English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:44 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad character in title, Chinese character in title, mostly non-Latin title: 成。绩。单 Q/Vxin:②③④②⑧⑧①①④ 毕。业。。证 by user167817 on english.stackexchange.com …

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3:45 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps answer: "throw out/away" vs. "toss (out)" vs. "pitch (out/away)" for "dispose of; discard; get rid of as worthless or useless" in AmEng by wuxiang on english.stackexchange.com …

[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported question: Graduated, did you get the diploma? by wuxiang on english.stackexchange.com …

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4:40 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted user: The registration opened or has opened by wuxiang on english.stackexchange.com …

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5:35 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in answer, pattern-matching website in answer: What is the word for always YES (100%) or always NO (0%), never in-between by Rachel Johnson on english.stackexchange.com …

IͶΔ

7:12 AM

@crl Hmm, rough day? :P

IͶΔ

8:20 AM

@IͶΔ the "crap" is on both sites, good or half-decent questions on EL&U will remain here because users want to answer them. Some LQQs can be made on topic with a bit of effort, and be perfectly suitable for ELL, but I rarely see Ellers doing that, the atrocious spelling and grammar errors that are left intact seem to suggest that 1. ELL users are unaware of such simple basic errors 2. They can't be bothered to edit the posts into shape or 3. the few users who really care are just swamped, and have given up. — Mari-Lou A 12 mins ago

Hullo @J.R.

Funny how stuff is now our fault.

J.R.

I had a positive migration experience last night.

IͶΔ

Yay

J.R.

A user asked what seemed like a learner's question, so I posted a link to ELL. The user then wrote, "Thanks! I didn't know there was a Stack Exchange for English language learners"

IͶΔ

@Catija no I wasn't aware untill now — Arman_Immortal Jan 12 at 19:02

J.R.

Then after he posted it on ELL (where I answered it), it got deleted from ELU.

IͶΔ

8:26 AM

There's a subtle feeling of victory behind it.

J.R.

Along with a comment: How great community here is..

IͶΔ

Maybe the site's name should be englishlanguagelearners instead of ell.

The lack of the word 'english' in the site's URL is disturbing. :P

J.R.

Well, that and ELU's name are what drive so many first-timers to ELU.

In this case, though, this user added a tell-tale clue: I think this is a very boring and childish question. However, this kind of simple thing is sometimes difficult for non-native English speakers.

IͶΔ

BTW, @J.R. do you think we have something on ELL that needs to be improved?

J.R.

In my initial comment, I said that it wasn't boring or childish, but it was asked on the wrong exchange, and that ELL was designed to take questions that are simple for native speakers but difficult for learners.

That sounds like a loaded question – like you have something in mind already :-)

IͶΔ

8:30 AM

I do.

But it's just as much as collecting ideas.

J.R.

There's probably something that could always be improved on any Stack Exchange. I don't think any of them have achieved perfection yet.

IͶΔ

We have a sleepy meta.ELL and I want to find something interesting to work on and improve.

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[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps body: Need help in understanding what is being asked here by user167885 on english.stackexchange.com …

IͶΔ

If you ask me, everything is a mess on ELL. :P

@SmokeDetector That's one awesome question title.

@J.R. IMO everything needs lotsa improving to get to an acceptable rate, because we don't have many edits or editors and stuff ESL learners post need lot of cleaning. But I want to choose to improve something people agree needs improvement.

It's tempting to think very few people on ELL do care about tags.

So attempting to clean tags will fail.

J.R.

I wouldn't say that "everything is a mess," but I would agree that we could use some "spring cleaning" on tags and such.

IͶΔ

8:40 AM

Expand "such" please.

J.R.

And I don't think that it's completely accurate to say that "few people care about tags," but I do think that most people find that to be tedious work and so they're not motivated to do it.

IͶΔ

"Don't send us what you don't like and we don't either" -- How hard is that to fathom?

@IͶΔ Sheesh, I'm really tired of wasting time on something so obvious.

J.R.

They appreciate the effort when someone else improves the tags, but they aren't necessarily going to chip in.

IͶΔ

@J.R. Well, I'm starting to doubt it.

John Clifford

Well that explains a lot.

