?

Cerberus

Uh I am not sure, I haven't been following that discussion...

Martha

@Fx, yes, Evil Jeff deleted it. And locked it for good measure, or so I'm told.

F'x

@Martha so cool!

Martha

8:10 PM

So any day now I expect to arrive at MSO to see a severely diminished reputation score.

F'x

I believe you already have, haven't you?

wait, no, sorry

Martha

Nope, still 700-something.

No recalc yet.

F'x

you can ask for it :)

Martha

Right. :p

But I get to keep my badges. So there.

psmears

9:26 PM

3 hours ago, by Martha

@Robusto The number of e's in Eeeek is variable. Ideally, it should correspond to the level of eeekiness of the problem. For example, that question about the missing red boxes on the main page of StackOverflow should, in my opinion, be prefaced by "Ek". At most.

In that case

If everything's totally fine, people should be able to say "k"

Or perhaps, to be totally explicit that there are no "E"s, they could put a zero in front

Like this: 0K

I am somewhat tempted to post that as an answer to this question

13

Q: Where did the term "OK/Okay" come from?

I've heard lots of varying histories of the term "OK". Is there any evidence of the true origin of the term?