English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Kit

00:24

Holy crap! I earned the popular question badge!

Hey, can it be written like [badge:Popular Question]?

Martha

The multicollider'll do that.

Kit

Guess not.

@Martha Wish I'd had an answer posted that I liked.

Martha

@Kit Well, you can always just leave it for a bit, and only accept an answer if and when someone actually posts a useful one.

Kit

Martha

Whee! Looks fun!

Kit

00:30

@Martha We just put together a new, super-cool "rocketship fort" this weekend because he outgrew this swing.

Martha

The niece at work. :)

Vitaly

I have just recently learned what Tupperware parties are. Wish I could unlearn.

Martha

Join the club, Vitaly.

Though actually, I don't know anyone who has held an actual Tupperware Tupperware party. Instead, they have Princess House parties, or those stupid candle parties, or other useless things. I mean, at least Tupperware makes useful and durable stuff.

Kit

@Martha Cripes, the fad these days is Lia Sophia jewelry, the Pampered Chef kitchenware, and some sort of sex toy pyramid scheme.

Is it just me or is it freezing in here? Think I'll have a cuppa. Anyone else?

Martha

None for me, the landlord turns off the air conditioning at 5:00 p.m. on the dot, so this place goes from Arctic to Sahara by 6:00.

Nobody invites me to sex toy pyramid schemes. Sniff.

Kit

00:39

@Martha The next time you come to visit, I'll have a friend arrange one especially for you.

If that's not too creepy.

Martha

Holy somethin': we have three ladies and one gentleman in the chatroom currently. (Not counting the grayed-out folks at the end of the list.)

Kit

That's remarkable!

Martha

@Kit That's... that's... really... uh... nice of you... I think...

Kit

Hi @Maria C.

@Martha It's odd; it didn't seem creepy at all until I said "if that's not too creepy."

Martha

Well, I did ask for it. :D

Btw, I'm still laughing at your "Work! Knew I forgot something today." comment. :)

Kit

00:45

@Martha Thanks. I'm kind of slacking badly. I have technically been working without a contract for the last two days.

Even under the gun with this project, it's hard to be motivated when I'm not sure if I'm working for free.

Martha

I'm constantly having trouble with motivation. You can only be in 'emergency mode' for so long before deadlines become an amusing but irrelevant footnote.

Kit

Right now, I am wasting my time searching for and looking through early American plays to see if I can figure out what people used for a standard greeting.

Surprising what motivates us, huh?

Martha

Whereas I just spent an hour watching Victor Borge skits on YouTube, because I was reminded of his 'phonetic punctuation' skit by that question about pronouncing parentheses.

(Which question still needs two close votes. So hurry up and accrue some more rep so you can vote about such things.)

Kit

Somebody just nailed a deer outside my house.

Martha

With a car or a gun?

And either way, do you know anyone who's good at butchering? Because mmm... venison.

Kit

01:01

@Martha Car. We don't all have guns here, you know. And it's not deer season.

@Martha That's true. If she doesn't want it, I bet I know someone who does.

Martha

How much damage to the car?

Kit

@Martha Front passenger side is pretty mangled. They lost a headlight and can't open the door.

Martha

Lovely. So now they really have to butcher the deer, just as revenge, you know.

Vitaly

Even though it was obvious from the HTOED shots, I shall point it out that “Howdy” (“How do ye?”) predates “How do you do?” by more than a century. Which is rather amusing, since I always thought it was the other way round, and that the former was a contraction of the latter.

Martha

Well, if you think about it, 'how do ye' is much more grammatical than 'how do you do'...

Vitaly

01:06

They apparently thought it ungrammatical, and added the extra ‘do’ to make it sound grammatical.

Martha

My reaction to "how do you do" tends to be "how do I do what?"

Kit

@Martha They have to put it down first. Poor bugger is still twitching.

Martha

Of course, I also tend to answer "how are you" with a factual description. I have to force myself at work to reply with a bland "I'm fine, and how are you".

@Kit At this time of year, I assume it's a young doe?

Poor thing, either way.

Kit

@Martha I didn't get a good look, but I think so.

Martha

Though not as poor as the owners of the car will be after the body work.

Kit

01:12

So I'm reading through this play and it has the joke of the man mis-hearing his friend. The word is "gallantry" and the man mistakes it for "girl huntry." Ah these early American witticisms.

