English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Anonymous

12:04 AM

See, it hates me.

Phonics The Hedgehog

@Cerberus I see. Thank you very much!

Anonymous

@PhonicsTheHedgehog That is a situation where different speakers prefer different mechanisms for resolving the conflict

Anonymous

Some prefer agreement with greater number, some prefer agreement with the nearer disjunct

Anonymous

To make both groups happy, put the disjunct with greater number next to the verb

Cerberus

@snailboat I know. It's not fair.

Anonymous

12:08 AM

Arnold Zwicky wrote a fairly long summary of this somewhere.

Anonymous

I don't have it handy, but it's somewhere online to be found.

Cerberus

@snailboat Ah, difficult.

It is displayed too much too the left for me too, Firefox/Windows XP.

@snailboat This is usually the best approach.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Thank you, I quoted you in our Japanese chat

Cerberus

OMG I am famous!!

Anonymous

T_T

Cerberus

12:15 AM

What are those t's about?

Anonymous

@Cerberus Can you reload? I tried editing it so that it looks wrong on my screen, hoping that it'll look right to other people :-)

Cerberus

12:30 AM

@snailboat Yay!

Is it a single code point now?

Anonymous

No, it's still a combining thing

Cerberus

Or did you use a different code point for the diacritic?

Anonymous

Ohh

Anonymous

in Japanese Language, 11 mins ago, by cypher

Arial Unicode MS has an issue for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial_Unicode_MS#Bugs

Anonymous

Maybe I had it right, and it's buggy for everyone else because they're using Arial :-)

Anonymous

12:36 AM

And now my edit broke it!

Cerberus

I shall try the first version using a different font, then.

@snailboat This is with Charis SIL in Word.

Anonymous

Well, I'm glad spell check works.

Anonymous

But my new version looks fine in Word with Charis SIL?

Cerberus

Yes, I was meaning to ask on ELU, Word says my word is spelled wrong, help!

@snailboat Let me try.

This is Office 2003, if that matters.

And your spelling is abominable!

Anonymous

So those are old and new respectively, right?

Cerberus

12:42 AM

Yes.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Thank you, you're helping! :-)

Cerberus

For once in my life!!

Ice Boy

3:27 AM

@Cerberus those are suppose to represent eyes with tears running down

Matt Эллен

10:26 AM

-1 - While some of your points are valid, you present them in such an aggressively opinionated manner that most people would be likely to discount your entire answer, especially as it also fails to include evidence that supports your assertions and prescriptions. — Erik Kowal 53 mins ago

Awesome, that was my aim! :) nicely put....... — Joe Blow 22 mins ago

why?

Anonymous

10:56 AM

@Cerberus I still haven't figured out what's wrong with the font rendering on my computer. Apparently it's something to do with font fallback

Anonymous

cypher wrote: 'However, when the two fonts are rendered together it sometimes causes rendering problems for some reason. For example if "Liberation Mono" falls back to "DejaVu Sans Mono" it renders the combining char after rather than before.'

LWTBP

11:17 AM

Hello, again. *You are my love, and I am yours.* *John is Adamn's father, Steven Arnold's.*

What is that idea of removing repeated words called?

Matt Эллен

elision

Anonymous

In linguistics, removing words is ellipsis, and removing sounds is elision.

LWTBP

Thank you Thank you. :)

Matt Эллен

@snailboat oh, right! beg your pardon

LWTBP

Oh wait... so it's ellipsis, not elision. But isn't ellipsis three dots for showing omitted words?

Matt Эллен

11:24 AM

that's one meaning. but the habitual way of doing it is another

LWTBP

finding information for the non dotted version of ellipsis online is difficult then

Matt Эллен

not really.

Anonymous

Ellipsis can refer ① to the process of removing words, ② to the words that were removed, or ③ to the symbol … which is often used to indicate that words were removed

Matt Эллен

google.co.uk/…

user08742

hi

Is it ok to say you, during the crisis, were ...

?

Anonymous

11:26 AM

I couldn't resist putting in circled numerals :-)

Matt Эллен

:D

LWTBP

OK. Thank you. So I need to search for "ellipsis linguistics". :)

Matt Эллен

yeah :D

@user08742 yes

Anonymous

In linguistics it most commonly has meaning ①

Anonymous

You are used to meaning ③

Anonymous

11:27 AM

@user08742 It's a marked word order.