Don't know why I assumed Language Overflow was a shared chat for both sites. It even has ELL's icon. :P

J.R.

8:44 AM

Of course you're starting to doubt it. The person doing the menial drudge work is usually the first to question whether or not those efforts are appreciated.

IͶΔ

@J.R. Yeah, and I'm now looking for something else to improve.

So people would chip in.

Something that is less tedious to work on.

Question titles are still pretty crappy, although after that post they improved a lot.

That means that guidance [still] works.

John Clifford

The problem with tags on ELL is that if the learner isn't sure how to ask/phrase the question, they're less likely to know which tags would be appropriate for it.

But then I suppose that's where an effective moderation approach would be handy.

IͶΔ

@JohnClifford Ja

John Clifford

I do sometimes see edits where all they've done is add/change tags, but not often.

IͶΔ

In Chem, normally the worse a question is, the more edits it attracts. Sadly that's not true on ELL.

J.R.

8:46 AM

It reminds me of the chorus of a song I once heard:
Everybody said that anybody could do
The important things somebody should do
Everybody knows that anybody could do
All the good things that nobody did

John Clifford

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done

IͶΔ

@J.R. Markdown no worky in multi-line, remember?

Yay! The good thing about language sites is you're never lacking stories or poems

J.R.

I don't chat enough to remember such things. Chalk that one up to LSNED.

IͶΔ

I think now that meta.ELL is doing the talks nicely, let's hold some action and come up with some guidelines for editing.

One reason that I don't edit a lot on ELL is that it's so cumbersome even in the simplest cases.

Dammit, what tags should I choose?

Dammit, how should I format?

Dammit, should I edit grammatical mistakes?

John Clifford

Generally when I'm editing I approach it from the mindset of "What tags and format would I have used if I had posted this question myself?"

IͶΔ

8:50 AM

Dammit, what title should I write?

John Clifford

0

Q: advisable vs advised

I recently found myself reading a phase with one of the terms. It sounded wrong. I'm not gonna say which one it was. Which one is correct/better? 1) It's advisable you do ... 2) It's advised you do ... I did some searching on the matter, but couldn't come up with anything solid.

"I had additional information I could have given you for this, but I'm not gonna!"

J.R.

I think the key is to realize one person can't keep up with it all, so it's up to the community to contribute. Rather than be overwhelmed by what's left undone, though, I'm just thankful for those who make their contributions here and there.

John Clifford

All I have the rep for on ELL right now is late answers and first posts.

(in terms of the review queue)

J.R.

You, Nathan, Stoney, Colleen, Maulik – we have some good folks who are doing good work.

Sorry if that's too much of a "glass half full" answer for you.

(for the record, that wasn't an exhaustive list)

(just some of the first names that sprang to mind)

IͶΔ

I'm not contributing.

Not at all.

There are folks who do the work.

J.R.

9:00 AM

Posting a meta question counts as "contributing"

So do your 449 revisions.

:-)

IͶΔ

Nah, I'm just all-talk and no action.

Don't tell Dam I said that.

J.R.

Well, I hope that gloomy pessimism is short-lived!

And your secret's safe with me – but I don't know how much Dam scours the chat logs.

But at least I knew enough not to put an @ in front of his name!

IͶΔ

He's a bit busy these days.

John Clifford

Did you really just misuse the contraction for "you are" instead of the possessive your in a chat for English language enthusiasts, @J.R.? XD

J.R.

Cheers, my friend.

IͶΔ

9:06 AM

@JohnClifford Such sin

J.R.

@JC - Yes, I did goof.

John Clifford

You done goofed, son.

My guilty secret is that a lot of the time when I'm typing "money" my brain almost autocorrects it to "monkey".

J.R.

Me done goofed indeed.

IͶΔ

Anyway, so I still didn't get your idea on what we should try improving prior to others @J.R.

J.R.

Just go where your passions lead you. People will get more done if they focus on doing what motivates them most.

I do a lot of title edits, but very few tag edits.

But that doesn't mean I'm not thankful every time I see a tag edit performed.

John Clifford

9:08 AM

Thanksgiving must be a riot at your house.

J.R.

If you do what you care about most, you won't burn out as fast.

