English Language Learners

Anonymous

00:22

@HostileFork- but when you have a traffic circle in your town you often refer to it as just "the circle". — Jim 11 mins ago

Anonymous

Maybe that's why I don't know what to call them. I don't think we have many of those things around here.

Anonymous

The circle!

Anonymous

Or maybe it's because I don't drive :-)

Damkerng T.

I wouldn't see that alternatives to used to question if you didn't mention it. So I left a comment. :)

For state things, you can use once. "I loved her once." "I once lived in Australia." For action things, when you have a time phrase, saying the same thing in the simple past tense is not very different from used to; for example, "I played golf every Saturday", "I played golf once a month." And you can always add, "but not anymore". — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago

@snailboat I think you might call it a roundabout.

Somehow Fly me to the moon ... is playing in my head, with a flashback to the movie Once around.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You think I might.

Anonymous

00:28

Me? I don't know what I think I might. :-)

Damkerng T.

Yup. :) Hah!

Anonymous

Actually, I thought roundabout was some UK term.

Anonymous

Didn't the comments there say so?

Anonymous

I know I read about them in a UK context before.

Anonymous

There were some really nice pictures of them.

Anonymous

00:29

But I don't think it's part of my active vocabulary.

Anonymous

Let's see.

Damkerng T.

I haven't read the question yet, not to mention the comments.

Anonymous

There's apparently a complicated roundabout called The Magic Roundabout

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

That looks pretty complicated!

Anonymous

00:31

autos.in.msn.com/gallery/…

Damkerng T.

Umm... hp.msn.com/c/my/err/500er.htm?aspxerrorpath=/gallery/…

(Note the 500er. And yet it says 404. 404 - File or directory not found.)

Anonymous

Strange.

Anonymous

What do you suppose unusual phrasing might mean?

Anonymous

> "To this day" is an unusual phrasing, only used to talk about something that has been going on a long time and is still that way.

Damkerng T.

Something rare, and could give the listener or reader a pause.

Anonymous

00:35

So then, to you, that sentence seems false, right?

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I feel I should point out that to this day is not actually an unusual phrase. — snailplane 6 hours ago

Anonymous

@snailplane It's an unusual phrasing. I don't mean to say it's a statistically improbable phrase, just that it's not a terribly regular language construct that follows rules that are easy to understand without some native speaker hammering it out for you. — HostileFork 2 hours ago

Anonymous

I haven't managed to convince myself that that's a possible reading of the phrase

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Is it possible that to their knowledge, this phrase is really rare, and if someone said it, it would give them a surprise.

Anonymous

00:37

@snailplane If you prefer, read as "curious phrasing"; if it was rarely used, I'd have said "rarely used" or "archaic" or something like that. Although: even if it is common in textual corpus I would say that it is uncommon in daily speech...more likely to appear in movies or television trying to be dramatic. — HostileFork 1 hour ago

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure how wide the range of their daily speech would cover.

I think I can imagine someone at the podium of a meeting somewhere saying that.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=32820843

Damkerng T.

But they tried to exclude those dramatic talks in movies and television.

(I still think it's not that rare.)

Got an idea. I will search for it in subtitles.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/help/spoken_e.asp

Damkerng T.

Heck, they exclude movies too!

Anyway, I think they have a point. I think to this day usually makes it more dramatic.

Anonymous

00:44

They do.

Damkerng T.

I should read their answer a bit.

Anonymous

By the way, COCA is not strictly a corpus of written English. One fifth of the corpus (80 million words) is the SPOKEN subcorpus of unscripted conversation (from TV and radio transcripts), and interestingly the phrase is most frequent in that subcorpus. I agree it makes things more dramatic. — snailplane 2 mins ago

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think to today is rare, even though this day could mean today.

Anonymous

You know, I think people have really a great variety of things they can and do say

Anonymous

I don't think any phrases are really off-limits in the spoken language

Damkerng T.

00:48

I think that's reasonable. :)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. To today is hard to say.

Damkerng T.

We all have a little different signature.

