@userr2684291 for mod!

I'm probably better off banned, though?

What's the difference between on computer and on a/the computer? Should I ask this on the main site?

ldoceonline.com/dictionary/computer is where I found on computer, and just saying it out loud, I feel like I've heard this often, but always thought a the or something was swallowed.

It's like when you don't know/care where something is stored, so you just say that, I assume.

@snailcar Have you ever used a capitalized word in a direct question when it is a part of a sentence? Like this - He wondered, Where am I?

If you say the computer you're begging the question "Which computer? What are you talking about? I'm just some random guy and I have no idea where and what computers you're talking about.", while on a computer is like being overly specific, and yet not ... revealing the information. It's like when someone says... let's say... Tell me about broccoli, and you say It's a vegetable. Right? So on computer here makes more sense.

With no quotations

that is what the latest CMoS advocates

Lul, redonkulous.

It looks a bit unusual in paper - without the quotes and a capitalized W or H

Btw, MLA also advocates that style now

I guess APA will too - I haven't checked

@userr2684291 I don’t like “stored on computer” at all, it sounds very old fashioned to me. The information is digital, or digitized, (or in the cloud).

"The cloud is just your digitized data stored on someone else's computer. Can we all sing 'redundancy, redundancy, where we all are copies repeated infinitely, over and over and over again, ad nauseum, and et cetera! Redundancy, redundancy!

"Stored on someone's computer", "Stored on government computers" sound fine. I don't know why, but "Information stored on computer" just seems like grandma talking about technology she doesn't understand very well. It doesn't matter where it is stored in that context, it matters that it is digital instead of paper-based.

Or maybe someone trying to explain digital information to someone non-technical.

@ColleenVpartedways Thank you for your insight.

@userr2684291 My intuition about that might be very regional though so take it with a big pinch of salt

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, mostly punctuation marks in body (122): could someone help me with the following sentences, as I do not know if they are structured correctly based on the theory of conditionals ✏️ by alex.p on ell.SE