JC, do you think I wait for Thanksgiving?? Every day is Thanksgiving!

;^)

John Clifford

:D

I just had this hilarious mental image of you sitting at your dinner table being like "We thank you, lord, for FumbleFingers changing that single-word-requests tag to idioms the other day."

J.R.

It's just like that, every year.

John Clifford

All my dreams have come true.

We don't have thanksgiving here so I have to live vicariously through others.

J.R.

It's like you had a hidden camera in my dining room or something

John Clifford

9:18 AM

Look there! A distraction!

runs

J.R.

And at the end of that very lengthy prayer of thanks, one of my children will invariably ask, "Could you tell us about the etymology of 'amen' again?"

4

John Clifford

sniff that's beautiful.

What IS the etymology of 'amen'?

Boris_yo

9:47 AM

Tied by string or wrapped by string?

Wrapped can only be box, right?

But if I tied with string?

John Clifford

I can wrap string around my hand.

Boris_yo

@JohnClifford And if you have book that you want to tie with string to keep it from opening?

Tie around...

John Clifford

You can tie the book with string, or wrap string around it.

Boris_yo

No you can't tie with string I guess. To tie you need more than one string.

Correct/Incorrect?

John Clifford

It isn't wrapped "by" string because that would imply that the string is completely enveloping it.

No, you basically tie the string to itself.

The sentences have the same connotation: you secured the book using some string.

Boris_yo

9:50 AM

The string is attached to book's cover.

So I just do a few rounds with it around book and then tie the end to keep it secure.

John Clifford

I'd still say it's tied with string.

Boris_yo

So I wrap and then tie?

Okay thanks.

I know gift can be wrapped...

John Clifford

Wrap has multiple definitions.

cover or enclose in paper or soft material.
arrange paper or soft material round.
place an arm, finger, or leg round.
clasp; embrace.
crash a vehicle into (a stationary object).

Valentin Tihomirov

11:47 AM

What does [he say] (youtube.com/watch?v=FnlbqZVzIm8&t=902) "she sleeps around ..."?

John Clifford

Sounds like he's trying to say proliferously.

Mitch

1:24 PM

@ValentinTihomirov He's badly mangling a couple of words, mushing them up in a malapropism.

@JohnClifford That's a wrap (you've finished)

Also an anglo-burrito

John Clifford

1:38 PM

@Mitch :D

Mitch

and shawl

and plastic food covering sheets

and an older term form spoken language music whip-whop

MετάEd

2:46 PM

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers.

John Clifford

Speak for yourself, my Amazon wishlist clearly has "stinkin' badger" as the, like, third item.

Saladin

can someone correct this line?

"
I apologize for the unavailability, this is due to my professional commitment this week"

John Clifford

"I have a prior commitment to attend to this week, and apologise that I will be unavailable." is how I would probably word it.

Saladin

@JohnClifford thanks a lot

John Clifford

You're welcome.

MετάEd

3:02 PM

The luxury entirely depends on whether it's full duplex or half duplex.

terdon

@JohnClifford "apologise that"?

John Clifford

Yup.

I apologise that things all the time.

terdon

that really doesn't work for me. You, or at any rate, I, apologise for things.

Lawrence

@terdon You could apologise for being unavailable, or alternatively, that you're unavailable.

terdon

@JohnClifford I've never heard that.

NGrams seems to agree: books.google.com/ngrams/…

apologi[sz]e that seems to be vanishingly rare.

@Lawrence Where are you from? And you @JohnClifford? Could this be a regional variation?

John Clifford

3:07 PM

Maybe it's a dialectal thing.

I'm Scottish, northeast.

terdon

@JohnClifford Then you don't count do yeh? That's a whole different language! :P

John Clifford

XD

Well there isn't a Doric Language & Usage StackExchange yet so you're stuck with me, lad.

terdon

Bugger.

:P

@Lawrence are you also British? And Northern?

Lawrence

@terdon Sorry, I don't normally answer requests for location. (And your dismissal of John Clifford is hardly an incentive :P ).

terdon

@Lawrence Hardly a dismissal!

Well, OK, it was but only meant in jest.

John Clifford

3:10 PM

He apologised for being unwilling to do something, so he's probably British.

