Question: When I am signing my name in an email message without putting it on a new line, do I write: "Sincerely,_John" OR "Sincerely,___John"? Basically, if I don't have my name on the next line, should I create a "false" sense of a new line by putting in more spaces, or is it better to just have one space in between the comma and my name?

**John is not my name. It is just an example, like John Doe, etc.

ಠ益ಠ one space in between the comma and your name is fine, in my opinion.

@AdamMosheh I would either use just "John" without the sincerely, or put John on a new line. "Sincerely, John" on the same line looks a bit odd, with any number of spaces (I see it sometimes, but I don't think it is proper form).

@skullpatrol You are probably right.

Do you know if this question has been asked yet in EL&U.SE?

@AdamMosheh I don't know.

Hello all.

@skullpatrol Should I ask it?

@AdamMosheh Doesn't hurt to try :D

@Mahnax hi

@skullpatrol How are you this evening?

@Mahnax Fine thanks and you?

@skullpatrol Eh, not bad. I just returned home from work.

@DavidWallace: Hi mate

Hello.

@DavidWallace: I saw your profile and i came to know your from the country which i liked most, great mate

Have you been here?

No mate , but my desire i have to live there,:) , i like the many places auckland and christchurch

I never had an opportunity to come there and live there

You should come to visit first.

Yes sure , i like to spend many times on coastal region, that's why i like Newzland as my first choice and then Mauritius

How long you been in Newzland mate

My whole life.

Great, Apart from Programming what's your Hobby mate?

I have a wife and an 11 year old son; this doesn't leave me much time for hobbies of my own.

ok cool, mate

What area are you from?

I m from India and I m living in a City named Chennai

On the East Coast, right? Isn't that the place that used to be called Madras?

yes , it was called as Madras, but now renamed as Chennai , hmm, How do you knew that mate, have you been chennai for sometime?

Not Chennai, no. I've got some friends who were originally from Tamil Nadu; I'm not sure exactly where. Then they moved to Mumbai, and later to New Zealand. The only place in India that I have been to is Mumbai.

oh ok great, i m from Tamil Nadu too

Yes, you said that already.

I have to go now. See you later.

bye cya

@Cerberus ^ (Just so that you know, by traditional I didn't mean old as mammoth dung)

Google Translate's interpretation of that is, "why the myth sangant believed in the mystical summons".

@Vitaly Actually, I find myself disagreeing with this assertion. I believe the "would" in these cases are actually setting up what might be called an "emphatic" conditional. I.e., "[If what you say were true,] [T]hat would be one dead fish]. Note that the stative declaration could just as easily be used ("That is one dead fish.") without having to resort to conditional at all. The fact that the conditional is used suggests some amount of disbelief on the account of the speaker,

or some suggestion that an exaggeration has taken place.

@Robusto Do the fwo facts that 1) You have to postulate a suppressed protasis to interpret it like that 2) The central-epistemic modality is found within two of the three time spheres, and the onciditional consequence applies to them all not trouble you at all?

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 They need to come and live in New Zealand.

*B: I wouldn't sign [if I were you].

@DavidWallace they'd only infect your gene pool.

Holla.

hi

So extro vs intra vs intro: is it GR?

I was all by myself.

I usually am

in the meatspace

@Vitaly Far fetched or not, that is how the theory of conditionality would analyse this. And the screenshot you posted said, when trying to apply the theory, that it was "not conditional at all". That means that the screenshot completely fails to understand how the theory works. It is either a lack of understanding or a big straw man.

I mean, it is OK to not like the conditionality theory, but one must first understand it.

@KitFox no one was looking

I was thinking of you!

Oh yeah, did I mention I was all by myself?

:D

I went to your house

@Robusto Agreed.

Who was the nutjob who didn't document her jQuery validation classes anyway?

Hello people.

@KitFox and it was a woman

hmm you're likely referring to yourself

Wait, which was a woman?

Fuzzy wuzzy?

i just noticed the female pronoun

Oh, yes.

@Vitaly: No need to disrespect Fowler. He knew a great deal about language, especially about the part that is a blind spot to some modern Anglo-Saxon syntacticians.

pretends to be documenting his jQuert validation classes

I think maybe I will just write documentation today.

