English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:45 AM

@tchrist:

12

Q: Can "hence" be used at the beginning of a sentence?

Can the word ‘hence’ be used at the beginning of a sentence? For example: Hence, I am not feeling well, I am unable to work.

Seems like you would have an opinion on this.

tchrist

1:34 AM

Bah, humbug! That’s just so much nonsense. Fortunately, real writers know better than to pay attention to it. His real business was far more difficult and dangerous, but the Shire-folk knew nothing about it. To them he was just one of the ‘attractions’ at the Party. Hence the excitement of the hobbit-children. ‘G for Grand!’ they shouted, and the old man smiled. — tchrist 1 min ago

cornbread ninja

@MετάEd everybody's a clitic.

@JSBձոգչ how's the monterey jack?

Mahnax

@corn Hi there! I start on Monday.

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax hooray!!!

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja Yep! I am excited.

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax you asking for a lot of hours?

Mahnax

1:41 AM

@cornbreadninja 15-20/week.

Pretty standard for part-time.

cornbread ninja

@Mahnax nice.

I really liked making the chocolate sauce.

Also frappuccinos

Mahnax

They have chocolate sauce?

For what?

cornbread ninja

mochas

Mahnax

Hmm, I don't think that they make that by hand anymore.

cornbread ninja

maybe they don't make it anymore. It was just chocolate powder mixed with water.

feels old

Mahnax

1:45 AM

It's syrup now.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist I think you missed your calling as a Tolkien scholar.

tchrist

It’s one of the three books I can grep.

Rather, I can grep Tolkien (The Lays of Beleriand, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings), Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun cycle, and George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire saga. So like five books per.

Mahnax

Ooh, that's actually really cool.

tchrist

Martin almost never has anything interesting. Wolfe sometimes does. Tolkien always does.

cornbread ninja

Can you apt-get some more books to grep?

:D

tchrist

1:48 AM

Dunno, I don’t run Linux.

cornbread ninja

Fair enough. Can you get more somehow?

tchrist

If I could be arsed, probably.

cornbread ninja

raises eyebrow

tchrist

There’re all out there for free, illegal download if your Google fu is up to it. I only looked for the ones I wanted to grep.

cornbread ninja

Surely you have Alice In Wonderland.

tchrist

1:50 AM

No.

I told you what I have, and why.

Cerberus

Hence followed by a comma doesn't work for me.

tchrist

I would like Creatures of Light and Darkness, I think.

cornbread ninja

I can only offer Alice.

tchrist

@Cerberus Why would you need a comma?

Cerberus

Why indeed?

I know it not.

tchrist

1:52 AM

Thanks for the offer, but I have never read it, just occasionally quoted it.

Cerberus

Apparently both Martha and Ale suggested hence-comma as an option in the question you linked to.

@Mahnax What's is your new job?

In a café?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Starbucks!

gleeful

cornbread ninja

I kind of wanted you to say 'no, and don't call me Shirley'.

tchrist

Tolkien has only two instances of a comma following hence, and these really do not count.

> Vengeance calls me hence, but even were it otherwise I would not dwell longer in the same land with the kin of my father’s slayer and of the thief of my treasure.

user19161

@Mahnax My favourite cafe. I would like an earl grey tea.

tchrist

1:54 AM

> ‘Go hence,’ he said, ‘unto a swift and bitter death.’

cornbread ninja

►

Mahnax

@WillHunting What size would you like?

Cerberus

@Mahnax That sounds a lot better than fastfood!

user19161

@Mahnax Small. =)

tchrist

CRRT does have a passage with an initial Hence.

Mahnax

1:55 AM

@Cerberus It definitely is.

tchrist

> Probably he grew out of the figure, not of a historic chief, but of a supernatural power, who had no story all his own, and who interested mortal men only when he interfered in their concerns. Hence he is essentially a helper in time of need; and we may be fairly confident that already in the oldest lays he possessed this character.

Cerberus

@tchrist "Really"? They just don't count, period.

tchrist

@Cerberus I agree, but people have been known to reach. I was fending them off.

Cerberus

Next time, just punch them.

Okay, I need to make some more chocolates...

tchrist

Feisty tonight, aren’t we?

Tolkien does have lots of hence though.

> For darkness will flow between us, and it may be that we shall not meet again, unless it be far hence upon a road that has no returning.'
> From such men the Lord Denethor chose his forayers, who crossed the Anduin secretly (how or where, they would not say) to harry the Orcs and other enemies that roamed between the Ephel Duath and the River. ‘It is close on ten leagues hence to the east-shore of Anduin,’ said Mablung, ‘and we seldom come so far afield.’

