@Færd no. Not at all. I was referring to Cerb's immediately preceding message.

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive answer detected: What do you call a person who tries to be the first to answer and/or answer the most questions on stack exchange? by a deleted user on english.stackexchange.com …

@MετάEd how did you manage to put that username? I'd like to do the same with another symbols

*other symbols

@Ustanak You have several options but one easy one is simply copy and paste the symbols from someplace. Wikipedia articles for example.

@MετάEd For absolutely everything but the simple Mac opt stuff for the common diacriticals and dashes and such, I always use the mouse to copy from elsewhere, although this is often from dedicated programs' output.

@tchrist When I'm not copying and pasting, I most frequently use: Windows codepage codes, the Windows US-International keyboard layout, and Vim digraphs.

Yeah those are all less convenient that opt-e and such for me. I refuse to have to remember numbers.

@tchrist 131072

Numbers like that just get burned in. My head is full of them.

But if I remembered those, where would I put all the phone numbers?

And Unicode only goes up to 10FFFF, thankfully.

@tchrist With the zipcode for the house I lived in when I was four.

@MετάEd 53147

@tchrist It can't be helped.

Can anybody here relate to the feeling of a pun having eluded you for years, until something finally connected the dots?

Happens to the best of us.

Well then, I suppose it's nothing too much to worry about then, although I can't understand how the wordplay escaped me. Having the last word in an argument surely isn't something I haven't heard of before, but I never thought to apply that concept to how the characters settle their disputes in Touhou. I'm surprised I've never even seen a joke to that effect before, even.

It's disappointing to think that after all of this time of being a devotee to the series, that the words alone weren't clear to me. I just discovered it by happenstance.

10 hours ago? Don't tell me I came and people left.

Huh?

\o @Ton

I think you're mistaken: I came and people left. ;-)

@Tonepoet reading that it was unclear what the pun was. What is it?

And now Mitch comes and we'll make the chat go boom again

explaosion

People show up when they show up

Maybe they all are reading the new Harry Potter

@Mitch Is that the Chinese for expulsion?

@Mitch Hmph, I was away for a bit. Has the Pokemon heat wave passed?

No it can't be Chinese (at least neither Mandarin or Cantonese) because neither have complex sequences of consonants like 'kspl'

How can you know I didn't read it that way?

@TIPS I don't actually know anything about that, so I'll answer authoritatively anyway. No, it has not passed yet. The media coverage has gotten bored with it, but people are still roaming the streets. It's those last pesky rare pokémon that are the problem.

@TIPS Because I know things.

Don't look over your left shoulder.

right shoulder is OK.

My right?

I looked at the other right.

Oh there you are.

hey everyone

Hey

anyone have a spare minute to help me

hey TIPS

could I ask for a little help quickly

If you want help, you can just post whatever question you have here.

Then people may or may not have the time/energy to assist you.

No need to ask "can I ask".

okay Cerberus do you have energy

to assist me

Not now.

okay

But you're still doing it.

It is better not to ask people whether they want to spend time on your issue if they don't know what the issue is.

People don't like to commit to something unknown.

yeah

Man

I needed the third of that time for the answer to my question

you have energy for wrong stuff Cerberus

It's chat etiquette.

from my standpoint I wish you directed that energy on helping me

but it's me

I really needed help

My point: you are more likely to get help if you follow etiquette.

I'm not saying you're stupid or bad mannered.

And there are no binding rules.

It's just what works well.

:)

So just post your question.

I've sinned Cerberus

You have not.

You're just not doing what's good for you!

okay here's my question, and I'm looking for a really energetical person to help me with that

I need a word for things that make equipment for access points to buildings

passages, protective railings etc

and I want to know when such equipment is ruined how to put it in words

Can I say that access points or passages are ruined, or possibly damaged

Hah.

and I also want to say that it is done through either negligence or through a normal course of work done by the employees working around the building

I need help with that

Here's a sentence that I'd like someone to help me with

So a railing is an access point?

part of it

like on wheelchair paths

And what should I be thinking of when you say "equipment for passages"?

I'm a bit confused.

protective coverings for example

So a covering is equipment?

