English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

3:00 PM

His son was only begotten, not crafted. QED.

Matt Эллен

God's soul's forgotten son.

tchrist

Only-begotten is kinda ugly.

Cerberus

In other words, that is most likely not an adverb.

tchrist

> The Greek term translated "only begotten" is monogenes, a word used nine times in the New Testament that can mean one of a kind or unique.

Cerberus

An ugly translation.

tchrist

3:03 PM

One-of-a-kind.

> In the 19th century, it was common to hyphenate adverb–adjective modifiers with the adverb ending in -ly (in other words, producing the character string ly-). However, this has become rare. For example, wholly owned subsidiary and quickly moving vehicle are unambiguous, because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives: "quickly" cannot modify "vehicle". However, if an adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be or should be used for clarity, depending on the style guide.

Cerberus

@tchrist So how did you get the proper small capitals on that page?

tchrist

I hacked the CSS in Chrome.

I think the problem is you also have to remove the old CSS.

Cerberus

But if you add !important, that should work. It doesn't.

tchrist

In Chrome though you can’t make your edits sticky without an extension.

Cerberus

Nor in FF.

I was too lazy to research it for Chrome, since I prefer not to use that privacy sucker.

tchrist

3:06 PM

I think it just overlays it otherwise, and since it is not changing the values that were there, they are not removed.

It’s the old author values that are the problem, though, so they have to be removed.

Cerberus

But !important should cause the old values to be overwritten.

tchrist

Where did you put the !important, exactly?

The thing is, there were no font-feature-settings values in the old author CSS.

And that is what one needs.

Matt Эллен

create a new author style and it will take precedence

tchrist

Won’t it just overlay the old one? I am way-not-clear on css.

These were the old and new values respectively:

author {
    font-variant: small-caps;
    letter-spacing: 0.1em;
}

author {
    -moz-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -ms-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -o-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -webkit-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    font-feature-settings: smcp;
}

Matt Эллен

it will overwrite the old values that are included in the new one, but maintain the old values that are not

tchrist

3:09 PM

See, I think it is keeping the old font-variant and letter-spacing values.

Matt Эллен

@tchrist that's essentially the same as

author {
    font-variant: small-caps;
    letter-spacing: 0.1em;
    -moz-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -ms-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -o-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -webkit-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    font-feature-settings: smcp;
}

tchrist

Right, so how do you wipe the old ones?

Matt Эллен

add them in

so you'd have...

author {
    font-variant: small-caps;
    letter-spacing: 0.1em;
}

author {
    -moz-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -ms-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -o-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -webkit-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    font-feature-settings: smcp;
    font-variant: <new value>;
    letter-spacing: <new value>;
}

tchrist

But I don’t want a new value. I don’t know what to put there. I just know that I want the old values gone.

Time to rtfm.

Matt Эллен

you'd need javascript for that, I think

tchrist

3:13 PM

Ok, I think I may know a solution.

author {
    font-variant: normal;
    letter-spacing: 0.0em;
    -moz-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -ms-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -o-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    -webkit-font-feature-settings: smcp;
    font-feature-settings: smcp;
}

Matt Эллен

looks good

tchrist

Those are the default values I believe.

@Cerb Try that in FF, and make sure you use a face that actually has small caps in it.

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