English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

kiamlaluno

00:50

@Cerberus I count sheep when I am sleeping. Is that ridiculous?

Cerberus

@Kiam: Yes, obviously. Do you really do that?

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus No; I just wanted to see what you would reply. :-)

Cerberus

Oh, too bad. Would have been cool.

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus It's too late. You had your chance. :-)

Cerberus

Well, it doesn't count if it isn't true.

kiamlaluno

00:54

This "we don't want version tags" issue made my hair as much grey as possible. I have an headache.

Cerberus

Version tags?

I think I missed that.

kiamlaluno

Yep. You have missed it because it's a problem on Drupal Answers.

Jeff doesn't seem to like when tags containing a version number are used for half of the questions.

The problem is that on Drupal.org we are used to mark for which version the question/support request/issue report is.

Cerberus

Hmm... why doesn't Jeff like that? It would seem to be an efficient marker? Or does he want it elsewhere, in the body?

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus For what I understand, he says they should be used when strictly necessary.

If the question could be valid also for Drupal 7, for example, I should not use drupal-6.

I have an headache already.

Cerberus

01:12

Hmm, not a bad argument... then again, what if Drupal 8 comes out and invalidates some of the questions that were about older verisons?

@Kiam: Hmm... drink some hot tea? Get some sleep?

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus Kill myself?

Cerberus

Bad idea.

Who would edify us with his Italian?

kiamlaluno

@Cerberus There will be still questions that are valid on Drupal 8.

@Cerberus Uhmmm… I could recommend a person, but she has not an account on SE anymore.

Cerberus

Then it must be you.

kiamlaluno

Sigh!

Cerberus

01:16

I know.

kiamlaluno

OK; I will make the sacrifice.

Cerberus

How noble!

kiamlaluno

She would have been much funnier than me, though.

Cerberus

She might not survive here.

kiamlaluno

I am worried you would not survive. :-)

Cerberus

01:18

We shall see. Bring her in!

kiamlaluno

It's too late; she will never come in, or return on EL&U again.

Cerberus

Why not?

kiamlaluno

She is angry with me, and she doesn't like SE.

Cerberus

Oh... why, and why not?

kiamlaluno

I asked her to join me on cooking.SE and english.SE to have something we could do together, but at the end she didn't like that. Maybe she didn't like she felt as obligated to do it.

Cerberus

01:21

Possible... and is that also why she is angry?

Or did you refuse her?

kiamlaluno

4

Q: Bodkins and bodkin - Same word different context?

Does bodkins in "odd's bodkins" mean the same as bare bodkin, which appears in Hamlet? (Other than being plural in the first example)

meaning

This is one of her questions, which are now mine after the account merging.

Cerberus

Your accounts were merged? Why?

kiamlaluno

Because they thought it was me to use both the accounts.

I created the account for her, and when I went to visit her, I connected to SE from there. She probably did the same when she was here in Italy.

To add more, I once connected using her account, and I voted myself.

The votes have been detected by the system, and removed.

It happened much time before I reached 6K on EL&U.

Now, after she didn't log in to SE from September, her account has been merged with mine.

Kit

01:38

@kiamlaluno You should be sleeping, sweetie.

It's what, like 3am there?

Cerberus

@Kiam: Discounting the votes would seem fair, but merging the accounts a bit too much.

Hi Kit!

Kit

@Cerberus Woof.

Cerberus

jumps

Kit

@Cerberus Good boy! (ear scratches for you)

kiam has a sad story, no?

Billare

01:54

Someone commit to the Philosophy SE if they have a spare slot

We need literally one more person.

Kosmonaut

2

A: Origins: "try and" over "try to" — how did we get there from here?

The only issue not covered by the question OP linked to arises from the mistaken assumption that try and is some kind of latter-day corruption of an established 'correct' form try to. But that's probably not how to look at it — most likely try and was around all the time, and it may well predate...

The Google Ngram graph in the comments of the above answer

We can't be using Google Ngram viewer in this way

If someone writes "If you try and fail, that is okay", then such a phrase would be counted as "try and"

Billare

Someone should write a meta post on the limitations on N-grams ;)

Kosmonaut

I am formulating what exactly to say, what people are doing and what's going wrong.

Billare

Ngrams are case sensitive

N-grams have bad date meta data

N-grams aren't good with more than one word

N-gram corpora are incomplete

Kosmonaut

Just because something has more tokens, that doesn't mean it is preferred

kiamlaluno

02:02

N-grams are not cookies.