I am all by myself!

Anybody happen to remember the markup for lists in TeX?

seriously, is it me misremembering or did you never used to talk tech?

You're just not here when I do.

TeX is Jasper's area. I, on the other hand must now eat chilli con carne

or however it's spelt

Mmm.

right, who here works in programming?

i want to know what the standard dress code for a programmer is

in my experience, smart jeans and a nice t-shirt are acceptable outside of meetings

@MattЭллен Ah, is that "tea"?

Or what do you call it?

Chile con queso y carne y acedía y diarrea explosiva

lol

hey i love chilli con carne

@Jez When in doubt better to be overdressed than underdressed.

with some nice steaming rice

I hate myself when I find myself underdressed.

I wear jeans most days, with a non-printed t-shirt or sweater, and sneakers.

@Cerberus No, I'm deciding whether to go for this job and i'm not really happy about what I consider their overly uptight dress code

A non-printed t-shirt? Is that different from a printed t-shirt?

no design on it

@Jez Oh, I see. What is their dress code?

I dress up on meeting days and stuff.

And when I'm interviewing.

@Cerberus trousers and a buttoned cotton shirt

@Jez Yes, but is it different with respect to formality?

@Cerberus Yes.

@Cerberus I should think so; some ugly metallica design is gonna look nastyish

@Jez Well, is that uptight?

a little, for programming. and god do i hate ironing.

@Both: Hmm, I see.

t-shirts dont need ironing

I never ever iron shirts.

Are trousers and a t-shirt acceptable?

You really don't need to.

why would they be kit

Just hang them to dry and you'll be fine.

Well, trousers are a bit more formal than jeans, but require less maintenance than buttoned shirts.

So you could look more dressed up with little effort.

If my employer demanded ironed shirts, I'd ask for ironing expenses, and boy would they be high, because it takes me ages!

Seriously: why iron?

And if you don't interact with anyone much, then you could probably get away with ignoring the dress code.

But not for the interview or your first day.

@KitFox the MD sits quite nearby

Neither my father nor my mother has ever ironed a shirt for the past couple of decades, and they are both lawyers. My father always wears grey woollen trousers and a tie.

@Jez And how is he dressed?

Only if you work at a large bank or something would you need that.

i doubt i could dress down tbh. he seems a bit stuffy

suit

Hmm. And the other programmers are also dressed?

while it was an interview, i got the impression he always dressed like that

the other guy was in trousers and shirt

So maybe he didn't always dress up?

If you wore trousers and a t-shirt, you could keep a pressed shirt in your office for special occasions.

@Cerberus The point of the screenshot is that 1) it lists other competing theories and references the specific authors and years so that you can incorporate it into your answer 2) it may not be obvious from the screenshot, but modern analyses of modals (including CGEL and Renaat Declerck's papers) don't postulate suppressed protases. So, my question is, why did you decide to mention only one of them (suppressed conditionality) in your answer?

How are you feeling today @Vitaly?

@Vitaly Because it is the only one that tries to describe a broader phenomenon and the historical origin if the construction.

@KitFox Non-conditional, thanks. You?

@Vitaly Groovy.

In fact I don't know any other theories: all I know is that some others simply say "this happens", without too much further explanation.

So I would perhaps switch to another theories if I knew more about it.

Have I maintained my status with you @Vitaly, or shall I attempt to increase your regard at this time?

By the way, is it really 14 °C in Maine?

At this hour, I mean.

Is that about 56ºF?

@KitFox That depends. Do you, too, think like Cerberus that there are somehow invisible suppressed protases in sentences that use epistemic modals, which somehow makes them conditional?

@KitFox Yup.

@Vitaly I don't know the word "protase" so it parses randomly as "potatoes" and "proteases" every time I read that sentence.

@Vitaly I do not "think" it: it is just a possible classification. There is no "truth" here.

@KitFox the if it rains in the civilization will be destroyed if it rains is a protasis

It's amazing how cool NYC and Maine are compared to nearby Ottawa and Buffalo and Washington.

Those places aren't really nearby.

I guess not.

But they look nearby if you zoom out.

But look at these temperatures. They look like God threw them on the land at random.