Anonymous

I don't think to today works as a substitute for to this day, which has a specific meaning

Anonymous

I think the problem is the preposition to, which doesn't really appear productively in this construction

Damkerng T.

How about until this day?

(I'm trying to figure out if they are set phrases.)

Anonymous

00:52

That sets an endpoint, which to this day does not.

Anonymous

Until today would be better

Anonymous

To this day has the sense of "even".

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

One of those implicature thingies linguists talk about

Damkerng T.

I think their example, "still unsolved, to this day." is quite good.

Anonymous

00:53

I think their answer is overall fairly good

Damkerng T.

I upvoted it. :)

Anonymous

Maybe I should get rid of some of my comments.

Anonymous

Sometimes I feel like people take comments as personal attacks.

Anonymous

I don't want to feel like I'm in conflict (at the moment).

Damkerng T.

Sometimes they take it that way.

Anonymous

00:55

I got rid of my middle comment.

Anonymous

It was a little too to-the-point.

Anonymous

And it's not necessary now that they've clarified.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

1

Q: Is correct to use Pant or is "Pants" better?

Is correct to use Pant or is "Pants" better? Here below the phrase: I'm wearing a red pants.

Anonymous

Can we get this question reopened?

Damkerng T.

00:57

Though I agree with your last comment, I refrain upvoting it. I don't want other users see the answer as wrong or something.

Anonymous

Can we get this question reopened? The problem that Tyler James Young pointed out was addressed, so I'm not sure why people are voting to leave it closed. — snailplane just now

Damkerng T.

Oh, a scissor and a pant!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. My last comment is supposed to add useful information, not to say "You're wrong! Ha ha ha"

Damkerng T.

One-sided scissor, and a one-legged pant!

Anonymous

So I tried to phrase it in a way that sounded like I was overall agreeing with them :-)

Anonymous

00:58

I probably failed.

Anonymous

I'm no good at putting words together.

Anonymous

I mean, sure, I do it anyway.

Anonymous

I put words together all the time.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods -- Sometimes, I think people upvoting comments in other people's answers, just to point out that the answer is not that good.

Anonymous

Like a two-year-old putting lego together with peanut butter.

Anonymous

00:59

Or whatever the giant two-year-old version of lego is called.

Anonymous

You know, the ones that are big enough that you can't eat them?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think you had a good point, and this is exactly why I love reading ELL comments.

@snailboat Big Mac. ;-)

Admittedly, I think I can't it all up at once.

(I'm sure my phrasing there must be a little off, but I don't know any better way.)

Opening your PDF from yesterday...

Hmm... so they call it a "high reduced vowel".

A-ha! Barred-I.

It's weird. I try saying Barred-I, and it's pretty much like Bard Eye.

I think I'm always skeptical when seeing F1-F2 plots. I mean, I think a lot of those measurements of F1 and F2 could be off, imo.

(I also have another little theory about formants tuning, which might or might not be true. But I guess that instinctively, we always either tune our formants to match our pitches, or tune our pitches to match our formants--for maximum resonance.)

Damkerng T.

01:21

> Businessmen, they, they drink my wine, Plowmen dig my earth, None will level on the line, Nobody of it is worth

> ell.stackexchange.com/questions/32873/…

Hmm... Somehow the line "Plowmen dig my earth" reminds me of a funeral. Maybe, "None will level on the line" could also mean nobody would care to come to your funeral.

I heard that Bob Dylan's songs are full of codes.

F.E.

01:46

1

Q: From the viewpoint of us/we, the people?

From the viewpoint of us, the people / From the viewpoint of we, the people Hi guys, I'm not sure which one is correct. I'm trying to say that I am also part of the people, and I'm not sure if I should use 'us' or 'we'?

sentence sentence-structure opinion

Grammar questions on ELU . . . yawn . . .

So many purely opinion based answers.

Damkerng T.

If From the viewpoint of us is correct, then I probably can say From the viewpoint of me. :)

And this is what I will call "unusual phrasing".

F.E.

@DamkerngT. Can you say, "From the viewpoint of I" ? ? ?

