English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Færd

01:51

What's the word for a story, work of art, etc that speaks in a too direct way? That puts a deliberate message out in the open instead of intimating it delicately? That lacks depth and doesn't speak to your subconscious at all?

Shallow? Superficial? Trivial?

I don't know how a critic would put it.

For example, compare these pictures about alcohol addiction:

1, 2, 3

Oh, and this.

(in reverse order of obviousness of the message)

(okay, not reverse)

tchrist

02:10

Unsubtle

Beats you over the head with the idea instead of attempting to persuade you.

Færd

Hmm..

@tchrist Exactly

tchrist

Pushy. Direct. Clumsy.

It just depends.

Færd

Clumsy?

tchrist

Browbeating.

Færd

I like your words, especially pushy.

tchrist

02:13

Forthright.

Blunt.

Færd

Thank you.

tchrist

I don't know that single words are optimal here.

Færd

Blatant?

tchrist

Too in your face.

@Færd Perhaps.

Færd

@tchrist Yes, it's better to have a variety of options.

tchrist

02:15

The distance between direct and rude varies.

I sure hope I’m not giving advice on romance here. :)

Færd

And I'm going to explore the opposites too.

tchrist

Brash.

Crude.

Færd

So many words.

tchrist

First person: I’m assertive.
Second person: You’re agressive.
Third person: He’s an asshole.

Bumptious.

Færd

Nice. But it doesn't have to be rude.

Many do this with good intentions.

tchrist

02:19

> Self-assertive or proud to an irritating degree: these bumptious young boys today

Færd

@DamkerngT. @TIPS Take a look ^.

Damkerng T.

Unsubtle is great.

Færd

Mhm.

And the obvious word: obvious.

Damkerng T.

Depends on what you want to describe, IMO.

The message is obvious, but the delivery is unsubtle, I think.

Færd

> I like cubist sculpture but not that one. Too obvious.

Damkerng T.

02:30

nods

Messages, works of arts, stories, and so on.

Just my opinion, anyway.

tchrist

04:07

In the sentence "You are short a nickel", what the heck is a nickel doing there grammatically? Short is an adjective not a preposition, eh?

sumelic

06:10

@tchrist: maybe it's a transitive adjective. Have you seen the following LL post about rarer examples of this? languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3096

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported answer: Is the phrase 'request you to send the copy' correct? by adjh hjaksdh on english.stackexchange.com …

tchrist

06:36

@sumelic I eventually stumbled upon it afterwards.

Saladin

07:21

Hello

@tchrist

you there

TIPS

07:34

@Færd I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking at.

Saladin

@TIPS

I need your help.

TIPS

I need your help.

Help me help you

Saladin

@TIPS

I need your help.

TIPS

@TIPS

I need your help.

What is it @Sal?

Saladin

I need your help.

I’m working on a visual graphic with the objective to have it displayed as life -size Panaflex poster within SOC room. The prepared design is still in its infancy and would take some before it is fit for final printing. My plan is to have the design professionally made by Ms Sarah (graphic designer) for Mars.
However, to reach that point of your maturity, I need your valuable input/feedback on this novice idea ; give your creative spin on the design and critique as you may, you will find me most liberal when it comes to design discussion. I want to inform you that this is low-priority-no ti…

can you proof-read above?

TIPS

07:39

@Saladin I lose you after "displayed as".

@Saladin ". . . take some time before it is fit . . . "

Saladin

Yeah missed that entirely.

TIPS

@Saladin OK honestly, some words seem very, very off to me.

Saladin

Yeah missed that entirely.

TIPS

Like "maturity"

Yeah missed that entirely.