Lawrence

:)

terdon

@JohnClifford Could be Canadian. They're ultra polite too.

Lawrence

@terdon Not to worry. I put smilies on my comment.

John Clifford

Hehe, true.

That was a very English sentence though. XD

terdon

Seriously though @Lawrence, I don't need to know where you're located at the moment. Only if your dialect might possibly be linked to the northern British Isles.

John Clifford

3:11 PM

The only thing it was missing was a small rich tea biscuit.

Lawrence

Fawlty-towers or similar rephrasing of the original (tongue firmly in cheek): I'm sorry, it's unavailable because I'm committed to being a professional this week.

2

terdon

Or not, of course. I don't mean to pry, I'm just curious. I've really never come across apologise that before. And I spent 4 years living in York, which is almost Scotland (if you ask a Londoner, anyway, not if you ask a Yorkshireman).

John Clifford

@Lawrence Hahahaha

Starred.

Lawrence

:)

terdon

That's never from Fawlty Towers, is it? Coulda sworn I have the whole thing memorized

Lawrence

3:13 PM

@terdon Very possible, but not necessarily northern.

terdon

Cheers

John Clifford

Basil certainly should have been committed.

Lawrence

@terdon No, it's original.

terdon

@JohnClifford Everyone bar Polly and, perhaps Cook, should have.

John Clifford

Que?

terdon

3:15 PM

@JohnClifford Oh come on, please try and understand before one of us dies.

John Clifford

XD

terdon

:)

John Clifford

I have a cunning plan...

Mixing comedies here, but it had to be said.

terdon

Tsk, wrong series :)

John Clifford

Can you imagine if Manuel and Baldrick had ever ended up in a room together?

Lawrence

3:16 PM

@terdon They did well not to be driven insane.

terdon

@JohnClifford Now that I would pay good money to see. From a safe distance, preferably.

@Lawrence True

John Clifford

Perhaps on a satellite feed from an adjacent planet.

Lawrence

@Saladin In case you read my starred comment - all in good fun, no insult intended. :)

Mitch

@terdon We should just apologize and leave it at that. You risk apologizing for something they didn't realize you should have apologized for (or that), and then you'll have to apologize for the mistake.

Lawrence

You know, the main site seems to have a reputation for being rather staid and legalistic. Meta has a number of protests against the same, but chat! It's probably our best (worst?) kept secret.

Mitch

3:24 PM

OK, just don't apologize, you'll never win

John Clifford

Oh, if only they knew about the chat.

That said, it's not like I don't use comments as my own personal snarking ground sometimes.

I like to think I give everyone a giggle as they pass by.

Y'know, it's been such a slow day I think I may actually have done a negative amount of work.

Mitch

> If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

John Clifford

I don't often attend dinner parties, so I conclude that I am not a stock-broker.

Mitch

The trouble with dinner parties is too much party and not enough dinner.

John Clifford

Too much dinner and not enough party would result in an obesity epidemic, though.

Mitch

3:31 PM

> It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

MετάEd

@JohnClifford Creepy :-)

John Clifford

I was being slightly hyperbolic, I did do some work today.

Mitch

Better than being elliptical, when you can't even...

Lawrence

I'm not sure you can be slightly hyperbolic.

MετάEd

Anybody can be some kind of bolus, though.

John Clifford

3:34 PM

I most certainly can be slightly hyperbolic.

They said I could do anything!

By "they" I mean my mum.

She says I'm a very special boy.

Let's say I'm going to murder my enemies with a thousand bees. If I subsequently say to them "I'm going to kill you with a thousand and one bees." I'm being slightly hyperbolic.

Lawrence

I suppose the appropriate response is: quite so. :)

John Clifford

Unless I miscounted the bees, obviously, in which case I'm being unintentionally factual.

Lawrence

Well, if you can do anything, counting a thousand bees should be child's play, not that I'd recommend that as child's play.

John Clifford

Just because I can do anything doesn't mean I will.

And I dunno, there are a few children I've met for whom I'd make an exception to that...

Lawrence

I'll take my leave for now - enjoy the rest of this chat! :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:46 PM

@JohnClifford Miscounted Bees would be a good name for a rock band

John Clifford

Damn, it totally would.