I don't know Cerberus

that is what i need help with

to name that

entire stuff

I see.

and I need to know if I can say that workers damaged these areas of the building through either normal usage of them or by negligence

that is my question

@RejlanGivens That is clear.

how?

It is clear what you mean by that.

> workers damaged these areas of the building through either normal usage of them or by negligence

yes

it sounds okay to you?

Yes.

thank you

So what is it that protective coverings and railings have in common?

And are there other things you have in mind?

they are all attached to the building

OK.

and they are all used by the employees working around the building

Would damaged doors be relevant, and carpets, and a side table in the corridor?

and they damaged that stuff through working around, going up and down etc

of course, I don't need to be specific

OK but those are not attached.

carpets or tables

I'm trying to think of a word to describe what you mean.

wouldn't be included in the description

Oh.

but doors yes, railings , steps

thank you

Not even a carpet or a door mat at the entrance to the building?

no

OK.

just fixtures

that's the word that comes to mind

but I'm not sure

Well, fixtures is a good word for things that are attached to the building.

thank you, I wasn't too far off

You could explicitly define "fixtures" in your document, if you're not sure whether people will interpret it as you intended.

I'll give you the sentence I was going to use here

Fixtures include any items fixed to the building, like x, y, z.

These areas are used by employees of the employer in the course of work, who damaged them beyond use through normal usage or negligence.

that is the sentence

sorry

I also need to add that these areas now present danger to the people who use them

And you have explained what "these areas" refers to in the previous sentence?

Otherwise, it is clear to me.

I listed them, it is all one gigantic sentence and I'm lost in it

can you tell me how to tack on this part with posing risk to the people who use those areas

I'm out of ideas

@KitZ.Fox This . . . turned out to be a weirder meta post than I anticipated. Has much changed since I was out?

These areas are used by employees of the employer in the course of work, who damaged them beyond use or brought them into a hazardous state for use, through normal usage or negligence.

that is what i want to say in one sentence

OK.

Well, this sentence is clear enough.

it just sounds unwieldy

If you just want to split it, put a full stop after "work", then continue with "They damaged...".

is the phrase "bring into a hazardous state" a natural collocation?

@Mitch It's a Touhou specific pun. In the Touhou series, disputes aren't settled with arguments, they're settled with preternatural duels. In the game Imperishable Night, you could unlock Last Word spell cards in outside of story mode which were presumably the strongest missile pattern each opponent could conjure and hence presumably, their best bet at making a finisher. Whomever won that part of the battle would emerge victorious in the dispute and hence if it were analogized to a debate...

@RejlanGivens I don't think so, but it is clear anyway.

can you suggest another phrase instead of it please

This is semi-legal language, which I'm not very good at.

it is

entirely legal and I have to translate it unfortunately

Oh, you're translating.

semi-officially though

yes

not my area of expertise either

the problem for me is that it doesn't sound good when I use a verb that actively gets something to fall into hazardous state

or in state of disrepair

those phrases have the meaning of deterioration

> These areas can no longer be used as intended, or they now pose a danger to other people

they are not caused by anything it happened to them

thank you Cerberus

kind of you to spare time to help me

You're welcome.

I will try to put it all together into one gigantic sentence

Does it have to be one sentence?

and hope that someone will even understand it in the end

Why not split it?

:)

That's what pronouns are for.

it needs to be one sentence

Can I give you the whole thing

there's more

If you say so!

I have to go now.

okay

thanks for the time

Good luck with the rest.

thanks!

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive answer detected: Adjective for someone who is an a-hole? by harrylane on english.stackexchange.com …

Is there a one-word verb for to be unfair (to somebody)?

What's the different between "winking" and "blinking" ?

wink (definition 1), blink (definition 1)

ah I see

You didn't need my help, did you?

not really :-)

So why asking?

@Færd "are you asking" or "ask".

@Færd Well I didn't need your help ;-)

@Tonepoet ing - when there is "are" then your verb gets "ing"

@Shafizadeh Then what is it that's still unclear about winking and blinking for you? Please tell me if my answer was incomplete.

@Tonepoet Should I have said Why ask as a shortened form of Why are you asking ?

I guess Why asking works too.

@Færd The links you provided were complete and I totally got it. thx

@Færd Yes, why ask.

Why asking sounds unidiomatic to my ears.