But then, personal pronouns have their own "rules" . . . ~~which are in the middle of a great shift~~ . . . :)

Damkerng T.

I don't know, but I'm rather sure that I would say "From my viewpoint" rather than "From the viewpoint of me/I".

However, I think I've heard For the life of me often enough.

F.E.

@DamkerngT. It is within rhetoric.

E.g. "From the viewpoint of us, the people who elected you, . . ."

Damkerng T.

02:01

Ahh... It seems like if it's heavy enough, it should be shifted.

F.E.

@DamkerngT. Oooo . . . You used "correct" . . . (sadness) A kitten will not go to heaven because of you! :(

Damkerng T.

Oh, no! Poor kitten!

Really, phrasing it that way sounds really odd to me.

(I mean, both versions.)

F.E.

@DamkerngT. What about my example?

Damkerng T.

Somehow your example is different, I think it's because it is heavy.

F.E.

The OP's example was a fragment.

I'm thinking of putting that example in as a comment. . . .

Damkerng T.

02:04

Chopping it down to From the viewpoint of we, the people really made me think that We, the people sounded better (if I had only two choices).

F.E.

@DamkerngT. "We, the people" is a different type of construction.

> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Oh, I'm pretty sure the 2002 CGEL discusses these different types of constructions. :)

(Because I've used excerpts from CGEL)

Damkerng T.

What struck me was that the OP shouldn't use either.

> *From the viewpoint of us, the people / From the viewpoint of we, the people*
Hi guys, I'm not sure which one is correct. I'm trying to say that I am also part of the people, and I'm not sure if I should use 'us' or 'we.

So, the OP is going to say something, and trying to claim that they're part of the people. Should they use any of "We, the people", "From the viewpoint of us, the people", and so on?

F.E.

But? ? ? What is wrong with my example?

Damkerng T.

Nope. :D

F.E.

> E.g. "From the viewpoint of us, the people who elected you, . . ."

Damkerng T.

02:10

I was trying to think about how they are going to use it, in their context.

F.E.

(cont.) You saying that (my example) is bad or poor English?

Damkerng T.

I think they might sound like they're trying to be self-important.

@F.E. No, because it's a different context. Hmm... Maybe I guess too much and read too much into the OP's context.

F.E.

Hey Robot, from the viewpoint of us, the tigers that rule the world, we know where you live.

Damkerng T.

Okey, let me try.

F.E.

But the OP didn't provide a context. Only a fragment.

Damkerng T.

02:13

> From the viewpoint of us, the people of Thailand, the United States of America should put more effort into the preservation of tigers and related species.

F.E.

@DamkerngT. That's a too formal of a thingie. That's why it sorta clashes.

Damkerng T.

nods

F.E.

For that kind of document, nominative personal pronouns would probably work better, in general.

But remember that, in general, personal pronouns have a "default", which is accusative case.

Nowadays, nominative case for personal pronouns in constructions such as these that we are talking about is sorta, slightly, constrained (imo).

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Which is, ironically, something people eat all the time.

F.E.

> ell.stackexchange.com/questions/32833/meaning-to-this-day/…

Damkerng T.

02:19

Oh, that's the second opinion!

(Or third if you counted mine too. :-)

Consider: "From the viewpoint of us, the people who elected you, . . ." — F.E. 15 mins ago

+1

F.E.

I was actually about to downvote that answer, all because of the 1st sentence. But as I skimmed the rest, it was okay. (But I still might downvote it later.) -- EDITED: talking about the "To this day" thread.

Anonymous

I didn't actually read the entire answer carefully

Damkerng T.

0

Q: Two Meanings of "To This Day"

According to this dictionary, "to this day" means: up to now : continuing until today But according to this dictionary, "to this day" means: even now, after a very long time The first definition suggests a period of time, but the second suggests a point in time. Is one of them wr...

grammar meaning usage

Oh, oh, oh, ...

Anonymous

But what I read seemed fine, apart from that section

Anonymous

I refrained from voting

F.E.

02:23

@snailboat I didn't either, because when the first sentence is that bad, it was hard for me to keep on reading/skimming. But I kept on skimming because of the info I had already gotten from ELL chat.