Anonymous

It's okay, but it's not the most basic position for the phrase

Matt Эллен

ellipsis in ODO

LWTBP

Thanks @snailboat and @MattЭллен I don't think I would have figured out the word by myself through net searches without the use of direct chat with more knowledgeable people. This is some serious stuff. LOL.

Matt Эллен

very

;)

user08742

i see thanky\ you

LWTBP

11:30 AM

So in the 'father example', is there a comma before "Gregson"?
_John was Johnson's father, and Greg Gregson's_

OR

_John was Johnson's father, and Greg, Gregson's._

PS: Why don't damn italics work with me mostly here?

Anonymous

That is a gapping construction, a specific type of ellipsis. A comma is sometimes optionally inserted to indicate the position of the gap in this construction. You have to decide in this case if you think it's stylistically a good idea or not

Anonymous

In this case it avoids ambiguity: "John was Johnson's father, and Greg Gregson's ~~father~~."

Anonymous

@LWTBP Markdown is disabled by design on multi-line chat messages, unfortunately.

Anonymous

They have no intention of changing that.

Anonymous

It is also possible to use a semicolon for the top-level coordination, which makes the comma visually distinct and perhaps easier to understand: "John was Johnson's father; and Greg, Gregson's."

Anonymous

11:35 AM

But that is again a matter of style and you have to decide whether you think it's a good idea or not yourself

Anonymous

A similar example from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p.1744: "Some of the immigrants went to small farms in the Midwest; others, to large Eastern cities."

Anonymous

I think there's a tendency to not mark the gap with a comma in short sentences, but in this case it might be worth it to avoid ambiguity (if you don't want to otherwise change the sentence).

LWTBP

I think the semicolon version looks better. But that should be used before the conjunction only if I am using the second comma to prevent confusion, right?

Anonymous

@LWTBP I wouldn't use it otherwise, but it's not strictly forbidden by any rule

LWTBP

Thanks a ton @snailboat !!

Anonymous

11:44 AM

:-)

Ice Boy

May I suggest: John was Johnson's father, while Greg was Gregson's.

LWTBP

@IceBoy Thanks. But and would still be a better option to while, no?

Or maybe it depends on the context

Ice Boy

yes, it does depend on context

floele

Hi all, is it correct to say "invoice of date X"? Or is it "from"?

Ice Boy

sentence please

floele

11:47 AM

There is no sentence

it's some kind of "heading"

Ice Boy

then "from"

floele

like in a table: "Invoice from date ...: Paid"

LWTBP

Invoice of 2014 would mean the data contained there is for 2014. Invoice from 2014 would mean the invoice itself was created in 2014, regardless of the data. My thoughts.

floele

in this case the "date" would be the invoice date, so the date when the invoice has been sent (sort of).

Anonymous

Why not for?

LWTBP

11:51 AM

+1 @snailboat

for instead of of right?

floele

it would not be a year, but rather a full date. So like "Invoice for 2014-10-13".

Or could I also just say "Invoice No. 123456 dated 2014-10-13"?

LWTBP

@floele As per that, I think it should be Invoice from 2014-10-13.

Your latest example sounds more precise.

floele

@LWTBP OK, thanks :)

LWTBP

But a comma before dated would be better. Not sure.

floele

hm, I guess I am going to use "from" anyway

LWTBP

11:57 AM

Haha.

Ice Boy

9 mins ago, by Ice Boy

then "from"

floele

or not?

Ice Boy

:D

LWTBP

It all depends on where you are using it. Layman context would need clearer description, while office use might not.

floele

it's just a table of invoices with some data, with the first column having the text "Invoice No. 123456 from 2014-10-13". if the wording itself is not incorrect, the meaning will be evident

Ice Boy

12:00 PM

yes

LWTBP

Bye guys. Have a good day.

Bye, guys*

LOL

floele

does that really matter? ;)

anyway, have a nice day.

LWTBP

It does. But I was just effing around.

It does for letter writing and stuff, I think. Bye anyways.

Anonymous

See you later, bunchofletters!

Matt Эллен

lol

Ice Boy

12:14 PM

:D

Robusto

12:26 PM

Good answer for the most part, but I think the past tense is used here deliberately to provide an interesting contrast to the normal slogan. That you can't find it used much that way through NGrams is irrelevant, as are NGrams themselves for style issues. If raw usage numbers were any indicator of stylistic perfection, clichés and hack phrases would be stylistic paragons. — Robusto 34 secs ago

Ice Boy

12:41 PM

Awesome, that was my aim! :) nicely put....... — Joe Blow 3 hours ago

@JoeBlow would you like to try your aim in here?

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…