> Yet we must move hence without more delay.

The post-literates will have no idea what that one means.

> You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy.

user19161

2:01 AM

I belong to the camp that likes hence at the start of a sentence.

tchrist

> ‘Then since we must look for fell deeds and the need of all our strength,’ said Éomer, ‘I counsel that we rest now, and set out hence by night, and so time our going that we come upon the fields when tomorrow is as light as it will be, or when our lord gives the signal.’

> Nogrod was originally Novrod ‘hollow delving’ (hence the translation Hollowbold), but was altered under the influence of naug ‘dwarf’. gul ‘sorcery’ in Dol Guldur, Minas Morgul.

> Yet if there be any on whom the shadow of our curse has not yet fallen, I should find at least a few to follow me, and should not go hence as a beggar that is thrust from the gates.

Here’s an unnotable one from Wolfe, but near a rather more notable word:

> I’ve a fellow there to whom I must transmit certain instructions, and I have learned that the troupe of players to which you once belonged will be admitted there for a thiasus a few days hence.

@Cerberus excepted, most of us do not read of a thiasus on a daily basis.

cornbread ninja

why?

2015 ~$ r 2009
cat sortfile2
jan:Start chapter 3:10th
Jan:Start chapter 1:30th
Jan:Start chapter 5:23rd
Jan:End chapter 3:23rd
Mar:Start chapter 7:27
may:End chapter 7:17th
Apr:End Chapter 5:1
Feb:End chapter 1:14
2016 ~$ r 2010
sort -t: +0 -1 -bM +2 -n sortfile2
Apr:End Chapter 5:1
Feb:End chapter 1:14
Jan:End chapter 3:23rd
Jan:Start chapter 5:23rd
Jan:Start chapter 1:30th
Mar:Start chapter 7:27
jan:Start chapter 3:10th
may:End chapter 7:17th
2017 ~$

Why do they sort alphabetically and not monthally?

tchrist

Holy cow, Google Images amongst all the nekkid folx engaged in the frolic, include a copy of the cover of the Wolfe book that I grepped out thiasus from!

Just a sec. Phone.

cornbread ninja

plays Jeopardy! music in head

tchrist

You have to move the M.

sort -t: -k1,1M -k3n

cornbread ninja

2:16 AM

moves M

tchrist

I dunno, there is one-vs-zero base thing.

I have never used -M on sort.

cornbread ninja

I did this instead

2017 ~$ sort -t: +0 -bM -1 +2 -n sortfile2
jan:Start chapter 3:10th
Jan:End chapter 3:23rd
Jan:Start chapter 5:23rd
Jan:Start chapter 1:30th
Feb:End chapter 1:14
Mar:Start chapter 7:27
Apr:End Chapter 5:1
may:End chapter 7:17th
2018 ~$

tchrist

I can’t do the -1 +thing.

I have to use -k.

cornbread ninja

I just put in what the book told me. -_-

adds to list of errata

@tchrist thank you.

come, mute.

tchrist

2:54 AM

Trench talk.

user19161

3:04 AM

Hey @mitch your votes were reversed yesterday. =)

user19161

-4

A: Less vulgar synonyms for "circlejerk"

It is closely related to nepotism, so depending on how accurate you want to be you could use nepotist.

user19161

Do we have enough delete votes to delete this answer?

tchrist

I don’t know. I’ve voted to delete it some five or six times, myself.

It’s curious how people think it is something that it is not. Perhaps the grass really always is greener on the other side.

user19161

@tchrist Sometimes, the grass is really greener on the other side even though not much greener.

tchrist

@emory: The term "circlejerk" is being used as a metaphor in these bullet points; the literal meaning is mutual masturbation (e.g. men in a circle jerking each other off). Surely the figurative meaning is less vulgar than this. — anon Jun 15 at 5:39

See what I mean?

user19161

3:24 AM

-3

A: "Add up to total" vs "add to total"

The ugly expression "add up to" is never correct. In this case, if "add to" may be ambiguous then the sentence could be rewritten as: The sum of the six numbers may be more than the total population and the sum of the six percentages may be more than ... However, it is difficult to see ho...

user19161

Also delete this answer.

David Wallace

5:53 AM

@WillHunting Hah! I was going to downvote that too. Then I remembered that I don't exist any more. Pity.

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