Billare

N-grams cannot distinguish between alternate senses of a word, i.e. the 1...2...3...definitions in a dictionary

Kosmonaut

Or part-of-speech

This is a pretty good list

It is unknown whether ngrams ignore punctuation or not, but probably they do...

Billare

Ah.

kiamlaluno

It's 4 PM and all is fine, from this part of the pond.

I still believe that "they are not cookies; don't feed them to the dog" should be underlined three times.

Martha

02:22

Random complaint: why does Verizon insist on addressing its bills upside-down?

Cerberus

03:11

@Kosmonaut: Ngrams seem to treat punctuation and other marks rather inconsistently:

Actually I'm not sure what to make of that.

nohat

05:21

I really hate these questions where people ask "what's the word that means <something>" when there is no such word, so people just start making shit up in their answers

Why would anyone take our site seriously if it's full of made-up nonsense?

Billare

05:37

@nohat What question(s) are you thinking about precisely?

nohat

english.stackexchange.com/questions/26896/…

Billare

@nohat The guy said he "knew there was a term"

@nohat What made me upvote the question is that Third Idiot submitted an answer that was the exact opposite of what he asked....Irish twins are apparently children born more than a year apart

Whoops, I mean, within the same year.

nohat

there have been some other questions where people felt like it was an invitation to start coining words

Billare

LOL, I just got the reasoning behind the coining of that term, too.

Alot of SWR are bad question, escaping that though

Programmers trying to name their classes

People trying for single words when double words perfectly suffice and are clearer

It's a troublesome tag overall, SWR.

nohat

that too

I'm still not convinced it's not a meta tag

Billare

05:45

Meta tag?

nohat

Stack Overflow Blog: The Death of Meta Tags

Posted by Jeff Atwood on August 6th, 2010

There are a few tags on Stack Overflow that have bugged me for a long time. Namely:

But I could never quite articulate what, exactly, was wrong with these tags. It’s been bothering me more and more as time goes on. So much so, that about two months ago, I was compelled to ask on meta: Should we permanently remove the [subjective] tag?

There are some weak arguments in favor of keeping [subjective], but that’s about the best its proponents can muster. The arguments against it are much stronger. I felt Shog9 made the best case: …

Billare

But SWR do delineate some important characteristics of the questions: It will accept multiple answers; there will be alot of votes; and what else would we tag most those questions with? Nouns?

nohat

which would make their general uselessness more apparent

Billare

They are generally useless

Bu

But there are consequences to not accepting SWW

They are one of our most popular question tags

nohat

i think [vocabulary] would work as a tag for SWR questions

Billare

05:54

Our "competitors" accept those questions; Word Reference, Yahoo Answers, etc.

nohat

feh to our "competitors" i say

Billare

And thirdly, they tend to draw alot of traffic from the multicollider because there is alot of voting on them

nohat

well, we're getting away with ourselves here I think. i wasn't trying to get rid of the SWR tag

I just want to stop people from making shit up in their answers

Billare

Wasn't that guy heavily downvoted: +3 -3 as of now?

nohat

I think made-up answers are a big minus

Billare

05:58

I haven't noticed them as a big problem.

Which isn't to say they aren't a problem.

nohat

here's another one, where the accepted answer is made up

2

Q: What is a good word for a person who doesn't masturbate?

Is there a word for a person who strongly disapproves of masturbation? If so, what would he/she/it be known as?

single-word-requests synonyms

Billare

Do you think "help me coin an acceptable English Latinate for this meaning" is offtopic?

52

Q: A word for a person with only one head

Reading this article by the fantastic Douglas Adams I came across this interesting quote: ‘[I]nteractivity’ is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the fi...

word-choice etymology construction word-games

Anyway, gtg.

It's late.

Robusto

09:22

Hello.

RegDwight

Guten Morgen.

So I see @Billare is bashing my favorite tag for no reason whatsoever. Well, well! :P

Robusto

@RegDwight Tag-bashing? How so?

RegDwight

3 hours ago, by Billare

It's a troublesome tag overall, SWR.

Robusto

SWR?

Vitaly

09:37

I love @Unreason's comment here.

RegDwight

@Robusto Single-word requests.

@Vitaly Hm. Snarky.