@Vitaly Well, if you really want to know what I think, I will go and look up the CGEL thing you are discussing. Otherwise, I will unconditionally agree with your scorn to improve my standing with you.

@KitFox The former, and no need to look up. Here:

@KitFox well that would be my preference but I doubt I'll be allowed to do that at this place

it's really annoying because location and salary and role are all ok-to-good

but tbh the MD comes across as a bit of a dinosaur... he didn't disagree with the joke that he'd rather be using a typewriter

seems like it would drag the whole company back from being modern

The first dialogue features an example of what I call conditional consequence, the second one features an example of what I call epistemic modality. Cerberus argues that the second “I wouldn't sign.” actually has an invisible suppressed protasis, i.e. “If blah-blah-blah, I wouldn't sign,” and that epistemic modality = conditional consequence.

@Jez So he gets the axe next year, and you get promoted.

the MD? unlikely

it's a small company

@Vitaly I find that difficult to believe.

The second "I wouldn't sign" doesn't strike me that way, but I am naïve.

It is "I would not have done such a thing" or "I refused to do it."

That doesn't strike me as conditional.

I've also got to call the recruiter back within 10 mins to tell them what i'm doing with this job offer

i want to kick the can down the road another week

heh.

@Cerberus this was a late lunch. I would call it tea if it were only sandwiches

From an answer on the main site by Cerberus.

@Vitaly I said that you could consider the second example as having an implicit condition, not that it is a creed that should exclude all others. Further I said that conditionality is a kind of epistemic modality, not that conditionality and episteme are the same thing.

I will be happy to include an alternative theory if you can give me one. But I'd like a bit of a unified actual theory, not just a label.

I would want to know why it happens and how the construction came to be.

Even if you want to subsume conditionality as a subgroup of epistemic modality, then the example is still central-epistemic modality and quite distinct from conditionality.

@DavidWallace The 7/7 terrorists had the same concern.

I would say you could argue that the original sentence was conditional, specifically because it starts with "I think that..." On its own, I wouldn't interpret it as conditional.

@Vitaly I don't understand how you can say "is". There can be no indisputable facts here, just competing theories, each with its merits.

@Cerberus Well, you can just say that other theories exist and give a quote from the screenshot I posted, clarifying that you don't know a lot about them. I am nearly sure that whatever book Noah's using doesn't use the conditionality theory, and that's why it irritates me.

@Vitaly I don't know. As I said in my answer, it is a minor point, and I'm not sure I want to mention theories that I don't understand or that may not be theories but just a label some particular linguist picked on a cloudy day.

sigh

How did you know it was cloudy here?

I think you overestimate the importance of labels.

@KitFox It would have been.

Lunchtime!

brb

@Cerberus The screenshot is from this, BTW: books.google.com/books/about/…

Bai!

CU.

As I see it, this would most probably has its origin in a conditional construction, but it was sort of idiomized into a fixed construction of its own.

And that is only logical if you consider that conditionality has to do with epistemic modality.

@Cerberus I, on the other hand, think you underestimate the importance of labels when it comes to answering questions asked by people who are probably not very fluent with different theories and labels. If Noah's book uses those labels in a different way, he won't be able make heads or tails of that part of your answer, and we know for a fact that his book does use the labels in a different way, as evident from his comment on one of the answers.

So whether you still call it conditional as reflecting its origin and similar but slightly different sentences, or use a different label for the idiomatic use, is reall not very important, because the label adds little to our understanding.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/68821/…

Why won't it inline? Oh well.

@Vitaly Which book is this? He didn't mention he was using a scientific grammar?

english.stackexchange.com/questions/68821/…

Hmm odd.

yup, that's broekn

We fail.

@MattЭллен So when you say "I will be home for tea"...

@Vitaly At least this in-line thingie still works. phew

@Cerberus some people say tea when I would say dinner

my grammer is perfict

works for a different question ^^

@MattЭллен Right, I thought perhaps it was that, because nobody would eat chili con carne for "tea" here!

quite!

It's a shame "supper" has gone out of vogue because "dinner" doesn't distinguish between the midday and evening meal

Quite?

