English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

11:12 AM

1717298141231053

11:23 AM

Whoops, sorry, figurative cat on keyboard.

5 hours later…

4:22 PM

@M.A.R. That's no excuse for giving away your password.

Or the terribly mangled digits of e.

Or your credit card number

or a mnemonic for another sequence of digits

4:54 PM

@Mitch Actually, I was working in the pharmacy and I scanned the barcode of a prescription paper, and SE has this new shitty thing about Javascript that it randomly switches to Chrome when I'm doing something important.

And it's always when doing something important. Recipe for disaster.

Eat disaster with mustard.

5:43 PM

> "Proportion of patients with inadequate treatment response at Week 33 vs. number of BAb-positive patients at Week 33."

Can we use vs. this way?

Here it basically means "among". Proportion of patients with an inadequate response among the patients in whom binding antibodies were detected at week 33.

It took me some time to understand the meaning in order to translate it into Russian.

@M.A.R. that's tolerable. with ketchup is just plain wrong.

@CowperKettle So is that the original English?

@Mitch Yes, the original was given in English, and I'm translating it into Russian

@CowperKettle It depends. It's not clear what the numbers really mean. Are those with inadequate treatment plus those that are BAb positive the entire population? or is just the latter the total? A proportion is the same as a percentage, the smaller amount of the total.

The language 'A vs B' is used for scatter plots of pairs, so maybe could work if it was over -many- weeks, not just the one.

The guys with BABs are the entire "population" in this sentence, it becomes clear from looking at a table just below the sentence.

But until I looked at the table I was stumped. I could not get the meaning of "vs.".

vs is usually used for things that are on the same status, two competing parts. A part does not compete against the whole.

So the original English is, like much of scientific writing, not particularly felicitous sounding.

'vs.' really wants to say 'with respect to', but that is a bit long for the situation.

One could (in the original English) leave out the "vs. # of BAb positive...". unless BAb patients are themselves a subset of a larger set of patients.

All this is to say the 'vs.' isn't the best, but is acceptable (even barely noticeable).

As to translating, it is intended to be '...out of the...'

You should be able to figure out the most appropriate Russian way of saying it, without having to a one-to-one word-for-word correspondence.

5:59 PM

"BAb patients are themselves a subset of a larger set of patients" - yes, this is the case, they are a subset. There are some patients who stubbornly refused to develop antibodies to the drug throughout the study.

@Mitch I see!

I have never come across the use of "proportion of something vs. something" before, and was too slow in deciphering.

6:11 PM

@CowperKettle It's hard for me to tell (maybe I would find it weird if I were reading, or maybe I'd just rush right past it getting the idea from context). Semantically it's sort of like 'against'. You comparing the part -against- the whole, like an adversary and so 'vs' might work. But a part is not balanced against the whole because it is a part.

Tanner Swett

6:39 PM

Does anyone besides me feel like an initial wr sort of suggests twisting or torsion?

Examples of this are wring, writhe and wrench.

And to a lesser degree, wrap.

@Mitch Yeah. People are weird.

Wrt.

Wrestle.

Wrtorsion. ← A word.

7:16 PM

@TannerSwett You're not wrong

wrack
wracker
wrackful
wraggle
wrainbolt
wrainstaff
wrainstave
wraith
wraithe
wraithlike
wraithy
wraitly
wramp
wran
wrang
wrangle
wrangler
wranglership
wranglesome
wranglingly
wrannock
wranny
wrap
wrappage
wrapped
wrapper
wrapperer
wrappering
wrapping
wraprascal
wrasse
wrastle
wrastler
wrath
wrathful
wrathfully
wrathfulness
wrathily
wrathiness
wrathlike
wrathy
wraw
wrawl
wrawler
wraxle
wreak
wreakful
wreakless
wreat
wreath
wreathage
wreathe
wreathed
wreathen
wreather
wreathingly
wreathless
wreathlet

There's a lot.

Those are only the one's I could think of off the top of my head.

I'm sure there are more.

Etymonline is great

WTH is "wrainbolt"?