Language Overflow

userr2684291

00:05

See e.g. languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2339: the point is that the author of the discussed article, a native speaker of AmE, uses an integrative which (regardless of the mistake in punctuation which, by the way, is elaborated upon in that article).

(Did I make mistake there, hmmm? Should there be a comma before which? I even say by the way; does that make the which thing supplementary, or maybe the BTW refers to something else?)

Lol.

CowperKettle

01:50

@userr2684291 Thank you, I'll read that!

AIQ

02:07

Okay, so this user is learning English through various games ... hmmmmm

CowperKettle

03:02

@AIQ I learned English through adventure games, like Loom and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

AIQ

@CowperKettle Yeah, I learnt a bit from games too, and I wasn't complaining, just making an observation. I used to read a lot of comics ...

AIQ

03:20

@CowperKettle I have edited my answer to include something on that vs which from CMoS.

Here is a small bit from that.

> Although which can be substituted for that in a restrictive clause (a common practice in British English), many writers preserve the distinction between restrictive that (with no commas) and nonrestrictive which (with commas).

AIQ

04:16

Are questions on style and structure of organizing arguments off-topic?

userr2684291

05:05

Preserve implies this distinction was maintained at some point: it wasn't. The only phenomenon that Present-day English observes is supplementary that's falling out of use. Which and that are otherwise interchangeable (as in, what they claim is common practice in BrE) when it comes to "restrictiveness".

There might be certain, let's say preferences, but to me it all looks like some kinda self-fulfilling prophecy these prescriptivist poppycocks (hmm) have been trying to shove down people's throats.

I really did it this time.

No one denies the distinction might possibly be useful, but that's beside the point. What else might be useful, let's see, a way to say something in a nice, polite way, without using extra words. See, useful. Also, "co-indexing", like when you say He killed his dog, now who's he, and who's the he the his is referring to? So, yes, you could use a parenthesis to clarify, but why not just add indices in parentheses in exponents or something?

It's shorter and makes things unambiguous. Also, get rid of the apostrophe in it's or you're, just blend all these similar-sounding words into one, because there's no way one could misunderstand you. This would be useful because it would save money and time editing, and also you wouldn't look stupid if you accidentally made a mistake.

AIQ

06:33

@snailcar I asked a question in Writing SE regarding style and structure. I haven't received any answers/comments yet. If I don't, should I ask in ELL? I am not sure of it would be on-topic for our site. :/

AIQ

08:20

So, I asked in Academia. Probably not a good idea.

M.A.R.

ell.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/104000

Isn't present-day English also late and modern?

@userr2684291 How dare you explain something in four paragraphs. That's a @snail-only option

OK, [questions] should definitely be a synonym of [interrogatives]

Before you get started on why they're not exactly the same, [questions] sounds like a terrible, terrible meta tag and it's confusing

CowperKettle

09:08

Word of the day: love ("So that’s fifteen-love to Kournikova.")

4-K

10:37

Hello

In this sentence

What is the object?

"The New York phone book contains 2000 pages."

Is 2000 pages object? Or no object at all?

Anonymous

11:49

@4-K Yeah, that's an object.

Anonymous

@M.A.R. We've hit peak textwall!

ColleenV parted ways

12:35

@M.A.R. Yep, I thought the same thing, but a new user wanted the tag and we have an "early modern" tag, so I thought what the hell

@M.A.R. I agree.

Anonymous

13:14

@M.A.R. It was coined based on the term "Early Modern English" as a way to talk about Modern English that isn't Early (so, after 1700), up through 1900 or 1950 or so.

Anonymous

It's a more recent coinage. Historical linguists used to just not talk about that period much.

Anonymous

It is definitely going to look awkward a couple hundred years from now, when people look back on what was quaintly called "present day" or "modern".

2

CowperKettle

16:24

ColleenV parted ways

16:50

I think Arizona’s flag is great. Florida looks like they plagiarized Alabama

Anonymous

Pretty weird.

CowperKettle

Word of late evening: dead drop

@snailcar The Internet is weird

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Not to me. To me, the lowercase-i internet is weird.

CowperKettle

Capitalization of Internet

Publishers have different conventions regarding the capitalization of Internet versus internet, when referring to the Internet, as distinct from generic internets, or internetworks. Internet and internet were originally coined as a shorthand for internetwork, in the first TCP specification, RFC 675, written by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine in 1974. Since the widespread deployment of the Internet protocol suite in the 1980s, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the W3C, and others have c...

> In 2016, The Chicago Manual of Style announced that its 17th edition would remove the capitalization of "internet."[13] The same year, the Associated Press announced that the 2016 AP Stylebook will no longer capitalize "internet".[14]

Chicago guys, always eager to decapitalize

ColleenV parted ways

17:06

There’s a pun here based on “to capitalize on” but I can’t think of one.

userr2684291

18:43

I, too, got stumped and capitulated quickly.

M.A.R.

19:41

@snailcar You have so many buttons!

How do you not mistakenly push a button to catastrophic effect?

M.A.R.

20:17

Thank you for your answer. — Jérôme 3 hours ago

Thank you for your comment–answer -__-

To be fair, the question is (hopefully) going to be closed

Also why is the close button on the left (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

You gotta hate the little things in life.