"lunch" and "supper" do

luckily they are different for me

Diner means food around 8–9 here. A souper means food around 10–midnight, so rare.

@Cerberus you don't have Sunday dinners?

And some people have diner at 6 pm, even; but any earlier than than, no.

@Jez No?

Are those early?

major sunday lunch?

yes

We have brunches?

no, lunch

I call it Sunday lunch

yeah but it can be called a roast dinner

or a roast lunch

I don't know, we would have lunch, then tea at 4 (but that's just sweet stuff, so cookies or cake), then dinner at 8.

i havent heard that one

@Cerberus so the lack of ambiguity in your vocab is based around the fact that you have different eating habits from us basically

@Jez Yeah I think so.

oh god, yet another. why does EVERY job require a "passionate" programmer these days

because unpassionate programmers would not do a good enough job

i saw a job description where the successful candidate would "wake up thinking of how to improve code" and "go to sleep dreaming about designing better architecture"

There is the modern thing called "high tea", which means salty food at 4. But that is a novelty, and considered faux English, in that you are not supposed to say that in England?

i thought high tea was quite traditional and involved scones and... tea

We call it supper here.

@Cerberus well that's not high tea here, AKAIK

Dinner is lunch.

@Jez That's sick.

btw, it's taco salad day.

@KitFox Dinner is always lunch?

No. So we use supper and lunch usually.

@MattЭллен So then would you ever use that term?

But workers carry a dinner bucket.

curious, didn't know anywhere used supper anymore

@Jez So what would "high tea" mean to you?

@Cerberus probably, but I can't think when

@Cerberus upper-class small sweet snacks like scones with jam, along with Earl Grey tea or something... preferably at the Ritz

@KitFox Hmm so what if I asked "where do you usually have/eat dinner?"? Would you think of lunch or supper?

@MattЭллен And probably don't know how to write code.

@Cerberus Supper.

@Jez that's over the top. I mean, I was like that at uni, but mostly because I wasn't doing programming for a job.

@Vitaly I don't quite understand the first example. Perhaps the word "that" is the problem? I would find this acceptable: "A What is Omaha like? B It would be cold." What is this supposed to show?

@KitFox Ah OK.

@MattЭллен you would, on what condition? :-)

@MattЭллен Not enough context.

@Vitaly hmm I'll edit

@Jez Hmm that is just what we would have with regular "tea".

@Cerberus I don't find it felicitous.

Except not at the Ritz, hehe.

@Cerberus Really, regular tea?

quite rare then?

@Jez bribery :D

@Vitaly I think we need more context and an idea of what the example is supposed to mean.

@Cerberus Oh, it's explained in the book I linked to.

If you bribed me I'd say Arsenal will win.

@Jez Well, I don't know, either sweet cookies or some other sweet pastry. I guess anything other than cookies would be a bit fancy.

cookies? it keeps getting weirder

Really?

Perhaps it is French.

cookies, unlike tea, are american

@MattЭллен Well, I don't think it's a conditional, nor do I think it's the epistemic would. (Don't ask me what kind of would it is, though.)

We always eat sweet pastry with tea.

Well, maybe not cookies. What would you call the things I have in mind?

@Vitaly What kind of would is it then?

They are called koekjes in Dutch.

@Vitaly Make up your own mind first before showing us such monstrosities!

"I would say X" seems like a hedge to me, and that's what I understand epistemic modality to be

A kind of epistemic modality, yes.

I have to sort my bicycle out. TTFN!

Epistemic modality can be anything from "I am sure about this" to "I have no idea whether this is true" to "this is not true".

Bye!

CU.

Yeah, a kind of epistemic modality, but I don't think it's the central-epistemic kind

And "it is true only under certain conditions, implied or no" seems to fit in nicely.

@MattЭллен would that a woodchuck would chuck wood!

I still don't know what the definition of "central-epistemic" would be.

Noticed my "would"? I didn't do it on purpose.

I gave an example CGEL gives for “central-epistemic”

Yes, but no definition.

How would you explain it?

This one?

i don't know what to say about this job offer! >.< How best to kick the can down the road?

I don't know, I still don't have a clearly delimited idea of what it should be.

@KitFox Example? This one:

@Jez Tell them yes, but you can't start for two weeks.

they know i can

Well, they shouldn't have.