Saladin

TIPS let me revise it

hang on thanks

TIPS

07:43

@Saladin "this is a low-priority-no-timeline work"

Saladin

hang on thanks

TIPS

I'm pointing out the obvious cases I see, but I don't think the paragraph is perfect yet.

hang on thanks

Saladin

I’m working on a visual graphic with the objective to have it print and displayed as life-size Panaflex poster within SOC room. The prepared design is still in its infancy and would take some time before it is fit for final printing. My plan is to have the design professionally made by Ms Sarah (graphic designer) for Mars.
However, to reach that point of design refinement, I need your valuable input/feedback on this novice idea ; provide as much creative spin on the design and critique as you may, you will find me most liberal when it comes to design discussion. I want to inform you that th…

TIPS

@Saladin "a life-size Panaflex poster"

@Saladin Is this Ms Sarah working at "Mars"?

Saladin

yeah

i should drop life-size

yeah

Yes

she is working at Mars

yes?

TIPS

07:53

Yes!

Yeah?

@Saladin "Ms Sarah (graphic designer) of Mars"

Saladin

thanks

and..

thanks

Mitch

08:58

@tchrist maybe soon it will be, chez nous.

terdon

@tchrist Isn't short an adverb there? The sentence seems equivalent to You are ten points behind.

user208178

09:43

@Saladin you might find this helpful:

user208178

37

Q: Alternative websites for proofreading

What websites are there where people can practice writing English, and have what they've written corrected by native speakers? (It'll be useful to point people to this question if they've asked a "question" that's purely "please proofread this text")

user208178

7

Q: where can I ask for free proofreading?

I know that proofreading is prohibited in this site. However, I'd like to ask if there are free online websites to do that. I remember once there was a website where I can help people in Spanish/Portuguese and they help me in English. I attempted searching on Google, but I didn't find anything....

discussion

terdon

12:37

This is getting ridiculous. Two gold badges for this silly answer.

Shafizadeh

13:12

"here is full code:" or "here is the full code:" ?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:29

@Shafizadeh the

Shafizadeh

ah ok

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

though I'm not sure about "full".

I don't like "full" and "code" together.

Shafizadeh

I meant all of code. Or a code snippet which is completely

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

To me, code is what a program is made of

Shafizadeh

true ..

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:30

Like, I can give you some of the water, or all of the water, but I am uneasy with ?Here is the full water

I can't put my finger on why I feel it's wrong.

I just feel that I would never write that.

Shafizadeh

:-)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

wrong might be too strong a word for it.

Shafizadeh

ok .. Actually I'm using that word (full code) into Stackoverflow (all users are programmer). So I guess they will understand what's my point

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

sure it's understandable. But so was the one with no the

Shafizadeh

ah

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:32

> Here is the full snippet

> Here is the full function

Shafizadeh

I see

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> Here is the full program

> Here is all the code

Shafizadeh

got it. thx

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

You're free to do it your way, of course. I can't 100% claim that it's wrong to say "full code".

Shafizadeh

ok :)

what's the meaning of "say" when it comes in the beginning of sentence?
EX: "Say we have that table."

Is that mean which one?
- I'm saying we have that table
- Suppose we have that table

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:35

The second one

Shafizadeh

Ah .. thx

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

np

tchrist

14:17

@terdon IF behind is an adverb there, what does it apply to?

@tchrist Miss, lack, be without, not have, and be short all take complements, as do -ing predicates like be missing and be lacking. But they don't mean the same things. Consider He's missing a finger on his left hand versus He lacks a finger on his left hand versus He doesn't have a finger on his left hand. Try these with other numbers. There was a question about this on my PhD qualifying exam. — John Lawler 38 mins ago

stack

Which one is correct?
- When should I mark a column as the primary key?
- When should I mark a column as primary key?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@stack with the

terdon

@tchrist I'd say are. It seems similar to flat, for example, in it fell flat.

stack

Alright..

tchrist

I'm not sure one can modify be with an adverb.

terdon

14:34

@tchrist What would you call be well?

An adjective?

tchrist

A predicate adjective.

terdon

Yeah, OK.

OK, so short is an adjective in You are short a nickel, then.

tchrist

I think so.

Like be worth in “That's worth more than a nickel”, it seems that be short takes a complement. Although the complement of short is less picky about ordering than worth.

You can be a nickel short or short a nickel. That doesn’t quite work for worth without changes.

terdon

14:55

I can't put my finger on how, exactly, but it seems to me that short is a different class of thing in each of those sentences.