Martha

Funny thing about deer - when we told our relatives in Hungary about the deer nuisance in our backyard, they totally assumed we must live somewhere very rural and back of beyond. When we told them the capital of the neighboring state (i.e. a big industrial city) is just across the river, they were floored. Deer in Europe are just not that numerous.

@Kit That's one of the things we have to teach folks in the SCA (medieval recreation group I belong to): just because it's old doesn't mean it's good.

Kit

That seems odd. I have the (mis)conception of most of continental Europe being like the Black Forest region, which in my mind's eye is thick with deer.

@Martha You belong to the SCA?

What house?

Martha

The East Kingdom doesn't do households too much.

I live in the Shire of Buckland Cross, but I mostly play further south, with Harthorn-dale.

(And I have now identified where I live pretty exactly. Perhaps I should edit. Naah.)

Kit

I have a friend who is in the Shire of Endewearde.

Vitaly

I am in Moscow. A sporadic butterfly catches my interest. I see appoximately 3.1 butterflies a year. And you are talking about deer. Meh.

Kit

01:19

Holla!

Martha

@Kit Yeah, that's the other end of the East Kingdom. Almost as far as you can get without hitting the new Principality of Tir Mara.

Kit

We have one use of "Holla!" as a greeting in 1787.

@Martha I was going to say that it must be pretty far away from where you are.

Martha

@Vitaly Well, I'm pretty sure New York City doesn't have a deer problem. So it's not the fact that you're in Moscow, it's the fact that you're in a city.

Kit

What's an aphetic dialect?

Vitaly

Apheresis (linguistics)

In phonetics, apheresis (; or , from Greek apo away, hairein to take) is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. Apheresis as a historical sound change In historical phonetics, the term "apheresis" is often but not always limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel. (The Oxford English Dictionary gives this particular kind of apheresis the name aphesis .) The loss of any sound *English [k]nife pronounced *Swedish [st]rand > Finnish ranta "beach" The loss of an unstressed vowel *Greek episkopos > Vulgar Latin [e]biscopu > E...

Kit

01:32

Ah. Thanks.

So that's how tarnation = eternal + damnation

Kit

01:46

@Vitaly You don't happen to know a searchable database of early American plays, do you?

Vitaly

Nay.

Robusto

01:59

@Vitaly — By the way, anent this, I do believe the Anglo-Saxon word scop (akin to bard, a singer of heroic songs such as Beowulf), may ultimately be derived from episkopos, which became biscop in OE (today's bishop). Episkopos of course meant "overseer"; and I like to think that scop meant "seer". Well, not bad for a folk etymology, ne?

Vitaly

o.o

Kit

02:19

@Robusto Isn't there an expression like "putting food on the table" or something that's along the lines of what totoro is asking?

Kit

02:31

@Cerberus How did I miss your beautiful essay on ligatures? Very pretty.

Night all.

Robusto

@Kit — Well, food isn't for wearing, unless you're Lady Gaga.

Vitaly

WordNet is mostly used by computational linguists and computer scientists. Does the fact that I find it and derivations thereof useful for language learning mean I am a Turing machine?

Dori

02:56

@Jez Got it, thanks.

Cerberus

03:08

Hai!

@Kit Thanks, you are too kind.

Hey, do you guys know the userscript that lets you draw on pictures on SE?

The drawing is permanent, and visible to everybody!

It does require editing rights to the question/answer you want to edit a picture in.

59

Q: StackExchange™ SuperCollider Freehand Circle™ Editor - [Now supported on EVERY StackExchange site!]

Important: All SE sites (with one exception - see below) are now supported. Please upgrade to the latest version to enjoy this wonderful new feaure! A special thank you to Jacob Jernigan for donating space and bandwidth to host the images generated by this script. Please...

This is the most amazing, cool, fun, and highly useful script I have ever seen.

Vitaly

Yo.

Cerberus

Yo!

So many interesting things to discover in the world of Internet...

Are you using any userscripts on SE?

Vitaly

No.

Speaking of the Internet, I am being amazed with this right now: image-net.org

Cerberus

Nice.

It doesn't have Amsterdam yet...

Vitaly

I wish it had been there when I started learning English.

Cerberus

03:21

Aww...

Vitaly

That kind of stuff seems to be immensely useful for people who want to acquire vocabulary without ever using a bilingual dictionary.

Cerberus

How old were you when you began learning English?

Brb refresh.

Vitaly

Well, if they have brains specifically wired for processing hierarchic networks. :D

Cerberus

Heh.