Anonymous

@F.E. Yeah, I tend to short circuit like that.

F.E.

@DamkerngT. That thread really ought to be closed or deleted or something, if such could or should be done to a thread, that's a thread that it ought to be done to.

Anonymous

Oh, meatie.

F.E.

02:45

3

Q: Prepositions: "The confusing widgets of language"

The title is adapted from an article in THE WEEK, written by James Harbeck. Well worth reading if you ask me. I don't particularly like prepositions. They are small, seemingly insignificant things that meddle with my writing. Living "abroad" so many years has resulted in me double questioning ...

prepositions prepositional-phrase by-on

Sometimes, by straighten out the sentence, things might stick out a bit at us.

> 1) By/In/On asserting that the red pill would reveal how deep the rabbit hole was, Morpheus implied there was only one reality.

Consider:

2) Morpheus implied there was only one reality by/in/on asserting that the red pill would reveal how deep the rabbit hole was.

Hmm . . .

Damkerng T.

Oh, I'm surprised by in this time.

F.E.

(cont.) All three are acceptable -- to me, that is -- though, I could see why many might prefer "by" or "in" over "on" here.

Anonymous

> Living "abroad" so many years has resulted in me double questioning the validity of certain phrases and expressions.

Anonymous

Does she mean she moved to an English speaking country and then away?

Damkerng T.

I think that's ambiguous.

Anonymous

02:51

Why does her question have two downvotes?

F.E.

Er, I was going to downvote it. But I decided not too.

Anonymous

It's an honest question. Why?

Anonymous

I mean, my question is an honest question. :-)

Anonymous

I was going to upvote it, but now I'm curious.

F.E.

Well, it started out badly:

> I don't particularly like prepositions.

Anonymous

02:53

Oh, I ignored that part.

Anonymous

It seems irrelevant to any question of language.

F.E.

(cont.) And I'm thinking, "Oh, no. another one off those" (face palm)

Anonymous

She's got a preface that isn't really related to the question.

Anonymous

So I sort of skipped over it mentally.

Anonymous

Apart from wondering about . . .

Anonymous

02:54

I thought she was a non-native speaker.

F.E.

In ELU, they like closing questions as opinion based.

Anonymous

I think Primarily Opinion Based is for "what's your favorite book?" type questions.

Anonymous

I think that it's misused most of the time.

Damkerng T.

I think she's a teacher.

F.E.

> Which preposition fits best?

That, combined with that other statement earlier on prepositions in general.

But I didn't down vote, for I'd think that people should be able to discuss, er, grammar, in an informal way on sites like this.

Anonymous

02:56

@F.E. Sometimes I say stuff is wrong.

Anonymous

I wrote an answer that says "Me go to the store" is wrong.

Anonymous

Of course, saying that carries certain presuppositions. :-)

F.E.

@snailboat I'm assuming "wrong" here means that it will probably get marked as "incorrect" by a teacher on a test.

Though, I'm surprised you would be saying something like that (e.g. "wrong") . . .

What gets me is all these pedants that keep saying to reduce the coordination to one coordinate in order to get the answer. (facepalm)

Anonymous

I usually use terms like "ungrammatical" or "nonstandard" or say things like "doesn't make sense" etc.

Anonymous

Let's see

Anonymous

02:59

Let me grab a link to the answer. (It's an old one. It just floated to the top because someone else answered it)

Anonymous

9

A: Can "me" be a subject?

No, me can't be a subject: 1. *Me went to the movies. This is something no native speaker would say. It's out-and-out wrong. If you say this sentence, you sound like a caveman. But the following sentence is very different: 2. Me and my friend Tim went to the movies.　　(often conside...

F.E.

Pedants keep saying that stuff like "between you and I" as being incorrect. (I end up shaking my head in disappointment.)

Anonymous

Are you shocked and appalled by my characterization of Me went to the movies? :-)

F.E.

@snailboat Yeah, I saw that earlier. :(

Anonymous

Wrong, I say!

F.E.