That makes it harder.

Just take the job and then quit if you want.

@Vitaly They would have made the decision last week.

@Vitaly Oh yes, well, what to say about that? It is a very special way of using will to refer to the past. That element is certainly present in the sentence in Noah's question. I explain that in one of my steps, actually.

They will have made the decision next week.

Unless I interpret your CGEL example incorrectly.

They would have made the decision next week.

But it is unrelated to the conditionality of the past subjunctive in would: the two do not at all exclude each other.

They will have made the decision last week.

Yeah.

Eh. I have documentation to write.

My condolences.

I'm sorry for the loss of your time.

Lost to writing documentation.

I'll watch. You bicker.

Which will probably be quite useful to some people in the future.

@Cerberus So you are singling out the word would because it can also be used in conditional sentences? Like, instead of modals and conditionals there are modals, would, and conditionals in your theory?

@Vitaly Eh those are not equal categories. They are on different levels. I have no idea what to say about that.

Look at the step in my answer where will is added. That describes exactly what the CGEL calls by its chosen label "central epistemic". This central-epistemic modality does not disappear when will changes into would: it is still there. I was just talking about the switch from will to would, which is not about the central-epistemic thing.

Perhaps you took the last paragraph of my answer to be about the answer as a whole?

It was just about the last step (will=>would).

In that case this is all a misunderstanding.

I took the last paragraph of your answer to refer to this sentence that is quoted right above it: “They would not have been alone when travelling.” In other words, my impression is that you call the would in that sentence a conditional would, as opposed to a central-epistemic would (which most books I encountered and I call just epistemic).

I don't see that there is an opposition. Have you not read my steps?

I have read your steps and arguments in this chatroom, and they all refer to what CGEL calls “conditional consequence,” which in CGEL is distinct from “central-epistemic” and “futurity”, and the three of them belong to what CGEL calls “epistemic” as subgroups.

"Would have been" as opposed to "were" contains two aspects: "central-epistemic" (caused by the addition of will) and potentially conditional (or pick some other label/theory, but not "central epistemic; caused by the past subjunctive).

@Vitaly All this discussion was to me about my last paragraph, which is only about the switch from will to would.

> This could be considered a conditional would

You explicitly refer to the “central-epistemic” would as “conditional would.”

I don't see how it's about the switch.

Again, read it in context: that is all only about the last step. I had already explained will in the step before that; and it should be clear that I would not describe the same transformation in two steps.

@Vitaly That is not the word "would" in general, but only the step from will to would as described.

The "central-epistemic" modality is equally present in will and in would, do you agree?

And do you agree that I described it in the step before last?

@Cerberus Yes.

The “central-epistemic” modality is incompatible with “conditional consequence”, do you agree?

I don't know what the latter means, but I probably disagree: the c.-e. mod. is compatible with [what could possibly be described as the conditional] past subjunctive.

^ conditional consequence

Perhaps I should make my answer clearer, if even you interpreted it that way. The final step in my answer is about "would" as opposed to will.

@Vitaly Definition?

Any will with an explicit conditional clause?

@Cerberus Please note that I have used “central-epistemic” and epistemic to refer to would as well. Those kinds of “epistemic” modality are not limited to will.

Let me dump my energy first.

@Vitaly Yes, I did not think that you would limit them.

@Vitaly I would call the would in my example both conditional and c.e. at the same time. Just as a verb can be passive and plural at the same time.

CGEL would call it central-epistemic and epistemic at the same time. (Conditional consequence in CGEL is distinct from central-epistemic but still is a subgroup of epistemic.)

And I might consider conditional a kind of epistemic.

CC?

Ah.

While I would normally call it just epistemic (which is in my idiolect and most of the grammar references I am familiar with is synonymous with CGEL's central-epistemic).

The thing is, I'm not sure the addition of a condition changes so much about the meaning of a will main clause?

@Cerberus The addition of a condition changes a lot in those examples to me.

That's would, not will.

So?

There is a reason why certain uses of would are traditionally called conditional.

Because they at least typically mark a condition.

I don't think that applies to will.

Or does it?

Modality and conditionality are very complicated.