Pictures are very helpful if you don't know anything about a language.

Later on, words become more useful in most cases, though probably not with plants, food, animals, that sort of things.

Vitaly

Feb 2 at 21:26, by Vitaly

I care enough to fix my nonsense, but I just don't know better. I have been studying English in earnest for 3 to 4 years at best, so my command of the language is kind of limited. :-/

How much do you think it would cost to hire a bunch of illustrators to illustrate meronymy for WordNet++ and a bunch of lexicographers/people/IDK to improve the meronymy part of WordNet?

Cerberus

03:32

Ah, I remember. Well, you have made formidable progress in those few years!

Meronymy? Is that the collection of content words?

Vitaly

You know where to look up meronym. ;P

Anyway, surely OUP could afford it?

Cerberus

I looked it up in Wikipedia (ashamed), but it appears to mean the relation between one word's belonging to a class and another's being the name of the class? How would you illustrate that?

Vitaly

Whisker, tail, paw are meronyms for cat. So, draw a vector cat, create closed paths to outline the whiskers, paws, and the tail, and annotate them.

Cerberus

Right.

So meronymy is the relation between cat and whiskers.

You want to illustrate the relation?

Or just both the parts and the whole?

Vitaly

…

Ok, 5 min.

Cerberus

03:41

Oops, I didn't see your edit.

Oh, the kind of pictures they use in some learner's books, I see!

Yes, that would be great. But... I imagine you'd need either a lot of separate, one-item pictures if you want to illustrate all concrete nouns from Wordnet, or perhaps pictures with semi-arbitrary groups of things on them.

In short, how much would it cost to draw all nouns that refer to concrete objects? I have no idea, but it would probably be quite a lot, considering that many illustrators will have no idea what many plants and animals look like, and, well, the sheer number. Still, it might be feasible.

Vitaly

I see you got it. No need for me to struggle with drawing a cat.

Cerberus

Aww. Is that what you were going to do?

Vitaly

That would have been the easiest way to explain what I mean.

Or it might be dynamic pictures (Flash? JS/HTML5?) instead of static pictures.

So that you point your mouse cursor to some part of a cat, and it displays an outline and a name for that part.

If the pictures are vector in the first place, a lot of them would be re-usable.

You could place the tail into a separate PictoNet entry without any loss in image quality. And maybe add a few quick details.

Cerberus

Hmm could be interesting.

But if they just reused old illustrations from various sources, it would probably be much cheaper...

Vitaly

“Illustrations from various sources” are not vector.

Come to think of it, it might even be profitable…

Cerberus

03:56

Oh?

Vitaly

For it would be used not by pineapples only, but also by growing-up kids.

Cerberus

(I can see why vector drawings will appeal to the technically minded; but reused drawings would be both cheaper and prettier, in many cases.)

Vitaly

They have visual encyclopedias (e.g.) now, but those are not interactive.

I think vector drawings are prettier. :P

Cerberus

True... so what would be the main advantage of vector drawings and interactivity?

Brb.

Vitaly

Scalability, ease-of-use, I think.

Anent the first, not everyone uses the same type of screen; there are PDAs, tablets, laptops, 30″ screens, OLED wallpapers hypothetically, etc, etc.

Interactivity is a time-saver. That's kind of valuable in the modern world.

Cerberus

04:05

Hmmm...

@Vitaly As long as the text is scalable, and the image just shrunk the crude way, it should normally work all right? They would never shrink beyond the size of a cell phone screen...

@Vitaly Okay, but how would the interactivity of these images work?

The typical thesaurial tree diagrams could be used, with an image attached to each node?

That'd be cool.

Vitaly

I am thinking more like multi-levelled illustrations (and vector graphics comes in handy here). Suppose you are searching for the Parthenon in the textual part of the thesaurus, it displays an illustration of it, you move your cursor to it and it highlights a column (or the roof, the entablature, whatever), you click on it, it zooms in and you can highlight the chapiter, the plinth, the shaft or whatever

Oh, and there is one more advantage of vector graphics over photographic pictures: the latter contain too much visual noise, whereas the former are neat and tidy and proud

Cerberus

"Proud", haha.

I suppose that Parthenon thing would be cool...

Vitaly

And then you click on the entablature, it zooms in and you can highlight the cornice, the frieze, or the architrave

Cerberus

Those are the kind of diagrams most encyclopedias have as well, including Wikipedia.

Vitaly

04:21

Tell it to a kid or someone who is just learning the language ;)

Cerberus

But what if "Parthenon" gave you a node, leading to, amongst other things, another node "Greek temple", and if that node were a static picture with all those elements annotated, and if you could click on the text label of each element to go to another node, about the element itself? I.e. if the links worked from word to word, not from image to image, the images being just attachments to each word—not as pretty as your thing, but still reasonably effective?

Vitaly

Photographic images or vector images?

Cerberus

Photographic.

But with arrows pointing at the various elements, and each arrow having a clickable text label.

Vitaly

1. Visual noise. No thanks. 2. It's not very difficult to imagine that the photographs for a cat and for a cat's paw don't match. And to make it even worse, it could be a bear's paw. 3. Adding part highlights to the photographs would be exactly as time-consuming as drawing vector versions of those photographs from scratch.

And if you don't add highlights, there is no way to tell whether an arrow points to a whisker, or the muzzle, or the jaw, or the cheek.

Cerberus

1. I was rather thinking of the illustrations found in encyclopaedias than photos.

Vitaly

04:31

@Cerberus The illustrations found in modern print encyclopedias are originally vector, as opposed to drawn with pen and paper. Also, those are not photographic.

Cerberus

2. Not sure what you mean...

3. I think it would still be quite time consuming but considerably less so than drawing the images from scratch, At any rate I wasn't proposing highlighting: the arrows found in conventional encyclopaedias work OK...

Vitaly

@Cerberus No they don't! Not for me. I was always frustrated with ambiguous arrows as a kid.

Cerberus

@Vitaly Okay, well, perhaps a bit of scientific testing would be interesting: have a hundred learners memorize a hundred words, one group with vectorized images, the other with conventional ones from encyclopaedias.

@Vitaly Aww... to be honest I don't quite remember learning through such images.

Miss

"i am trying to post qustion on this site " is right or

Cerberus

Except a few more complicated ones like your Greek temple, and there the 400-year-old drawings still work fine for me!

Miss

04:36

"............. in this site " is right

Cerberus

On.

Miss

hmm ok

Cerberus

And it should be "a question".

Miss

hm m

Cerberus

And hi!

Miss

04:37

hi

Cerberus

This one is still cool!

I must be off to bed...

Adios!

Vitaly

05:08

Later.

ThudanBlunder

10:40

Hi, I am a new member. My simple question asking for a synonym was rejected for the reason "It does not meet our quality standards." How can that be? I got the same when I asked in Meta. Thanks in advance for any tips.

Robusto

11:01

@ThudanBlunder: Can you link to it?

@RegDwight: This surely is a dupe of about a hundred questions:

1

Q: Capitalization of "Theorem 1" and so on in mathematics papers.

In many mathematics papers I read sentences like "...with an appeal to Theorem 4.5 we get...". My question is, is the capitalization of theorem in this case correct? If it is correct why do we capitalize the word?

capitalization

Jez

It didn't used to have been there.

^ what meaning does that sentence have? it sounds wrong, the 'have been' bit

Robusto

See the comment under my answer there.

RegDwight

@Robusto Um... possibly. But not of the one you pointed out, methinks.

He's talking about capitalizing Theorem in the middle of a sentence.

That other question is about titles.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Yeah, I see. Well, I'll have to keep looking.

@RegDwight: Can we chat privately for a moment?

Jez

didn't used to have been wanting to have been having to have had need of needing to want...

Robusto

11:14

@RegDwight: I got in and then it booted me.

ThudanBlunder

@Robusto: How can I link to a question that is rejected??

Robusto

If it's closed and not deleted, just right-click on the link and copy the address, then paste it into chat.

RegDwight

You can actually post links to deleted stuff, too. It's just that only 10k users will be able to access them.

ThudanBlunder

It is not closed because it was never opened. For your info the question title is 'Synonym' Synonym? and the question itself is "Does there exist a synonym for 'synonym'?". Can you see any problem with that?

Robusto

I can't find it using a search, sorry.

RegDwight

11:25

2

A: I can't ask a question. The website keeps giving me "Sorry, we can't accept this question."

There are certain quality filters we apply to incoming questions. Make sure your question has a clear title a reasonable explanation of what your question is, sharing your research on the matter correct use of English and actual sentences Also, if your question is so brief that it could be ...

Robusto

But possibly it was a duplicate.

RegDwight

@Robusto He's talking about not being able to post it in the first place.

Robusto

Oh.

RegDwight

@ThudanBlunder Check out that answer by Jeff Atwood.

ThudanBlunder

I get verbatim: Oops! Your question couldn't be submitted because:

It does not meet our quality standards.

RegDwight

11:28

Well, your question is only nine words long (including the title, prepositions and articles), and four of those words are the same: "synonym". I can totally see why the quality filter doesn't like it.

Robusto

@ThundaBlunda: For the record, NOAD lists alternate, substitute, alternative, equivalent, and euphemism as synonyms of synonym.

ThudanBlunder

@RegDwight: Thank you for help. 'Quality filter'? So we now have programs deciding the quality of sentences? Good job Joyce can't log on. Anyway, I previously repeated the question as the title, but with the same result. Never mind.

@Robusto: As synonym literally means the same name, I wouldn't say your suggestions are synonyms.

Robusto

11:47

@ThudanBlunder — Huh? Then according to your definition of synonym there can be no synonyms. :)

z7sg

Apparently if you say this in German it means something: When birds birds behind birds birds birds birds after.

Robusto

@z7sg — <takes notes>

Kit

Morning.

I earned my first silver badge last night.

@Vitaly This sounds really awesome. Are you working on this for real or for hobby?

z7sg

That's what it's all about. Collecting shiny things.

Kit

@z7sg It's a little exciting. Not as exciting as it will be when I finally find my answer.

Robusto

12:02

@Kit — [Rings a tiny silver bell in celebration]

RegDwight

@z7sg No. When birds copulate behind birds, birds copulate behind birds.

I like the Buffalo sentence better.

Kit

@Robusto Thanks. I think you just gave a angel his wings, though.

RegDwight

It's much harder to figure out on the first run.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Do buffalo copulate behind Buffalo? Like, in Lake Ontario?

z7sg

Sure, I know what it means really. That's just what google comes up with. I wouldn't translate vögeln as copulate either though, it's a bit more vulgar I think.

RegDwight

12:07

@Robusto You're much closer to it, go and check. I'll wait.

Robusto

@RegDwight — See, if you had bothered to invade my back yard already you could check for yourself.

z7sg

Germans can't get close to the buffalo sentence.

RegDwight

@Robusto You're right, as usual.

Too bad my plans to destroy America are of a higher priority.

Robusto

Yeah, and how is that working out for you?

RegDwight

As if I'm tellin ya.

Pah!

On a totally unrelated note, GLU has its first suspension.

For a level of discourse that... well, lemme just say that I've never seen anything like that on this site.

z7sg

12:13

Who what?! I didn't notice anything.

Kit

What's the Buffalo sentence?

z7sg

@Kit "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

Kit

@RegDwight (making notes)

RegDwight

36

A: Awkward sounding but grammatically correct sentences?

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

@Kosmonaut, this is related to your interests:

1

Q: Wonach richtet sich das Geschlecht eines Anglizismus?

Wenn ich das Geschlecht eines Anglizismus bestimmen muss orientiere ich mich an 3 Gegebenheiten: Hat das Wort ein echtes Geschlecht (the mare, die Stute)? Welches Geschlecht hat die Übersetzung im Deutschen Nach welchem Geschlecht klingt das Wort Ersteres erscheint mir verbindlich, aber die ...

translation gender

Kit

@z7sg Eek. I didn't need that this morning. I'll try again later.

Jez

12:24

such a nice day out and i'm in this office (and it smalls sweaty :-( )

what i wanna know is, where do all those half-naked people walking along outside work?

Robusto

@Jez — I pay them to walk around outside your office and distract you from your duties.

Jez

nah, not around my office, i work on a converted barnhouse. :-) youngest woman around here is about 40.

RegDwight

@Robusto You're doing it wrong. You should be paying them to walk around outside of your own office.

Robusto

@Jez That's all I could afford to spend on you.

RegDwight

Actually, make that inside your office.

And "walk" doesn't sound optimal, either.

Robusto

12:36

@RegDwight — Yeah, well, if I were a rich man ...

@RegDwight: So how do you feel German.SE is working out so far? Everything you'd hoped for?

RegDwight

I dunno, too early to say. Right now there are lots of questions that are basically verbatim copies of our oldest/most popular questions.

Robusto

I wonder if it would be the same for any language?

Kosmonaut

29 mins ago, by RegDwight

@Kosmonaut, this is related to your interests:

Very interested, no idea of the answer.

RegDwight

Awkward sentences, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite radio stations.

I actually tried to kill a few of those, but the community rebelled.

Well, one person on meta.

Who got five upvotes for saying that it's too early to kill them, which is actually a good point.

Robusto

A rebellion? That doesn't sound very German.

RegDwight

12:45

So I reopened that one question and never touched the rest.

Robusto

Ah, you're a mod there too?

RegDwight

Ayup.

Robusto

I don't know how I feel about sharing you with others.

RegDwight

RegDwight ♦, Europe, GMT+1

742 1 13

expressions translation single-word-request meaning grammar perfect-participle letter

Don't worry, by the time there are pro-tem elections, everyone will hate me so much))))

Kosmonaut

@Robusto We're getting into a weird area here.

Kit

12:46

@Robusto I don't like it, personally.

Robusto

Hahaha.

RegDwight

@Kosmonaut No, you are getting into a weird area in your head.

Whoever smelt it, dealt it.

Kit

@RegDwight Not it.

Robusto

It seems like evidence that @RegDwight can't commit to one SE site. Maybe we should try working on the relationship. See a counselor or something.

RegDwight

Me, I just love nurses in drag. Nuthin wrong with it, innit?

@Robusto Actually, my commitment to GLU was released just the other day. They even paid me 50 reps on Area51.

Kit

12:48

0

Q: Capitalising a sentence whose first word is explicitly uppercase

Hi. Let's say that you have a word that should be typed with leading lowercase letter. Perhaps it's a computer command. Perhaps it's an Internet nickname. I can't find any more serious examples. When you put that word at the beginning of a sentence, should you capitalise it? cat allows you...

capitalization

Didn't we just answer this?

RegDwight

@Kit The title makes no sense, does it?

Kit

@Robusto Personally, I'm okay with him being on other sites, as long as he still gives our site priority.

RegDwight

2

Q: Should I change the structure of a sentence/add filler words to make sure that the sentence always starts with a capital letter?

Here is a quote from a book on C++ ("for", "while" and "do" are keywords in many languages, and in most languages they have to be in lower case. The C++ language is one of those.): Simply put, algorithm names suggest what they do. "for", "while", and "do" don't. One cannot write "For" inste...

capitalization

Kit

@RegDwight No, it doesn't but--

RegDwight

1

Q: Capitalization of names that begin lowercased, at the beginning of a sentence

Possible Duplicates: How Should Trademarks be Written? How do you capitalize a proper noun such as “iPhone”? Many products these days have names that intentionally begin with lowercase letters. The most common examples are of the Apple "iDevice" variety, but there are so...

capitalization proper-nouns

Robusto

12:50

@Kit — So you're one of those "open relationship" types? Those never work out, you know.

Kit

@RegDwight Yes. And that one about "E.g." that I can't find.

9

Q: When a sentence starts with e.g., should the e be capitalized?

When a sentence starts with e.g., should the e be capitalized? Neverminding that it might be better to start with "For example," ... Thinking of SE posts and comments, should the starting e be capitalized?

capitalization

There.

RegDwight

Well, that one is arguably different.

E.g. and e.g. are the exact same thing. Foo() and foo() aren't.

Kit

@RegDwight That's a very good point.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Unless you're using a case-insensitive language.

RegDwight

Sure.

Kit

12:55

Does Mitch always take things so literally, or am I just missing his sense of humor? english.stackexchange.com/q/28379/8360

@Robusto But who does that these days?

Jez

if a sentence starts with e.g. it's probably invalid grammar. e.g. like this one.

Robusto

@Kit — Didn't VB allow for case insensitivity? I had a boss a while back who insisted that case-sensitivity in languages was a bug, not a feature.

CSS used to be case-insensitive once upon a time, IIRC. Depending on the doctype, I think. IDK, that was so long ago, like 2003 or something.

Jez

@Robusto in a file system, it is.

Kit

@Robusto Not the VB I work in, but I started in 6, so maybe prior to that.

Robusto

Didn't you have to set option explicit to make VB go all case-sensitive on your ass?

Kit

12:58

Urgh. I really detest this colleague's use of the construction "So I can't actually do anything with your site right now -- correct?"

That's right, doucheknuckle. It's still in development!

Take your beta and leave me alone.

@Robusto That sounds vaguely familiar.

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