Cerberus

16:26

@tchrist You're down two tricks.

Turn it up a notch.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, down two tricks has down taking a complement. Ordering won't matter there, so you can be two tricks down or down two tricks. But to turn up seems to be ditransitive like make.

Cerberus

@tchrist Somehow we're down two tricks sounds more natural to me than we're two tricks down.

Specifically in a Bridge context.

But perhaps I'm over-sensitive.

tchrist

16:43

@Cerberus No, I feel that way as well. The second form seems possible but a lot less common.

Cerberus

Agreed.

Somehow, you're two tricks down suggests a change, a movement down.

Whereas down two tricks suggests the plain Bridge fact.

What's the adjective for Bridge?

Pontic?

Mitch

16:59

Pfft

Pontine

Levantine

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 only a container can be full. Water is not a container. Ergo water can't be full

user208178

Guten Tag!

tchrist

17:15

@Cerberus I can't think of an adjective derived from the name of any game, actually. I think we always use nouns attributively: chess board, poker table, bridge match, frisbee golf tournament.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:33

@Mitch Yeah I thought of that but I'm not sure that's the whole story

People use "full" to mean "whole, complete" with lots of nouns... I don't find them all objectionable.

MετάEd

17:58

@Mitch english.stackexchange.com/questions/289767/…

Except for example July 4.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch but "water" can be used to mean "glass of water", so you could say "my water is full"

MετάEd

18:55

8

Q: What’s so floppy about floppy disks?

While reading through Etymology of the use of "Drive" to refer to a digital storage medium and its various mentions of floppy disks, it occurred to me that, while drive is in origin a reasonably good and logical word to use for digital storage media, floppy isn’t really a very apt adjective to de...

etymology terminology technology

This question is just an excuse for Andrew and others to discuss 3½ inch stiffies.

tchrist

19:08

@MετάEd My language still doesn’t allow "saving to (a) drive", only saving to a file, or to disk; something like that.

Files aren't "on" drives. They're on disks, tape, etc.

Tapes are on drives.

Or not.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I suspect the choice of the word "floppy" might be a case of "a few people thought it sounded nice" when naming the initial invention.

Cerberus

@tchrist Some sports term?

Equestrian?

Venatic?

Something to do with dice?

MετάEd

@tchrist There's nuance. Whereas you save to disk, you actually write to the drive (or even to the controller).

Færd

19:43

I understand phallus-shaped, but phallic-shaped?

In almost every combination of the form X-shaped, X is a noun: onelook.com/?w=*-shaped&ls=a

Cerberus

@Færd Yes, shaped is normally connected with a noun.

MετάEd

@Færd Did you compare penis-shaped?

Cerberus

However, some other, similar words are often constructed with adjectives, such as good-looking.

Færd

That good is an adverb, isn't it?

Oh, no.

@MετάEd That's about as frequent as phallic-shaped.

@Cerberus So they are exceptions?

Cerberus

20:01

I just think both constructions are possible.

Or perhaps the adjectival option is only available with words that are copulae, like looking?

MετάEd

Penis and phallus go well with copulae, I would imagine.

stack

Is this correct? "How can I behave with a column as unique without having index? "

Færd

@Cerberus That sounds reasonable. (not sure about the only)

MετάEd

@stack That is hard for me to understand. Can you explain it?

stack

@MετάEd As you know, there is something named "unique-indexes". Now I want to create a system to do what "unique-indexes" does.

MετάEd

20:20

Here's a first shot at it: "How can I make a column behave as unique without having an index?"

Or "How can I ensure a column has only unique values without having an index?"

Or "How can I enforce unique values in a column without having an index?"

@stack

Remind me again why we get Japanese.SE feed items in this room?

Matt E. Эллен

Something Reg did

I think

or it could have been someone else

I know @Reg added German

I assume he added the other languages too

stack

@MετάEd ah I see. thank you

MετάEd

20:52

I will never clear the queue! cries

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…