Robusto

Ah.

@Vitaly — Hahaha.

Vitaly

@RegDwight Well, you are a ̶b̶a̶b̶y̶s̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ mod. You could play the good cop there, by writing a less snarky comment welcoming the user etc, etc.

Robusto

I don't know why Fraser Orr got two downvotes for this answer:

0

A: Origins: "try and" over "try to" — how did we get there from here?

I'd like to hazard a guess on this one. The construct "try and do such and such" sounds very much to me like a figure of speech called hendiadys. This figure of speech is the use of two words joined by a conjunction to mean just the one word, but mean so emphatically. In fact the name "hendiadys"...

At the very least he introduced me to a new figure of speech.

Vitaly

No one noticed my new gravatar!

Robusto

09:51

Meet the new emboss! Same as the old emboss!

Well, slightly different.

Vitaly

It's so much better.

Robusto

Yes, yes ... I see that now. You must be very proud.

I may wind up accepting Fraser Orr's answer unless something better comes along.

Vitaly

@Robusto As a matter of fact, I am.

Robusto

Well, seeing them up close like that makes me like the first one better. It's more elegant, actually. The taper of the stroke in the first is artful, while the second seems like you're working the connection too hard. I think your left brain is fighting for control at this point, and losing. There, it had to be said.

Vitaly

Huh.

Robusto

10:00

The editor in me often defeats the artist. I get an inspiration and it's good, but I think it could be better so I wind up destroying the initial inspiration over successive edits, until what remains has been pretty much over-thought into the grave.

For my money your first gravatar is a much finer piece.

Vitaly

I just don't like how the strokes connect to each other in the first gravatar.

And the stroke width is off in some places (the top of the lambda for instance).

Robusto

See? You're left-braining it to death.

Vitaly

>_>

Robusto

I see the gestalt, and the first pleases me while the second feels overworked.

But maybe after coffee I will feel different.

Vitaly

Oh, but the second gravatar looks like an eagle-headed Egyptian god.

Well, that was an idea.

Also I wanted it to be more dynamic, the first one is sorta static, the second one looks as if it rotates counterclockwise (maybe that's where your dislike comes from partially, people don't find unbalanced/dynamic pictures aesthetically pleasing I think, unless it's something like Briullov's The Last Day of Pompeii)

RegDwight

10:09

I will second @Robusto by quoting a Russian proverb: "Лучшее — враг хорошего."

Vitaly

Anyway, now that it (the overworked-ness) has been pointed out, I have to agree, and I am back to my old gravatar for the time being

what if I balanced the second gravatar by rotating the ascender of the lambda clockwise so that it matches the left diagonal stroke of the lambda instead of the right one? that would also give more space for a narrow taper

RegDwight

Feb 17 at 16:29, by RegDwight

The last one flies so much over my head, I have no idea.

Vitaly

10:25

…something like that… and it isn't coming out right anyway, or so it seems to my left brain

the bowls are broken

RegDwight

Now the lambda has a crack.

Vitaly

Haha

RegDwight

If it can be recognized as lambda at all.

Vitaly

10:42

And that?

I see the ascender doesn't quite connect to the ‘circle’

Third Idiot

It's more like the windows sign.

In some ways

Robusto

@Vitaly — Stop making sense! Art isn't about making sense!

Vitaly

Oh yes it is, according to all the teachers I had here in Russia as a kid.

RegDwight

And now it shows.

Robusto

The right hemisphere is the source of creativity, the left of rationality. The rational is always trying to control the creative. But it can't! It's like the blind man saying, "Shove over and let me drive!"

RegDwight

10:50

The left hemisphere is never right.

Robusto

Q.E.D.

Third Idiot

@Robusto Q.E.D.??

Robusto

Quod erat demonstrandum

RegDwight

Oh my.

Robusto

**quod erat demonstrandum** |kwäd ˈerət ˌdemənˈsträndəm| (abbr.: QED)
used to convey that a fact or situation demonstrates the truth of one's theory or claim, esp. to mark the conclusion of a formal proof.
ORIGIN Latin, literally ‘which was to be demonstrated.’

@Vitaly — This is better than the second, though not better than the original.

Vitaly

10:55

-.-

RegDwight

This last one is a Web 2.0 logo. The first one was a livestock brand, uphill, both ways, barefoot in the snow.

