English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

We shouldn't assume that if they are not doing something obvious to us, it's them who is stupid and us who are smart.

First there was Ford, then Reagan (an actual B-movie actor who could be counted on to read his lines), then because Bush senior was VP at the time, they had to give him the nod (even though he was not dumb), but they made him take Dan Quayle (dumber than dirt) as his VP so DQ would be next in line, and then they got W. In the last election, they nominated McCain but made him take Sarah Palin as running mate! All because these people can be controlled.

That would explain a lot. "On the internet no one can tell you're a dog."

Actually, it doesn't hurt to have an account on Writing. It's probably our most closely related site in the entire network right now. Certainly more closely related than Cooking, Photography, or Stats.

Who, me? [points to nose]

Haha, well, serves you right for being Western.

@Cerberus He asks three questions (which might already qualify it as too broad). One is off-topic ("I am not satisfied with it, the more polite the better"). The second one is a dupe ("do you need a dot after the title"). And the third one could be considered too broad or even off-topic ("are the commas placed correctly"). And overall, it's too localized, as Kosmonaut noted. We don't do proofreading here, and ghostwriting even less so.

Chat gets quite informal here, but rarely sexual, unlike many other chatrooms.

That may be true. NL did have its fair share of eternal feuds and recurring clashes.

Some scandals even made the newspapers.

Incidentally, the bloat of jargon on Wikipedia does seem to be getting worse. I can hardly understand any meta-page for its ubiquitous unexplained acronyms.

He probably doesn't know how @ works.

Perhaps a bit crazy, yes.

@Reg: About my question on inanimate etc.: all dupes ask "can I use... at all?", and none of the answers I have ever seen gave a good explanation of when it is good practice and when it isn't.

Oh, totally missed that. Yeah, that makes his actions... puzzling.

I am totally gonna cut him some slack for every single one of his actions. It's the combination that kills me.

@Cerberus correct it, add no further comment

Now Morpheus calls me... adieu!

Montaukett also

@Cerberus It's a translingual pun. It counts.

Well. Thanks for the dup links, which allowed me to discover my new favorite sample sentence: "I've got an octopus in my pants."

@Martha — It's an example of bloatware now. More clicks to get less information. Microsoft should be stealing it soon.

You should've posted those in one post so I could star it. This way, each part is kind of pointless on its own.

@Robusto Your rebuttals are never available in my country.

He is a bit like a serial killer, mailing letters cut out of newspapers: he is communicating, in his own way.

Any time I see that all I can think of is this: "Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems."

I also find it a bit against the spirit of the site to respond to a request for more specifics by saying you intentionally want it to be as broad as possible.

You get points for: "If there is any rule at play here, it is: "use the word that means the thing you want it to mean"

@Fx Those are pinned messages. They stay there so everyone's up to date on the latest developments.

He should just be banned, IMO; it's hopeless dealing with him.

@RegDwight — Here's my all-time shill question suggestion: "Which Ubuntu distro allows the fastest downloads of porn?"

@Robusto great minds think alike. Or, as ze Schömans put it, zwei Idioten, ein Gedanke.

Kosmonaut's dotted map must have been pointing out all sorts of communist sects in the USA then...

Be careful with Lady Gaga. She may wind up wearing you one day.

Why not?

I'm not really complaining or anything, just killing some time here and entertaining Robusto. Better than the other way round.

...And now it's 16691. The reign of the Beast was short.

So maybe up next is Postmodern English? I like the sound of that.

wordsplay.net

No, I am Spartacus!

BTW, my favorite Italian insult is orecchino.

Take it literally, and your jaw should be on the floor. ;-)

At parties, I find that if you locate a nearby lampshade, put it on your head, and yell "woo!", people will respect you.

I was thinking that as well. At first I was reading everyone's responses, then I just totally ignored them so I could keep up.

Where people only talk about tea in received pronunciation.

function getGhettoric(rhetoric) { return "ghettoric"; }