M.A.R.

20:38

Daily close vote ammunition spent

I'd spend my downvotes too but that'd be too disheartening so I'm going to sleep

ColleenV parted ways

@M.A.R. Because there is a secret war in SE between the left-handed and right-handed UI people...

37

Q: Please move the Flag Button back to the right side

When reviewing, I flag. And when I do, I was happy that all my mouse-clicks could be done all on the right side: One click for the flag-type, all the way on the right side. One click to submit. One click for "I'm done". When the flag window is open, I've already done all the commenting, editi...

M.A.R.

20:54

feature-request close every question with "meaninf" in its title as soon as it's posted

Great. Now I forgot what I was doing

ColleenV parted ways

@M.A.R. I'd rather see the people writing an answer without cleaning up the typos penalized in some way. I mean, they read the question, did they not notice the horrible typos and formatting?

But then I remember I'm a libertarian and not an authoritarian and realize it's just being cooped up in the house making me cranky.

M.A.R.

Join the dark side, and together, we will rule ELL

Screw liberalism. We terribly lack for consistency in moderation. You can't avoid telling people how they should be doing things for too long.

Yeah yeah, I get it, it's kinda awkward when you edit everything and it sounds like William Frigging Shakespeare is asking about haz vs has

I have half a mind to pick holes in candidates with extreme prejudice up until the point I'm officially self-declared a jerk

but that's how SO does it anyway so I probably should too.

ColleenV parted ways

I don't know if I have the time to properly rule ELL - I just wanted to pitch in a bit prior to the elections so the new moderators won't start out behind on everything

M.A.R.

The statistics for the number of handstands you did while writing a custom response for an edit rejection in the suggested edits queue is alarmingly low. What makes you think you're physically capable of becoming an ELL mod?

ColleenV parted ways

Besides, we're buying a dehydrator. I realized that I don't like most canned veggies but we can't always get fresh

I am going to be the queen of dessication.

M.A.R.

21:05

That sounds dangerous. You should run for mod again.

ColleenV parted ways

But, the dried green beans I like to snack on are ridiculously expensive

M.A.R.

You're top of the food chain. You can't help it.

Why do I get the feeling ^ is a song lyrics?

ColleenV parted ways

And don't get me started on cranberries. They're like 25 cents a pound fresh and 12 dollars a pound after you suck all the moisture out of them and sprinkle them with sugar.

M.A.R.

I think I'll pass

ColleenV parted ways

I read that properly dehydrated ad stored foods can last years on a shelf. Assuming your house doesn't have a snack monster.

M.A.R.

21:09

The cheapest option is probably to just bite the bush and drink plant juice. Nature is doing it right.

@ColleenVpartedways Store them in the cellar in case of a zombie apocalypse

Or whatever had happened in the backstory of The Road

ColleenV parted ways

Not so worried about zombies as I am about crazy people.

M.A.R.

Same diff

ColleenV parted ways

My husband has been doing all our shopping and he says people are getting weird

M.A.R.

They're in the process of turning

ColleenV parted ways

Well most of the panicky people are just shouting right now, not trying to bite anyone

M.A.R.

21:11

That's how it always starts

ColleenV parted ways

I'm just really annoyed by all the petty tyranny. It's like all the sudden we're all in the same HOA, and the Karens and Chads are all out there turning in their neighbors because their masks are on crooked.

Police arrested a woman in front of her children the other day because she took them to a playground. The police weren't wearing masks though, so what was their point?

M.A.R.

o.o

Orwell seems to have miscalculated the century in his book

ColleenV parted ways

They probably infected her, because they come in contact with more people that she did by taking her child out in the fresh air

It's getting bad. Frightened humans are the most dangerous creature on the planet

But we're lucky

We live out in the country

M.A.R.

Meh, look on the bright side

ColleenV parted ways

We look out for our neighbors and none of them are snitches

M.A.R.

21:16

The cases aren't growing that fast anymore

@ColleenVpartedways That's what they want you to think

It's always the person you least suspect.

ColleenV parted ways

Lol, snitches get stitches around here ;) It's very "live and let live"

M.A.R.

And even when you get used to that trope, they subvert the expectations by it being someone other than the person you least expect

ColleenV parted ways

Ha!

M.A.R.

So it's kinda the person you least expect but not the person you least expect

No wonder Poirot got paid in expensive mustache oil

ColleenV parted ways

It's never the person who you expected it to be because they were obviously the one you were supposed to not expect. It's always the other one that you actually didn't expect it to be at all.

M.A.R.

21:21

Or the guy in the middle of the spectrum, since you had conflicting feelings and were undecided

ColleenV parted ways

Suspect everyone of everything and you'll rarely be wrong. You won't have any friends, but at least you didn't get fooled.

M.A.R.

But in case that's obvious, it'd be someone you highly suspect, so you go into a meta thinking loop that "what if they aren't?" "what if that's what they want me to think?" "what if they'd know I'd be thinking this and that's why they aren't?" . . .

@ColleenVpartedways A more Game of Thrones-y version of this was uttered by Tyrion

@ColleenVpartedways but that's really hard, that's the point

You can't always play chess

So I should really shut the lights off

Gute Nacht

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