@Shafizadeh You're welcome. But you didn't need anybody's help to get those links. That's Oxford Dictionary.

@Cerberus English is your native?

@Cerberus Oh, good to know.

Thanks.

@Færd That's right ..

@Shafizadeh No.

@Færd books.google.com/ngrams/…

@Cerberus Yeah. I was just looking at this one: goo.gl/voUhnS

Lots of possibilities.

I meant all of them are infinitives; no gerunds.

Yes.

Oh, wait, I see your query now.

I didn't know Ngrams could do that.

How does it choose how to fill in the asterisk?

The most frequent words that go there, I guess.

Calls it a 'wild card'.

But since frequencies change with time, I don't really know how they calculate that exactly.

@Færd Yeah, a gerund can't work because "Why" is a pronoun. You'd have no verb in the sentence.

What about: Why me ?

A hidden verb that suffices.

I don't know about that one.

Interesting.

@Færd Yes, that works.

Why ask? is short for why do you ask?

Aha.

But asking makes one think of a gerund first, before a participle.

And you can't construct the gerund.

I think that's it.

Or that could be it.

Right. I shouldn't have called it a gerund.

Actually at first I wanted to say:

I don't know why one does not think of the participle.

> Why the asking?

Ah, that is possible.

But then left out the article, which wasn't a good decision!

But that suggests to me some kind of repetition or nagging?

Haha.

@Cerberus Yes. Exactly.

Why all the yammering, why the incessant complaining?

I think it comes down to the fact that you're too grievous to do proper grammar when lamenting "Why me?" so it gets a slide into the vocabulary as a sort of idiom. =P

Yes, at some point elliptical expressions may become idiomatic.

Or fixed.

There are other cases like "Why this?" and "Why that?" too but in those cases, it's common for those pronouns to represent any number of words.

There are also other cases like Why? and What?.

Why the red cape?

Whose cape?

Why ask?

Why not ask?

Why not is another good one.

Okay. Why not.

I think understanding some of those might require more context.

Particularly why not.

My first guess would be it has something to do with answer fragments. Sometimes a question and an answer don't have to form complete sentences if the missing data from one can be inferred from the compliment. That's just a guess though.

That applies to answers, absolutely.

But I think it questions the reason is just our general tendency to abbreviate common expressions.

@Cerberus COCA lets you do that too. When you search for collocates, just put an asterisk in the collocates box and it will give you the first hundred collocates of the word.

I think COCA is an American dictionary?

I'd rather search British corpora.

@Cerberus It also applies to questions, and especially the questions that end in prepositions.

No, the Corpus of Contemporary American English: corpus.byu.edu/coca

@Cerberus You can do that in British National Corpus too.

@Tonepoet But how can you infer data from an answer that has not been formulated yet in your question?

@Færd Ah OK, cool.

That's not from an ungiven answer.

I guess a shortened question borrows meaning from the context more than it does from its answer-to-be.

Oh, OK, but that is possible with any type of sentence in a dialogue.

True. So it's not characteristic of shortened questions only.

I agree.

@Cerberus You wait until the answer has been made to do that. Ending a question in a preposition sets a mode of speech where-in you're just expecting the remainder of the prepositional phrase to be the answer.

Basically, the question ends because you can't assume the answer which would render it complete.

@Cerberus I'm thinking we need to talk, for certain values of we.

Do you think that it matters to parents that you tell them you love them? The verbal manifestation of affection?

@tchrist ?

I've gone and replied on elu meta.

@Tonepoet What you mean is questions like "Paris is in...?"?

@Cerberus And it's getting worse. I strongly recommend not feeding the demanding troll.

Well, he has a point.

I have commented on your answer.

"Demanding" is a problem.

Yes.

And now I know what that little popping sound means.

It means I have my headphone plugged in and not on, so very little sound gets through.

I'm still enjoying your Regex, by the way.

I should frame that. :)

It wasn't a metaphor!

I'm not dating Reg's ex. :)

All his exes belong to him.

We should just call a regular expression a Rex. It's shorter to type. j/k

Or we could just call it a regular(?=\sexpression)(?<=regular) expression.

Do you think that would work?

I suspect that the two look-arounds will bite one naother.