03:01

@snailboat By you, yes. :)

Anonymous

Well, obviously you have to make certain presuppositions about correctness for it to make sense, and those presuppositions may not always hold.

Anonymous

You may want to say "Me went to the store" on purpose. :-)

Anonymous

In that case, you haven't made an error.

Anonymous

I grant that.

F.E.

> The correct usage is "My friend Tim and I are going to predict[...]". So you are correct, except common usage is to place the self last in the list, preceded by other pronouns, and putting any nouns first.

I almost downvoted when I saw: "The correct usage is . . ."

Anonymous

03:03

Feel free.

F.E.

(cont.) The rest of that excerpt is weak.

Anonymous

Wait, I didn't write that.

Anonymous

I didn't read the quote because I assumed you were quoting me. :-)

F.E.

> It can be a subject, but only in the sense that people can use incorrect grammar. It isn't correct grammar, for the reason you correctly state.

That was the first sentence.

How many times will the word "correct" or "incorrect" be used?!

That deserves a down vote for each use!

It oughtta be a law!

@snailboat Tigers are sly. Tigers are tricky.

Anonymous

itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html

F.E.

03:10

> This is something no native speaker would say. (bolding is in the original)

Anonymous

It sure is.

F.E.

I was surprised you didn't add the caveat to that.

Anonymous

You're right, it's not strictly true.

F.E.

Yup, Tiger is right.

Anonymous

I didn't specify the context in which it holds true.

F.E.

03:11

No children.

Me wanna ice cream!

Anonymous

I think of our idealized fictional native speaker as being at least 18. :-)

F.E.

But you used an absolute in your, er, opinion.

Anonymous

Even then, you can say it if you really want to.

F.E.

Bad linguist! Bad, bad, bad.

Anonymous

Hah.

Anonymous

03:13

I may go back and hedge it up later.

Anonymous

Not right now. I'm too lazy. :-)

Anonymous

It's dinner time!

F.E.

The more I've learned about today's standard English, the more that I'm thinking that it might not be safe to ever state an absolute.

Anonymous

I'm usually fairly good about hedging.

Anonymous

Sometimes I'm not.

Anonymous

03:14

From time to time, I say things that are out-and-out wrong. :-)

F.E.

@snailboat Yes, that's why I was sorta surprised when I read that post.

The next thing I know, the Great Snail One will be using "correct" and "incorrect" in her answer posts.

Anonymous

I do tend to say "ungrammatical", "nonstandard", "unidiomatic", etc.

Anonymous

Regardless of whether you consider the concept of correctness to be relevant, it's usually not specific enough

Anonymous

The way I conceptualize it, something can be correct or incorrect if you set specific goals.

Anonymous

If you achieve your goal, you've done what you set out to do correctly.

Anonymous

03:19

If you fail to achieve your goals, you have not.

Anonymous

If you aren't trying to speak standard English, and you don't speak standard English, obviously there's nothing incorrect about that.

Anonymous

But this idea can usually be phrased without bringing up the concept of correctness.

F.E.

Tiger always speak standard English.

Anonymous

(As above, where I phrased it in terms of goals.)

Anonymous

Learners often do set specific goals for themselves, either explicitly or implicitly.

F.E.

03:20

(cont.) Talk to a tiger, if you don't believe me.

Best time to talk to a tiger is a half-hour before dinner time.

After you've eaten a plate of lasagna.

Make that two plates of lasagna.

Better is, after you've eaten a whole tray of lasagna!

Tigers like lasagna.

Everything tastes better with lasagna.

Anonymous

I'm eating meat this evening for the first time in months.

Anonymous

This is also the first time I've made pizza in almost a year.

Anonymous

The meat I chose to eat is chorizo. (That's not pepperoni!)

Anonymous

04:00

@ManishGiri Thank you for the comment

Manish Giri

04:26

anytime!

I wonder what's up with user HostileFork though!

HostileFork

05:16

@ManishGiri What's up?

It's saturday morning.

I wonder what's up with Drew.

What's up with me is: Listening to music and tinkering on the computer. Maybe you should be more specific.

