@Mitch Day 6 of shorts weather here. We might get a dusting tonight but not even a foot, so it's back to shorts again by Thursday latest for the foreseeable future.
@crl Well, you could spell it Maximilians or if there are really a lot of them even Maxibillions, but then people might look at you funny cuz they wouldn't get it. Keep it simple though and they just might Get Smarts. Or maybe not.
Quick question, I want to interrupt a sentence in this manner: X - Even if it applied to Y - couldn't be used here. should I use dashes or commas here?
Or should I just bracket it? X (even if it applied to Y) couldn't be used here.
@200_success: So let me get this straight: you know better than the OP what he wants to know? Bearing in mind that he specifically asks for "a nicer alternative phrase?" — Robusto2 mins ago
@Robusto I'm happy that you managed to read the OP's mind despite the fact that the question was poorly written. The discrepancy between the stated question and the accepted answer also needed to be pointed out to for future readers. We can disagree civilly; name-calling is uncalled for, and a violation of SE rules.
But I still maintain that it's pretty arrogant for someone to decide they know better what answer the OP should accept than they do themselves.
All I know is, yesterday I gave a perfectly innocuous answer to a question and today I wake up to find it being vehemently attacked for being too nice!
If you want to put a positive spin on it without straying too far from the sound, try rep-hound.
I mean, I even make it conditional. "Only choose this answer if you want to put a positive spin on it." So one would assume the OP is factoring that in when he awards the check mark.
I think the comments were for future people searching for something similar, rather than necessarily for the OP, since the question does have ambiguities. Your answer will appear at the top, so it's worth noting that there is more than one way to interpret the question.
@MattE.Эллен That is clearly the mechanism and practice at SE sites. Why should this question specifically require special notification of the way things are?
@MattE.Эллен You're constricted by the hegemony of the future. Don't write for the idiot kids of the next century, write for the octogenarians of the last
They're the only ones who have the time to sit around and read this stuff.
Of course, they'll need some idiot kid to fix that button that you know calls up the internets web tube thing.
Fair compromise. The savant kids will be able to make it on their own. In fact we'll just drop them off at the curve in the highway near the dumpster. Fighting for survival will build character.
@Cerberus Well, he did pray for it so I guess there's some guilt to be assigned to him. But in the end it's the gods who did it. I mean everyone is pray for this, pray for that, but it's not a democracy.
@MattE.Эллен I remember a story about a professor, who in order to speed up grading papers, stood at the top of some stairs and threw the papers up in the air over his shoulder. Those that fell below a certain stair were just given an F outright. His reasoning was that he wanted to remove the unlucky right away.
@Robusto "more than fifty per cent of students at Harvard, Princeton, and M.I.T. gave the incorrect answer to the bat-and-ball question." - base rate fallacy - he didn't give what the proportion of wrong answers in the entire population is.
But per previous discussions, except in super-careful formal speech, that x occurring immediately before a stop becomes a simple [s], because the sequence [kstr] in unnatural and hard for them to say.
@ABeautifulMind I just came back from lunch. I'm headed out to a bunch of afternoon meetings. I have a half-written letter to you. I will finish it soon.
Please specity the difference with examples.
If you want to put a positive spin on it without straying too far from the sound, try rep-hound.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…