English Language Learners

Mistu4u

04:03

OMG... I have enjoyed a 8 hours sleep by now and you guys are still awake. May GOD be with you so that you guys don't get insomnia. :-P

Anonymous

13:07

@Mistu4u Hah.

Anonymous

But without insomnia, how would I write answers on ELL!? ;-)

Mistu4u

@snailboat That's a deep commitment :-)

Anonymous

@Mistu4u Actually, I just spent an hour on Lang-8, so I think I'm out of time for writing answers this morning.

Mistu4u

@snailboat Correcting that particular user's writing?

Anonymous

@Mistu4u I corrected an entry for a friend, too.

Anonymous

13:11

But it was much shorter!

Mistu4u

@snailboat I see.

Anonymous

To be honest, proofreading isn't one of my stronger skills. I can do it, but I have to work really hard.

Anonymous

Often, when I read a passage with missing words or minor grammatical problems, I fix them unconsciously, without even realizing

Anonymous

And I don't notice there's an error at all!

Anonymous

There are tricks to work around that. For one, you can read your writing aloud. That's the most useful trick I've found.

Anonymous

13:13

And of course, it works for other people's writing, too.

Anonymous

And of course you can really focus. We read so much that it becomes a very automatic activity we don't have to think about

Anonymous

You can, to some extent, make it a conscious process

Anonymous

Another trick is simply to slow down. The slower you read, the more likely you are to notice problems.

Anonymous

(But not so slow that it stops making sense!)

Anonymous

Anyway, I don't really have a knack for proofreading, so I have to rely on these tricks and, to some extent, to sets of rules I've memorized rather than my intuition.

Anonymous

13:15

(And even then, you'll notice my own English is rife with errors!)

Mistu4u

@snailboat That's what I do.

@snailboat Well, if the examiner is me, I have to use a microscope I guess :-D

Anonymous

You'll notice it most of all in my comments, because I can't edit them after five minutes have elapsed.

Anonymous

I can edit comments forever on Japanese Language & Usage, which I'm afraid has allowed me to become lazy about writing them right the first time . . . ;-)

Mistu4u

@snailboat Is that true for Japanese.SE only?

Anonymous

@Mistu4u It's because I'm a moderator on that site.

Anonymous

13:22

JLU doesn't require too much moderation though, so I'm mostly a normal user.

Anonymous

A normal user, that is, with the ability to edit comments forever! ;-)

Mistu4u

@snailboat Ooo.. I did not know mods get that privileges!

Anonymous

@Mistu4u Yup. And I can edit my messages on chat forever, too.

Anonymous

I'm drunk with power!

Mistu4u

Yeah, I see so! Seems like I must nominate myself in the coming vote in ELL once it graduates ;-)

Anonymous

13:29

If you'll recall our discussion yesterday about killing plants . . .

Anonymous

I'm afraid I didn't water them at all yesterday!

Anonymous

So I should go feed the plants in a few minutes, since it's almost dawn.

Anonymous

(We've got an automatic sprinkler system and such, but it's broken! It just floods the sidewalk for ten minutes, which is no good. And it's a nice excuse to spend some time away from the computer, so I've been doing it by hand.)

Mistu4u

13:45

@snailboat Yeah sure, Off you may go!

and rest your eyes.

@Gilles I can't recall ever having seen this use, but if I ever did see it, I think I'd interpret it the same way you do here. It think it'd have to be using the title as a phrasal template (a snowclone). — snailboat 2 days ago

Looks like I found a mistake :-D

Anonymous

@Mistu4u Ah! Thank you for wishing me rest, but the truth is, I'll be up for the rest of the day. I just woke up early, is all :-)

Anonymous

I managed to water the lawn! It's not a very big lawn, so it didn't take me too long.

Anonymous

Can you tell me what my mistake was?

Mistu4u

14:33

@snailboat Can be a mistake if only I could not understand it myself.

It think it'd have to be using the title as a phrasal template....

I think it would be "It think s" and also "it would have to be using...." sounds weird to me.

Anonymous

14:46

@Mistu4u Ah! Yes, I wrote It where I meant I!

Anonymous

I think it'd have to be using the title as a phrasal template (a snowclone).

Anonymous

17:52

@Mistu4u Hello! I was thinking...

Anonymous

If you get a bad edit like this one, it's probably better to reject it, then edit the post separately

Anonymous

You should only improve it if the original edit actually improved something, in my opinion.

Anonymous

The reason is, Community automatically approves the edit when you "improve" it

Anonymous

And if a user isn't submitting good edits, they need to be rejected so the system can prevent them from submitting further edits.

Mistu4u

18:48

@snailboat Okay, I got it. I too was becoming tired of these minor edits from Java D. In fact, I posted a chat here to him, but it seems they did not reach him.

I think mods should warn him before he is temporarily banned from suggesting edits.

Anonymous

@Mistu4u I think a couple of his edits were arguably helpful, but most of the ones that have been approved shouldn't have. And he's close to the 50% rejected mark

Anonymous

13

A: Too many of your edits were rejected, try again in 7 days

I just amended it to take into account your accepts. When deciding on whether we should ban or not, we now look at your last 7 days of activity. If (rejects - (approvals / 3)) >= 5, you will be auto-banned.

Anonymous

> If (rejects - (approvals / 3)) >= 5, you will be auto-banned.

Anonymous

> Java D had 14 edit suggestions approved, and 10 edit suggestions rejected

Anonymous

10-(14/3) = 5 + 1/3

Anonymous

19:00

5 + 1/3 >= 5, so does that mean they'll now be banned from suggesting edits?

Mistu4u

@snailboat Well, if they say so and if the stats are certainly from last 7 days, he might be!

Anonymous

Oh! Right. I didn't check to see if that's the case

Anonymous

Yep, six days, looks like.

Mistu4u

@snailboat He surely deserves some rest :-)

Here is a tricky comment, I found while surfing an old question.

Give me a Y; give me an E; give me an S. YES! — kiamlaluno May 24 at 18:12

Seemed to me an intelligent comment! :-)

Anonymous

Oh hey, it links here:

Anonymous

19:08

Stack Exchange English Language & Usage Blog: Articles: “A” vs. “An”

waiwai933 on November 04, 2011

One of the prevalent questions on the English Language and Usage – Stack Exchange is about whether a or an is the correct indefinite article to use. It’s a straightforward question, but like all questions, there are subtleties that raise further questions.

General Rule The question of “a” vs “an” is always decided by the pronunciation of the word that follows the article, without exception. Words that begin with a vowel sound, such as apple, egg, or owl, use the indefinite article an. …

Anonymous

Oh, how excited I get when I see those magic words, "without exception"!

Anonymous

One description of "a" vs "an" that is possible in modern linguistics is as follows:

Anonymous

1. There is just one word, "a".

Anonymous

2. The epenthetic consonant "n" is inserted between it and a following vowel to prevent hiatus

Anonymous

So, in other words, when you say "a egg", an n sound gets inserted in-between so you don't have to pronounce two vowels in a row.

Anonymous

19:12

However, English also adds a glottal consonant in some situations

Anonymous

I believe that if you induce a native speaker of English to say "a" and to draw it out, without knowing what word comes next

Anonymous

Then you make them say "egg"

Anonymous

The epenthetic consonant will instead be glottal

Anonymous

The difference being one of spelling; we write the n, but we don't write the glottal consonant.

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