The Reading Room

12:33 AM

@Tsundoku I had to google that (the dog came pre-named from the shelter)

2 hours later…

2:16 AM

@Bookworm fishing for HNQ

8 hours later…

A: Is it acceptable to remove spoiler blockquotes from questions and answers?

10:08 AM

At the time of writing, spoilers are inaccessible to keyboard-only users. This issue was reported on Meta Stack Exchange in October 2017. Solutions have also been suggested, including one that relies on more appropriate HTML elements than the blockquote element. Using the current spoiler implemen...

Q: Spoilers are inaccessible to keyboard-only users

Several SE sites, including Science Fiction & Fantasy SE, support the tag >! for spoilers. This markup hides the text following the spoiler tag unless the user hovers the mouse pointer over the spoiler area. Unfortunately, if you browse websites by keyboard (e.g. due to mobility impairment), the ...

Feel free to edit out the spoiler tags in my answer @Tsundoku. I put them in (and am leaving them there for now) because @DLosc's question had one, and I didn't want the answer to reveal what the question took some effort to conceal.

Q: Add a warning about the inaccessibility of spoilers to the editing help

I'll wait for a reaction from DLosc.

As I pointed out in October 2017, Spoilers are inaccessible to keyboard-only users. That question has two answers suggesting more accessible alternatives, including one that relies on native HTML elements (detail and summary) that fit the task much better than the blockquote element. Since the ac...

discussion accessibility spoilers editing-help keyboard

4 hours later…

Gareth Rees

2:27 PM

Several questions having trouble with verbal irony recently—see this on Pirates of Penzance and this on Carbide. Irony can be surprisingly difficult.

1 hour later…

Q: "America for Me" - too regular metre?

3:35 PM

I still have to figure out some good election question about determining the site scope

even if it's not exclusively a diamond moderator responsibility

Bookworm

3:47 PM

I'm reading this older book called Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell. In a chapter called "Metrical Variations", a part of a poem is cited as an example of overly regular metre. The poem is called "America for Me" (written by Henry Van Dyke) and these are the quoted lines: I know that...

poetry meter

Q: Looking for a children's mystery novel set in south africa

4:13 PM

data.stackexchange.com/scifi/query/1725311/… is a SEDE query for HNQ to which I gave an answer. column abh tells if my answer was before the question went HNQ. change the SEDE parameter networkuser to your network user ID to find with your answers instead of mine. I'm showing this on Sci Fi because I only have one of these on Lit.

1 hour later…

Bookworm

5:31 PM

I am looking for a children's mystery novel set in South Africa, of which I remember several details. I should say up front that the novel I am looking for is not Phyllis Whitney's "Secret of the Tiger's Eye", despite some similarities. I remember the following details. (It is possible that I'v...

identification-request mystery-novels

3 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

8:41 PM

"title and tags in AmE" - hmm, @Mithical, source for that? Tags yes, because we need to choose one style or another for a unique tag name, but I thought titles are like body text, OP's choice?

I don't remember anyone trying to change my titles to AmE before, but if they did, I'd be rolling back in a hurry ;-)

Mithical

*checks the post I was thinking of* Huh, my mistake. Misremembered on that one, sorry.

9:23 PM

oh no, now you've reminded me of the “lightsaber” thing on SciFi.

9:39 PM

Star Wars is set long, long ago, yes? At a time when lightsabre-toothed tigers roamed the earth?

I'm not familiar with the timelines to tell if those two coincided

ah. If I were on SFF, I'd ask there

Q: When did Star Wars take place?

there's probably already a question on Sci Fi for how long ago Star Wars is set; as for when saber-toothed tigers lived, that'd be off-topic to ask

We know Star Wars happened, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". Is there any information on exactly when that was, relative to our time?

star-wars

10:11 PM

@verbose I've removed the spoiler tag from the question; feel free to do the same to your answer. (It's not that much of a spoiler anyway, compared to some other things from the same book!)

@GarethRees "Is it not enough, ungrateful as you are, to make no return to all the favours I have done you; but you must treat me with ironing?"

@Tsundoku Thanks for waiting. :)

@DLosc Done.

@Randal'Thor I spent a non-negligible amount of time trying to decide whether to use "fishing rod" (as I would write it) or "fishing-rod" (as Dickens wrote it) in the title of my recent question.

@DLosc Ha, I noticed that my answer promiscuously swings between the two

Edited to add a missing hyphen

@Mithical Hey how'd you do that without its becoming checks the post I was thinking of ?!

10:29 PM

@verbose I experimented a bit in the Sandbox and came up with *\*text here\**

ooh, escape sequences. who'da thunk it

It's a bit surprising, since \**text*\* doesn't work at all

*tries escape sequence*

*wonders whether @PrinceNorthLæraðr is still doing as the Romans do*

Or whether he has joined the two gentlemen of Verona.

(Why does Verona have so few gentlemen anyway?)

Ah, you beat me to the punchline. ;)

:-D

I think they were all killed in the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets.

10:38 PM

@Tsundoku There are plenty more male-identified Veronians, but they're all boors

So The Two Gentlemen of Verona is set after Romeo and Juliet, though written earlier.

@Tsundoku If they were getting into swordfights in the street, were they really gentle men?

Well, they had this strange idea of honour.

They were unaware of Falstaff's views on honour.

@Tsundoku ooh, kinda like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana