English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Cerberus everybody had trouble. poetry and obscure neologisms. nobody talks like that!

@RegDwigнt I hesitate between supporting Lawler's comment and that of Shoe.

@Mitch You still understood more of it than I from Persian poetry!

I guarantee.

@Cerberus of course you hesitate. The point is the OP shouldn't.

Your hesitating is fine with me and with Prof. Lawler.

@RegDwigнt The OP probably shouldn't be using it, I agree.

If you don't know what a fragment is, what's the point of being alerted of them?

7:24 PM

Anyone can read about it and learn what an incomplete sentence is.

@Cerberus all it takes is one unrecognized word per sentence to lose all meaning. One word in one sentence, you can figure out the intention of that one word by context and you have the ability to roll that word over and over in your head to learn its meaning. Two words in one sentence, you don't know enough to narrow it down for both of them.

It all depends.

If there's one word misunderstood from every sentence, there's no way to catch up. That's what Shakespeare is like

I've read enough texts where I had to skip several words in a sentence and still understand part of it, or the gist.

@Shoe Speaking of the Devil! Welcome.

well, that's your business.

that's what you're paid for.

7:26 PM

@Mitch I wouldn't say that...it depends on many things.

@Cerberus and then you go back and bam! two pages ago someone eated a dragon. Interesting!

well, the foreign culture also removes context from things.

That is possible!

Then again, people shouldn't eatan dragons.

@Mitch Yes, context is key, as usual.

It's a phantasy book for a reason.

And eatan is Old English. We have moved on, dude.

Wait, when?

A: “Comment on something” or “comment something”?

7:31 PM

When Reagan died.

-1

Amazing ! I just got 3500 RP code for totally FREE ! Come and download code too http://RiotPoint.eu/ <<

Nice.

Is that a new thing?

Does that change how we should handle spam?

Like defacing?

I don't know if it is a thing, much less if it's new.

I've never seen that before.

Cerberus. Thanks. First contribution here; was interested to read comments on the latest meta post about the site changes. I agree that the grammar checker is not a good tool in the hands of those suffering from what the good folks at Language Log call 'nervous cluelessness' about grammar. But I find it useful to have it on if I'm writing a quick email, that I nevertheless want to get right.

And .eu? Seriously? Who the f even plays LoL outside of Korea?

7:35 PM

It's also good in my English classes when my ESL learners are doing some writing. If they get the dreaded green squiggly and don't know what's wrong, they can call me over to tell them. In an estimated 90% of the cases Word is right.

Tweened!

And hello.

I get squigglies under absolutely everything. And them ain't even green.

I suspect Word thinks you're writing German!

My English is so most very much superior, any and every software instagivesup.

@Shoe hint: I am not chatting with you from within Word.

And I don't want to know if there are people who do.

Ah. I also suspect you are not numbered among the nervous clueless.

I tried to get numbered, but got assigned the OVER 9000.

So I walked away.

7:41 PM

Believe or not, this is my first foray into a chat forum. I 'm feeling a bit pressured to maintain the jovial repartee.

Speaking of which, you have to excuse the peace and quiet, the room is usually on fire and no human or bot can keep up with so much as reading it all.

I suppose everyone's too shy right now.

@Shoe Hi! 90 %, really? That's high.

Ah there we go, someone kicked the hell puppy.

@RegDwigнt Install an English dictionary and/or set the language of the input box to E.

@Cerberus yes and why would I do any such thing if my English does not even suffer from every single word's getting underlined?

7:43 PM

@Shoe First time ever, as in, in your life?

You may consider this page a quickly updating comment thread, then.

I'm trying to remember who else had never chatted before showing up here.

@RegDwigнt kicks square hippo

The hippo ain't square, your glasses are all foggy from the hurricane.

@RegDwigнt But it does. I see the squiggles.

Glasses again.

7:45 PM

@RegDwigнt Maybe...Fumble Fingers?

@Cerberus yeah something like that.

8 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

Seriously, someone who's quite a regular now.

Really?

@Cerberus I only see blue butterflies.

7:46 PM

You must be wearing your blue Lego bricklets.

@Cerberus. Indeed yes. As to the 90%, my students are typically in their first or second year of learning English and make the expected mistakes of subject-verb agreement, word order, missing articles, etc. Word's good on those.

@Shoe Ah OK, I guess if the sentences are short and the simple mistakes many...

When I learned English we still used paper and a pen. And books. Though I guess Word actually existed already.

(See, now it might get "sentence are" as in my previous line before correction.)

@RegDwigнt But it wasn't used by normal people, was it?

We used Word Perfect. Which was like Word, except Perfect.

Right. Even Microsoft agrees that Word isn't perfect.

QED

7:48 PM

And Perfect to a computer geek meant "you have to learn over 9000 hotkeys by heart or you're going to accidentally explode your computer".

I only knew save and exit, I think.

Hello

Well I programmed my computer's beeper to play For Elise, in Turbo Pascal.

Italics, never!

@Andy Welcome!

@RegDwigнt Geek.

And by "my computer" I mean "one of the 3-MB monsters at our school".

Can anyone help me revise a small paragraph?

7:49 PM

We can try. I was going to leave but I can squeeze a few snarky comments in.

Okay, so I have a portfolio of 4 essays. And more than one person is going to read and grade it. So I have to write a cover letter, which I did. But I am having trouble writing the conclusion, and thanking the person for reading my portfolio.
I have this as a conclusion:
In the end, I want to thank you deeply from the bottom of my heart for looking over my portfolio and reading my papers. I understand that you have to read many papers in one day, so I tried to make my papers as readable as possible.

You can always try and post it, and tell people what bits you aren't sure of.

Looks fine to me except that "deeply from the bottom of my heart" is a bit too much for my tastes.

@RegDwigнt do you recommend me removing "deeply from the bottom of my heart"?

I'm not sure how one can thank deeply in the first place. So just go with "thank you from the bottom of my heart" if a simple "thank you" won't do.

7:51 PM

I've not looked into it, but I naively assume that the checker has got better in each new version of Word. Maybe those who last used it a few years ago should give it another go. Ok, papers to grade. Nice chatting!

@Shoe Bye!

The thing is, if you really are aware that that person has to read so much stuff in one day, you really should be keeping yours short, right? Your not wasting additional time of theirs would be the best kind of thanks they can expect.

What Reg says. I'm also not sure I would say "in the end" to mean "lastly" rather than "at last".

Good point.

@Cerberus So do you recommend me changing "in the end" to "at last"?

7:55 PM

No, he recommends changing it into "lastly".

No, to "lastly"...or just leave it out.

"At last" and "in the end" mean something slightly different. You wouldn't use that to simply enumerate points/topics in a letter.

I'm also not sure what you mean by readable: aren't you making yourself a compliment?

Maybe "succinct" is more neutral?

Yes, "succinct" makes more sense.

OK.

Okay, all of people. Your suggestions are very helpful. I love all the advice that you're giving me about my writing. However is there somewhere where I can get feedback on the whole paper?

I'm afraid not.

7:59 PM

I wouldn't know a precise address. I know that there are all kinds of crowd-sourcing sites that do that, but I couldn't so much as name one.

They are usually based on reciprocity, too, so you'd have to revise others' stuff first.

That is a lot of work, something people with skill and experience usually get paid for...

@RegDwigнt Oh, that's interesting.

What happens if I posted on this site?

@RegDwigнt But then it would have to be between people of the same level.

@Andy It would be closed.

@Cerberus Well lots of people with skill and experience are also usually get paid for what we do on Stack Exchange, or on Wikipedia, or even just on Flickr, really.

@Andy You can ask about specific constructions or even word choices, depending on the word. Although actually, ELL is intended for this. But never a whole paper.

8:01 PM

Okay, now I have this:
I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for looking over my portfolio and reading my papers. I understand that you have to read many papers in one day, so I tried to make my papers succinct.

@Andy yeah there's even a specific close reason that says "proofreading is off-topic unless you can nail it down to exactly one clearly identified issue".

@RegDwigнt But the proportion seems to be a lot smaller here.

I.e. there are a lot more people willing to answer specific questions for free than proofread papers for free.

@Andy I want the second "my papers" to be a simple "mine".

@Cerberus well yes, more work is more.

@RegDwigнt so like "...no my mistake

@RegDwigнt More work at once.

8:03 PM

@Andy nonono, the second "my papers".

> I understand that you have to read many papers in one day, so I tried to make mine succinct.

+1 would upvote

@Cerberus yes.

I.e. there are a lot more people willing to answer one specific question for free than answer ten specific questions for free.

@RegDwigнt Yes I got it. Thanks for the clarification.

Ten at once, yes.

No prob.

8:04 PM

We want little bites to nibble on.

I once answered OVER 9000 questions at once. With a single "yes". A+++ would do again.

Was that when you had ordered over 9000 Barbie dolls from Ebay, when it came time to give feedback?

Okay, Thank you all very much. I appreciate all of your help, and I thank you for taking the time and helping me with my essay.

►

Turns out Hollywood had a camera running in my room for the occasion.

@Andy Good luck!

8:08 PM

I also order my Barbie dolls all from the same source, so your comment doesn't even make sense!

@RegDwigнt That is not how I imagined God, let alone a Lego hippo.

Anyway. As I was saying, I was going to leave and now I am going to execute.

Lators.

@RegDwigнt You have to give individual feedback for several items from the same seller, don't you?

OK bye.

@Cerberus actually they changed it years ago such that it only counts once if it's all from the same seller all within some amount of time.

You could leave 42 feedbacks but he'd only get 1 reps.

Oh, really? That makes sense, I suppose.

Oh.

But do the 42 feedbacks all show up in his list?

8:11 PM

@Cerberus yeah except to all the people who are too late to the party. Those guys who were there straight from the beginning got to play by the old rules and you have to play by new ones now. No fair.

@Cerberus yes.

Then you still get to type 9000 feedbacks, yay!

You mean you still get to copypaste 8999.

Why copypaste when you can be creative?

Trust me, nobody can be creative with 80-character comments 9000 times in a row.

Even I can't. That says it all.

But now I must go look up the meaning of "really", "leave", and "already" in a dictionary of my choice.

How can I say,"My writing has improved a little bit."
Without using "a little bit."

8:19 PM

"Somewhat"?

Hello Cerberus how are you? Are you fine?

@Cerberus okay, but I was looking for something in between tremendously and a little bit.

Cerberus???????????????????

8:44 PM

Cerberus???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

8:56 PM

bangs head on desk

For the past few weeks, there are probably 10 edit attempts per day. Even now after NReilingh was kind enough to edit my answer to bring it up to snuff. I'm pretty tired of the notifications about it, and I can't delete the answer. I don't see what the big issue is about protecting it, because it would solve the problem completely. If you won't protect it, please delete my account for this stack. — cornbread ninja 15 secs ago

Whaddya gonna do?

Wow, @Cerb is in demand. I can't remember the last time I've seen 59 question marks in a row like that. Good thing he ain't married to her.

:D

9:30 PM

@Robusto You've counted them?

No, of course not.

You can just say "yes", since you know I'm not going to count them myself.

I just copied them and pasted them into the console like this: "???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????".length

Try it. It will give you the number 59.

"For the past few weeks, there are probably 10 edit attempts per day. Even now after NReilingh was kind enough to edit my answer to bring it up to snuff. I'm pretty tired of the notifications about it, and I can't delete the answer. I don't see what the big issue is about protecting it, because it would solve the problem completely. If you won't protect it, please delete my account for this stack".length

= 398

Oh shit. I don't have that stuff anymore.

Limerick Machine: Workdays

What stuff? A console?

Stack Exchange

9:32 PM

posted on December 05, 2013 by sgdi

I work for eight hours each day For someone who’s willing to pay I sit and type A whole lotta shite At least I get lunch at midday

@Robusto Yup.

How not?

I don't do that anymore.

But you're using a browser, ne?

Um, yeah.

9:33 PM

So open the console.

Which browser are you using?

FF. F10?

I can't remember. I used firebug usually.

Nope.

F12.

That's it.

Firebug, as excellent a tool as it was, has been superseded and obsoleted by native tools in FF and Chrome.

Yup. 59.

in FF use CONTROL + SHIFT + J

Or F12.

9:35 PM

Yeah. F12 is what I use.

I've got a question for you, but I've got to do something first. Are you hanging about for a bit?

In FF, F12 opens the Inspector tab, but you can get to the console from there.

@KitFox I'll be here a while.

OK. brb

@Robusto That's better.

See? Now you've learned a trick. Good doggy! Give yourself a treat.

9:38 PM

The trick is that you know I won't check.

But the trick is so easy. I would think you'd be interested in a lazy person's way of doing something.

I am in fact now going through my bookmarkets. One says "count text in selection", but it doesn't seem to work.

Another one says "count text in text box"...

Doesn't work either.

So @Rob, I need some advice on how to interact with a person at work. I thought you might have some protips for me.

We're not really getting hats, are we?

I mean, besides telling me not to do it.

9:41 PM

@KitFox Shoot.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Yes, we are getting hats.

k.

@Robusto So one of my projects has all of one programmer on it. He is territorial and possessive. He is arrogant to hide his insecurity and it is hard to determine his skillset because he doesn't cop to his limitations.

Sounds like a problem.

Yeah. I'm not sure how to interact with him to encourage cooperation.

For instance, I would like to suggest that he parse the search string, but I don't know how to do it in a way that he would consider actually considering it.

Because, for one thing, that's not my role in the project. Which is something I also have to remind myself of. I don't develop anymore.

9:46 PM

@KitFox By "search string" do you mean the query string of a URL (which is referred to by the location object as simply the search)?

I don't know the dynamics very well, but it feels like everyone who knows anything about the project is exasperated.

@Robusto The text in the "search" box of this particular webpage.

Parse it how?

I think you are thinking of the details too much.

But just breaking it into tokens by splitting it on the spaces.

And then searching the terms separately.

Well. Conjunctively.

That's simple to do in Javascript.

Yes. I know.

9:48 PM

So why can't you tell him to do that? Doesn't he know how?

I don't know if he knows how, but he hasn't done it.

I probably should have mentioned that the project is a search page redesign.

And it appears to match the entire content of the search box as a single string.

I think this is not helpful.

What appears to match the entire content of the search box?

Whatever his search query does.

OK, it's obvious he's a prick. He may be a prick because he's incompetent, or he may just be a prick. Either way, he's going to feel threatened by any challenge to his ability. If you are in a position of power over him, just tell him to do it. If not, you have to use other means.

I'm not in any kind of position to tell him to do it. I just started here, for one, and for two, I'm a BA, not uh. Whatever I'd have to be to be in charge of it.

9:53 PM

Hi

Hi.

@KitFox BA? Bachelor of Arts?

Oh, Business Analyst.

RIP Nelson Mandela.

@Robusto No, no. BadAss.

Not even a chuckle?

sighs

Huh-huh.

Sorry, I stepped away for a bit.

9:57 PM

It's OK. I can't be on all the time.

Anyway, does he have a superior?

I guess so.

They just recently reorganized everyone.

Do you have meetings with other people involved?

There isn't anyone else involved, except the project manager.

Well, and the stakeholders.

Hi, everybody.

10:01 PM

Hi.

@KitFox I would ask the guy directly about the issue. Then if he got all inflammatory, ask again in a public forum. Either a meeting or email with cc to PM and stakeholders.

I am a new user and I have a question, if anyone would be so kind as to answer?

@RegDwigнt Yeah, it really is a pity, although I am not surprised.

@SusanGerard Always!

Surprised would be the completely wrong word, yes.

@Robusto Mmyokay. Thanks.

10:03 PM

He had a good run.

I am blindly downvoted, without explaination of why my answer is bad or wrong. Is this common? I would like help in making my answers better.

I'm afraid it is.

And there is little you can do.

I was hoping downvoters would explain their reasoning

the editing of comments is very helpful

@SusanGerard I wouldn't want to hang from a rope until that happened.

but I get the feeling that maybe I'm being downvoted for personal od competitive reasons

10:06 PM

Is there a pattern of downvotes?

@Robusto funny!

umm, it seems to happen immediately after I post an answer, within seconds

I don't see a lot of downvoted answers on your profile (or at least they aren't obvious). About how many do you think have been downvoted?

I don't mind losing points, but would like to have a chance to improve my answers, and downvotes are discouraging

only five or six maybe

but I have only answered maybe 25 questions

Thnk you, @KitFox, for looking.

So, just shrug it off and hope for the best? I'm really enjoying this site.

People are encouraged to comment when they vote down, but they usually don't. I often don't do it either, when I am not in the mood, or don't have time, or don't think it will help.

Then there is also the fear or a revenge down-vote that keeps people from commenting when they vote you down.

OK. I will look to the edits, then, to help me improve.

that makes sense!

@Cerberus, thanks!

I would not downvote unless I explained why, and I read that downvotes should be used judiciously.

10:16 PM

So this happens to everyone, me too.

Then I'll try not to let it bother me, and hope to keep giving better answers. Thanks, everyone.

Especially the first sounds like a good idea!

It's part of the job...

:-)

After a while, you'll learn not to take down-votes personally and shrug them off.

10:35 PM

Hi

Why don't you answer? I'm very sad Cerberus

Well, I will answer you when I'm there.

Not when I'm doing other things.

What things?

Things.

Hmm

The men in this world faced endless toil. What does it mean?

Faced ~= experienced.

Or "had to deal with".

10:46 PM

But as a boy, Sanders was also exposed to soldiers on military bases, and he came to view soldiering as the only available alternative to a life of toil__the warrior, faced not with toil, but with waiting, killing, and death.

What don't you understand?

All of the them please tell me all the details about these sentences

he came to view=believe that It's correct or not?

exposed=introduce ??

"He came to view x as y" = "his opinion changed; from then on, he considered x to be y".

@IceGirl Have you looked up "expose" on dictionary.com?

No