I've always said that if I ever have a rock band I'm going to call it In Retrospect, Babies Make Lousy Ammo for Catapults.

Or IRBMLAC for short.

(pronounced errbumlack obviously)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

That would be a good album name

I think we're on to something here. We could make millions. MILLIONS!

John Clifford

Well the first album would be called So I Had This Catapult, Right...?.

MετάEd

"Big Rubber Band"

Mitch

@JohnClifford I'd take an exception to that

IͶΔ

4:25 PM

@Mitch I'd take an exception to your exceptions

I expected as much

I excepted as such

bespectacled much?

Gut geschmeckt!

Respectobiggle?

@Mitch Mahlzeit.

Mitch

4:35 PM

How did you know?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Few unique characters in answer, offensive answer detected, repeating characters in answer: When did "sale" become "sales event"? by dgdgdg on english.stackexchange.com …

MετάEd

7:56 PM

@Mitch Reminds me of a great story. Do you know about the two baby skunks "In" and "Out"?

One day, In was out, and Out was in. Mamma skunk sent Out out to bring In in. In a very short time, Out went out and brought In in. And Mamma asked Out, "How did you find In so quickly?"

4

And Out replied, "Easy, mamma. Instinct."

Cerberus

8:24 PM

Hah.

Anonymous

@JohnClifford It's funny. I noticed you constantly talking about EL&U over there :-)

Anonymous

But I just assumed you knew.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=46409432

Anonymous

> I apologized that we wouldn't be able to offer them bread and salt, or wine.

Anonymous

> To the more than 200 people who've written me since this column debuted six weeks ago: I want to thank you for writing and apologize that I can't answer every letter personally. But in future columns, I'll try to deal with some of the issues you've raised.

Anonymous

8:33 PM

@terdon Do examples like these sound wrong to you?

Anonymous

> I could tell Jeff was beginning to get nervous. He kept apologizing that he hadn't planned more carefully. But really, it didn't bother me a bit.

Anonymous

There are some false positives in the results, by the way:

Anonymous

> It was the excessive apologizing that tipped us off when my grandmother died

Anonymous

But only a few, I think.

Cerberus

Wrong, I don't know.

Informal.

Anonymous

8:39 PM

They sound perfectly natural to me.

Anonymous

That's just my personal judgment.

Cerberus

But in a formal text?

Anonymous

I might avoid it in super-formal writing, the sort I never do.

Cerberus

OK that is something.

Anonymous

Plain ol' formal writing, not so much.

Anonymous

8:42 PM

I wonder what other people think.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Let's suppose it's used in semi-formal speech at best.

Cerberus

I haven't made up my mind yet.

Anonymous

Then perhaps the numbers in corpora are low because we're looking for examples where that hasn't been omitted, but it very often is informally.

Cerberus

Right.

What are we trying to prove?

Anonymous

I'm not necessarily trying to prove anything, but I think terdon said the apologize that construction didn't work for him.

Anonymous

8:46 PM

And I thought that was interesting because it seemed unremarkable to me.

Cerberus

Well, you searched in a specific region, didn't you?

Anonymous

And earlier we got a Google Books Ngram Viewer graph, and I added the COCA (yes, AmE) results to that.

Cerberus

Or does COCA have texts from other regions?

Anonymous

COCA does not, although there is a fairly small amount of text from speakers of other dialects mixed in.

Cerberus

Perhaps it is used in semi-informal American speech, or text, but not elsewhere.

Anonymous

8:48 PM

@terdon What sort of English do you speak?

Cerberus

It sounds a bit like a contamination to me, but not a very remarkable one.

I believe he speaks British.

Anonymous

It was originally John Clifford who suggested apologize that, though, and he's Scottish.

Anonymous

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Cerberus

Isn't the English from North America influenced by Scottish accents?

Anonymous

The results for apologize that are few in both the AmE and BrE subcorpora on Google Books.

Anonymous

8:51 PM

Here's the same search with only apologize that: books.google.com/ngrams/…

Cerberus

@snailboat If you disable smoothing, you'll see how rare it is.

Anonymous

Thanks, that's a good suggestion.

Cerberus

E.g. zero hits for 1966 in British.

Not that I would let frequency lead your opinions on style!

