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Airymouse
Airymouse
00:00
@Luc Wyn If you read one or two pages from Chapter 1 of press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7576.pdf you will get a feel for what Walpole had in mind when he coined the word. Serendipity began as incredible, unbelievable good fortune and has devolved to mere good luck. Fortuitous began as "by chance" and has become" having good fortune." Over time the meanings have converged.
Airymouse
Airymouse
00:12
@sumelic Now that I've seen a few questions from the ACT exam, I see why everyone is captious (nit picking we call it.) I don't suppose there's any way to know how Mark Twain or William Faulkner would have fared, but if you think Dickens would have passed, just read the first sentence of "A Tale of Two Cities." The only punctuation mark ACT would have liked was the period.
 
4 hours later…
suməlic
suməlic
04:00
@Airymouse What rule of thumb? I'm not sure I understand the question.
@Airymouse It would be nice if we knew that everyone was looking for interesting answers like that. Unfortunately, sometimes questions without research just come from people who don't know how to use a dictionary and they get boring, not very useful answers. Closing a question is supposed to prevent that from happening.
@Airymouse Huh, I never took the ACT so I don't know what it tests. Punctuation is such a variable, style-dependent subject that I don't think it's a good idea to test all aspects of it.
 
10 hours later…
Airymouse
Airymouse
13:40
@sumelic Back in the days of yore we took an SAT exam, call verbals. It dealt with vocabulary, reading comprehension and some grammar. Lucky I, it skipped punctuation. There have been several posts about ACT questions, some of which struck me as debatable.It seems I have a simple rule: If I get it wrong, it's a bad question.
@sumelic My impression is that at Math stack, if you're not allowed to comment, you can pose the comment as a question provided that your question does not require clarification from the previous questioner.

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