Vitaly

2

Robusto

Here's a logo I designed for my contracting business. It took me about an hour to come up with. I spent weeks trying to improve it, ruining it in the process. Eventually I went back to the original and everything was fine.

RegDwight

Is that an R?

Robusto

Yes.

RegDwight

11:02

See, I can read Robustian.

Third Idiot

@RegDwight A Robustian Combustion

Vitaly

@Reg: where do I see how long until the badge?

RegDwight

Where do you see how long until which badge?

Vitaly

22 hours ago, by RegDwight

Clarification: you only get the Outspoken badge for getting starred by 10 different people, not for starring the same person ten times in a row. Do note the subtle difference.

Third Idiot

@Vitaly Hope that helps.

Vitaly

11:15

@RegDwight is going to unstar it anyway (as he unstarred that “Everyone is in the 7th grade on the Internet” post twice). :P

Robusto

@Vitaly — You're kinda funny lookin'.

Which is what you were about to say in the last panel, yeah?

Vitaly

Realism wasn't my concern there.

Robusto

Anyway, gotta commute. TTYL, everyone.

Vitaly

CU.

RegDwight

@Vitaly You can't monitor your progress towards that one.

@Robusto Laterz.

Vitaly

11:17

Sigh.

RegDwight

Badges are supposed to be surprises!

Vitaly

Ah, like Enthusiast and Fanatic?

RegDwight

Well, people do keep asking for ways to be able to track their progress, so they do keep getting such ways, but the basic idea is still that it's nicer as an unexpected reward rather than as something you can see coming from a mile away.

Enthusiast, Copy Editor, tag-specific badges, you name it -- they all used to come as total surprises. But people just wouldn't stop asking for ways to monitor their progress...

And now even Electorate is no enigma anymore.

Third Idiot

@RegDwight Why aren't there ways to monitor our progress?

@RegDwight Is it because, as stated above, these badges are meant to be surprises?

Miss

i wan to use hanmail in english

but its in korean ...

how can i use it ?

MrHen

11:28

Okay, this is frustrating me

Kit

Hup.

MrHen

15

Q: "True" is to "false" as "truth" is to... what?

If I were to reverse the sentence, "I care about the truth" I would want to say: I care about the false. Is that correct? It seems awkward at best: He speaks the truth! / He speaks the false! This one truth is important to all / This one false is important to all

meaning single-word-requests antonyms

Kit

@MrHen Didn't like "falsity", eh?

MrHen

@Kit Its not that I don't like it, I need a reason to choose it

As best as I can tell, there are three possible answers here

Well, four

I see 3 of those 4 scattered about

But no one comes right out and explains what is happening here well

The only reason I found the 4th is because I used the answers as stepping stones

Kit

@MrHen Well, I rather liked it as a description of state.

MrHen

11:30

and after a little looking, I figured out what was going on

And I have no idea how that one answer is at 42

@Kit Which one?

Kit

@MrHen Huh? Let me see...

MrHen

@Kit Ah ha, you mean yours. :)

Kit

@MrHen Well, yes. I haven't been keeping up though.

MrHen

Yeah, actually yours is as good as any of them. :)

Kit

You're right, 42 votes for that?

@MrHen Well, I had falsity in first.

MrHen

11:32

@Kit Yes, I just noticed that

Well, actually, right now you are "winning" then

Thanks for pointing it out again. :P

Kit

@MrHen I've got a feeling that I inspired the "fallacy" suggestion as well.

@MrHen Yay! Go me! (I'm all about winning)

MrHen

@Kit Yeah, but lie, fallacy, etc don't really work

Kit

@MrHen But seriously, I think it's a good question. I found it irksome.

It kept bothering me while I was trying to work.

I think the observation that there is only one truth, but many ways to be untrue, was apt.

Oh, my husband suggested "falsth", by the way.

Third Idiot

@MrHen She didn't get "falsity" in first. Look at the time. She is at 16 hrs. Someone else who got falsity in was at 14 hrs.

MrHen

@ThirdIdiot "14 hours ago" is later than "16 hours ago"

Higher numbers mean earlier times

Third Idiot

11:38

@MrHen Ah! I see your point.!

I think I should go to bed early.

I'm not thinking straight today.

MrHen

BTW, your answer is good as well

You cover more bases than anyone else...

Kit

@ThirdIdiot Don't carelessly cast aspersions on my honor, young whippersnapper! :)

MrHen

This is annoying.