Did it bother you that I said the sentence was a bad supporting example? :-/

Sorry, but it's kind of an incoherent sentence.

Here's a sentence which uses both evaluates to and evaluates to be- " A constraint that evaluates to true when the value defined by the dynamic operand evaluates to be within the specified range." Here "evaluates to be" is used as an interval indicator. — Manish Giri 2 hours ago

It is true that you have, indeed, identified a case where "evaluates to" would not be a valid substitution. I don't deny that.

But you could also say "evaluates within the specified range" and be all right

My point however was this

@ManishGiri That sentence is rather snakey all together. I think the point in defending a usage pattern isn't to find a sentence on the Internet where someone has used it, but to find a case where it is used to good effect in an overall communicative way. If you are painted into a linguistic corner and it's the only way to make something feel like it works if you can only change one word, being painted into the corner is the problem, and shouldn't be used to justify the construction. — HostileFork 1 hour ago

Which was my way of saying that: whether your point is right or wrong, we should be careful in using really messed-up sentences as precedent in language teaching. It should be a simple example.

So my challenge was to make a nice clean sentence proving the point; not to offer a very convoluted one.

More simply you could have just said: "it may be helpful, for instance, in indicating ranges. consider: 'The guard condition evaluates to be within the specified range.'"

Then we can look at it and diagnose it without being worried about all the other junk.

HostileFork

05:44

And if we said things like "The guard condition evaluates to be within the specified range" and asked questions about that... challenges to if that is nonsensical or not would at least blend in to some word usage points within the sentence being studied.

F.E.

05:57

To those with access to the 2002 CGEL, exactly what is it that the authors are saying there on the top of page 281 on particles, in the discussion on [25] ?

They ain't saying that the examples with transitive prepositions are also examples using particles, are they? (I hope not.)

If they ain't saying that, then why do they even bring it up?

Of course many intransitive prepositions can have corresponding transitive ones too. But I'd think that the transitive ones wouldn't be particles (?)

HostileFork

@F.E. Example?

F.E.

@HostileFork It's a whole paragraph of stuff.

But there is another question that I have:

> 1) He jumped out the window. (That is supposed to be AmE.)

The authors say that is not normal for BrE (on page 281, top of, within section discussing [25]).

So, what do the BrE people say instead of that AmE version?

HostileFork

It's valid, but most americans would say "He defenestrated himself." It's one of those things that comes up in conversation often. :-P

F.E.

The authors also used that example as an example of a transitive preposition. But it's not a participle, I don't think. And so, I don't know why they even brought the topic up.

HostileFork

That's a surprising differentiation

F.E.

06:04

What do the BrE speakers use, I wonder . . .

HostileFork

It's a valid question. Remember this:

F.E.

(cont.) It can't be: * "He jumped the window." (I don't think it can.)

HostileFork

Fair use

Fair use is one of the traditional safety valves intended to balance the public's interest in open access with the property interests of copyright holders. == Fair use under United States law == The legal concept of "test copyright" was first ratified by the United Kingdom of Great Britain's Statute of Anne of 1709. As room was not made for the authorized reproduction of copyrighted content within this newly formulated statutory right, the courts created a doctrine of "Fairness Abridgement" in Gyles v Wilcox, which eventually evolved into the modern concept of "fair use", that recognized ...

If an argument has been made in some publication that is not free to copy in whole, you are in no way restricted from excerpting its statements for critical commentary.

And if we do not fight, continuously, for the freedom to excerpt from copyrighted sources and share things for criticism... we will lose the right.

F.E.

Er, I saw the silly threads talking about that. Like this is the first time this "issue" has come up.

HostileFork

The silly threads talking about the fact that you have some journal you're asking questions and identifying by number, instead of pasting the appropriate paragraphs, as if that's "normal"?

It's not normal, and it's not silly to question it.

F.E.

06:10

12

A: "Removed OED definition as it is not allowed under my license agreement"

Do not use this answer as an example of what we can and can't do. We are allowed to quote the OED - they are wrong. I got in contact with OED, and they said essentially: No. We can't use their definitions. Sorry guys. I didn't mention stack exchange or ELU, so we won't suddenly be getting a ...