Many constructions never seen before are perfectly fine.

And vice versa.

Anonymous

Oh, I won't let it change how I speak.

Cerberus

Speaking of the Devil!

hides

Anonymous

8:53 PM

I'm just curious, really.

terdon

@snailboat yes, they do. Unnatural, at the very least. How interesting.

Cerberus

I would aplogize for something.

If necessary followed by a gerund.

Anonymous

I have a lot of informal chat logs I can use as a corpus to see what I actually type, which might not be the same as what I say, but it's fairly informal and it's better than relying on my introspection.

Cerberus

Do you feel that for + gerund is better? Or are both constructions equally pleasant to your ears?

Anonymous

It seems that I always say apologize for myself, even though apologize that sounds okay to me.

Cerberus

8:56 PM

Heh.

Anonymous

I have an idea.

Anonymous

It might be a syntactic blend of I'm sorry that 〜 and I apologize for 〜.

Cerberus

That was the contamination I mentioned.

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

I didn't realize.

Cerberus

8:57 PM

I should have been more explicit.

Anonymous

I'm sorry that 〜 seems to be a lot more common. It wouldn't be surprising to see the two blended like that.

Cerberus

Acceptance panels often disapprove of contaminations (and pleonasms) even without realising why.

Anonymous

Something like how people say on accident by analogy to on purpose.

Anonymous

Which, by the way, also sounds fine to me.

Anonymous

But at least in that case I know not to use it when formal standard English is expected :-)

Anonymous

9:02 PM

Here's a data point: on accident seems to be common in my chat logs (lots of people I know say it), but I can't find any examples of apologize that.

Cerberus

Ouch!

That sounds much worse than a. that.

Anonymous

Again, though, the numbers might be lower than expected because that is so often omitted, and I'm not sure how to construct a search to see if that's the case.

Anonymous

@Cerberus It's pretty normal in a lot of American English dialects among younger speakers.

Cerberus

You could search for apologize I and apologized he.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Nada.

Cerberus

9:05 PM

@snailboat I'm not surprised. Ain't got no is probably also very common.

@snailboat Hmm.

Anonymous

I can find lots of examples of apologize that on SE! :-)

Anonymous

17

A: Should we make it clearer that there's no need to apologize?

I apologize that I don't have a better answer, but I doubt adding this information to the on-topic help will make a difference. The on-topic section of the help center is editable by the moderators (unlike the rest of the help center or the site's tour page), but I doubt enough people look at th...

Anonymous

Yes, that's what I mean. I apologize that it doesn't scan, but that's why I asked the question in the first place, to find something that actually fits. — Joe Z. May 11 '14 at 21:40

Anonymous

3

A: Using "apologize" without "for"

Apologize is almost always (excluding some rare uses) an intransitive verb; however, with that said, you will often hear people (in the US) say things like, "I apologize [that] the event didn't go as planned." Technically it needs that as a conjunction, but there's a strong trend in the US toward...

Anonymous

That's not an example so much as a discussion of apologize that.

Anonymous

9:13 PM

I think I actually will try to be conscious of this in the future.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Thanks for helping me figure this out :-)

Anonymous

I'm going to go do a little informal survey of some AmE speakers.

Anonymous

I gave them the "I could tell Jeff was beginning to get nervous. He kept apologizing that he hadn't planned more carefully. But really, it didn't bother me a bit." quote without pointing out anything in particular and asked if anything sounded weird.

Cerberus

@snailboat Meh, he suggests that that is omitted specifically in America, and that this is a recent phaenomenon.

By the way, have you searched for apologise(d) that?

Anonymous

My search in COCA was for [apologize], so it got apologize, apologizes, apologized, and apologizing. I searched for those in my chat logs too. I did another search on Google Books, but I left out -ing because I figured it would lead to false positives.

Cerberus

9:22 PM

@snailboat Good. Perhaps you could ask a follow-up question: "is there anything in this sentence that you would not write in a formal or literary context, something that you think some people would not approve of?".

Anonymous

I'll have to wait a while to see what responses I get.

Cerberus

Exciting!

Anonymous

@Cerberus How people react to it is more important to me than frequency. I'm learning something new today! :-)

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…