I feel odd about picking a 4 voted answer over a 40+ answer

z7sg

@Kit Yes, really annoying isn't it?

Third Idiot

I'm older than most of you.

@z7sg Your meaning, young man?

Kit

11:41

@z7sg I'm not trying to be a twit, but really, it doesn't say anything.

Makes me feel like everyone has completely missed the point of the question.

@ThirdIdiot Well, my apple trees did blossom overnight.

z7sg

@MrHen Well don't be! We were having this discussion over on meta SO. Simple answers garner many votes because the bar to deciding whether they're correct is so low. Nobody came up with a solution though. :(

MrHen

@Kit Yeah, no joke.

@z7sg Ooh, link?

Third Idiot

@Kit YOung? If you knew how old I was, you wouldn't have said that about me.

Hence the reason for my vast knowledge and wisdom, spreading to several SE

MrHen

The dumb thing is that right now all of the information is contained in the collective group of answers

But I don't feel one single answer is getting the job done entirely

Kit

@MrHen Maybe you shouldn't pick an answer. I'm wholly dissatisfied with it myself.

MrHen

11:44

And don't know how to explain to all the others why I chose that one

Third Idiot

@MrHen Could I retry?Please!?

MrHen

@Kit But the truth is out there :)

@ThirdIdiot Sure

You are close

Kit is closest right now

Third Idiot

@MrHen I'll make it concise!

MrHen

@ThirdIdiot Haha, okay :)

Kit

@ThirdIdiot And go easy on the bolding!

MrHen

11:45

:P

z7sg

@MrHen Not sure if this was it. Has been discussed a lot a guess because it is a common frustration! meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/7162/…

Kit

@MrHen Just find us an answer, MrHen, so I can rest my mind.

MrHen

@Kit Well, I could be tacky and post my own answer...

I'd probably cause a riot and get downvoted through the floor

@z7sg Thank you. Reading now :)

Third Idiot

@MrHen Before I submit my answer, I'd like to warn you, It's concise and prosaic. So take a deep breath and absorb its profundity.

@MrHen Excellent idea! Get the "Self-learner" badge!

RegDwight

@Kosmonaut: prescriptivist alert over at German L&U, halp needed.

5

A: Ist "wegen dir" falsch und nur "deinetwegen" richtig?

Streng genommen: Ja, es ist falsch. Leider ist wegen dir mittlerweile so enorm oft benutzt, gehört und gelesen worden, dass es kaum noch einem auffällt. wegen verlangt einen Genitiv. Das kann man besonders schön daran erkennen, dass es DESwegen heißt und nicht DEMwegen. wegen dir ist Umgangsspr...

Third Idiot

11:50

@MrHen I didn't get downvoted when I answered my own answer.

MrHen

@ThirdIdiot Did your question have a 40+ voted answer to it?

@Spare, I think I saw that.

Third Idiot

@MrHen No, just enough to get me the "Self-Learner" Badge

I badly wanted it!!:):)

jks.

MrHen

@ThirdIdiot Yeah, your new answer isn't really helping much :P

Spare Oom

@MrHen en.wiktionary.org/wiki/falsehood indicates falsehood is a countable and uncountable noun, so it seems to me it would work. Mendacity looks good too, but apparently archaic.

MrHen

@SpareOom Yeah. Mention that in an answer somewhere and we have a winner

Third Idiot

11:53

@MrHen Doh! Could..could I try again!?

MrHen

@ThirdIdiot Probably not. Two answers is probably enough.

I mean, really, if RiMMER just added examples I would probably have accepted it already

Kit

@SpareOom I'll race you!

MrHen

But "I care about falsehood" isn't immediately obvious. Most people are thinking about individual truths, hence all of the suggestions for "lies" and such.

Spare Oom

@Kit You'd steal my answer!?

Kit

Isn't mendacity a human characteristic?

@SpareOom No, not really. I was just playing.

MrHen

11:55

And the other frustrating thing here is Matt Ellen's comment

It is misleading but is at +7

Spare Oom

@Kit Ok, I'm just a newbie, so I'm slow in posting anything.

Third Idiot

@MrHen I thought you'd say that, so I added examples to my second answer to help your decision.

MrHen

It's cool :)

Kit

@SpareOom I'm newer than you. Don't be shy! Jump in there!

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…