But I've noticed that it has been edited ("corrected") within the last 24 hours.

I think there was another thread about that too, that was related to that topic.

HostileFork

Let's see.

If you went back to when font foundries were being made, and people were designing lettering.

And you asked the type foundry if it was okay if you printed a sign with lettering in the style they designed

F.E.

What are you talking about?

HostileFork

That you hand-wrote, do you think they would say "sure, that's fine" or do you think they would say "NO, you must pay us a license fee"?

F.E.

What do you think?

HostileFork

I think they would say no.

Intellectual property protection of typefaces

Typefaces, fonts and their glyphs raise intellectual property considerations in copyright, trademark, design patent and related laws. The copyright status of a typeface – and any font file that describes it digitally – varies between jurisdictions. In the United States, typefaces, the abstract form of the design – meaning the data that is measured and recorded digitally within the typeface's corresponding font file – is unprotectable under U.S. copyright law. However, the same abstract design is protectable by other means in the United States, such as design patent (indeed, the very first US design...

But that's where the courts and the balance comes into play.

> Under U.S. law, typefaces and the letter forms or glyphs they comprise are considered to be utilitarian objects whose utility outweighs any merit that may exist in protecting their creative elements. Typefaces are exempt from copyright protection in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer).

F.E.

06:14

What if you are writing a book or article that surveys different fonts, and there are pictures of them in there?

HostileFork

You may do so. (At least in the country I live in; which I will not uphold as a beacon of justice in general).

F.E.

Really, do you think I'm going to spend a bunch of time on a subject like this?

HostileFork

I don't know you at all, I can't predict your behavior.

F.E.

If you want someone to talk to on a subject like this, you might get better luck on ELU.

HostileFork

You might get better luck finding those with access to the 2002 CGEL who can know what you mean when you say page 281, top of, within section discussing [25]. I'm not sure who those people are, or what sub-part of the universe you're in where you think the minutiae of British and America English as it pertains to jumping out windows is more important than foundational freedom of communication.

F.E.

06:17

@HostileFork Yeah, you'll find more people of your ilk over at ELU chat.

HostileFork

So... um... people of the ilk on a site designed to be more accessible than ELU because that is too elitist, and English Language and Usage is supposed to be friendlier to new questions from non-native speakers...

... those people have access to the resources you mention, and should be chatting here? I'd think if anything, it would be the other way around.

F.E.

> You might get better luck finding those with access to the 2002 CGEL who can know what you mean when you say page 281, top of, within section discussing [25].

HostileFork

This would be the place that is welcoming to new speakers, people who don't have or are not protectionist of power; but seek to inform learners.

F.E.

(cont.) There are people here who do have such a copy, and we do discuss these types of topic here.

> I'm not sure who those people are, or what sub-part of the universe you're in where you think the minutiae of British and America English as it pertains to jumping out windows is more important than foundational freedom of communication.

(cont.) Yeah, ELU chat will be more your style.

HostileFork

That's fine. I don't have a problem. But no one else here is talking, and if you live in a comfort zone so narrow that when someone says "hmm... I find this weird" then maybe the Internet is not for you.

F.E.

06:20

(cont.) We like discussing English grammar in ELL chat.

HostileFork

No, I think I'll stay here.

F.E.

. . . yawn . . .

HostileFork

@F.E. I can tell you and I are not likely the kind of people who would get along. That's okay. I still find it funny that you ran to grasp support for something and then were casually dismissive of the update that said "Do not use this answer as an example of what we can and can't do. We are allowed to quote the OED - they are wrong."

I find myself very curious about people who want to believe they could not do things like quote a definition from the dictionary, or a grammatical argument.

But what I'd hope you took away from the update is that there are people who would like to bring more people to the table. For my own interests in looking at English Language Learners, I'd like to see how quickly people can get good peer-reviewed answers... how fast can we make learning? It's not about minutiae for it's own sake; and in that sense I'd suggest it's you who might find a better home on English Language Usage.

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