I am hoping to help my girlfriend improve her english. Sometimes I correct her sentences but I would like to tell her more than just, "You are wrong. This is the correct sentence." What are some general tips I can give her? Are there any resources that would do automatic improper grammar detect...

I'm assuming there isn't a word that contains every letter in the alphabet, so which word contains the most? Examples: antidisestablishmentarianism - 12 [antidseblhmr] psychotherapy - 12 [psychotherap] handcraftsmanship - 13 [handcrftsmhip]

Would somebody recommend any good book about technical writing, more specifically, writing research papers or books in science and engineering? Thanks! By the way, I found that question Recommended books on writing well in English? was closed as off topic. But I didn't find anything in FQA abou...

Sure. In most cases, the room owner is more or less arbitrary, because it's just the person who was first to create the (e.g.) PHP room. But of course it makes sense to have several owners, especially for rooms that are quite active and have developed their own "style", and have those owners be p...

I just spent some quality time perusing the Insular and Anglo-Saxon chapters of Michelle P. Brown's A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (pp. 48-49 and 58-59), as well as pp. 34-42 of Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique. The names they use for the...

Eisenhower used it constantly to fend off reporters - is there a term to describe this type of phrase?

I am currently running a Dell Precision T5400 (Intel Xeon E5420 @ 2.5GHz / 4GB RAM). I am looking to add disk mirroring. I presume I will require a RAID card and two new fast SATA hard drives. I will install Windows 7 Pro (32 bit) after hardware config. Can anyone offer a little more detailed ...

I can't recall term used for duplicating extraneous words e.g. VIP person (Very Important Person Person), first question what is this term? Second question, is the same term used when the duplicated term is a synonym?

Strictly speaking, "GPL" is a three letter acronym for GNU General Public License. (Note the AmE spelling.) “GPL” stands for “General Public License”. The most widespread such license is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This can be further shortened to “GPL”, when it is u...

The "respectively" in those sentences isn't redundant. You might argue that it's unnecessary (in which case I'd disagree*), but "redundant" means that the word is repeating something you've already said. Think of the classic examples of redundancy "ATM machine" or "PIN number". * As RegDwight ha...

We often say "PIN Number", this is part of everyday conversation. But why? PIN stands for Personal Identification Number, so what we're actually saying is Personal Identification Number Number. Is there a reason for this?

I'm assuming there isn't a word that contains every letter in the alphabet, so which word contains the most? Examples: antidisestablishmentarianism - 12 [antidseblhmr] psychotherapy - 12 [psychotherap] handcraftsmanship - 13 [handcrftsmhip]

What's the name of a type of painting that typically contains a crowd of people posed along a plane? Usually they're all focused on one point or an event that is happening in the painting. I've seen lots of of examples but I can't find any good ones at the moment. The best I could find is this ...

I don't think they all serve the same purpose. At least they shouldn't. Personally, I interpret these four tags as follows: single-word-requests is for word requests, i.e. questions that ask if there's a single word that matches a given definition (“community of experts”, “obsession with publis...

Are there other literary examples where-in a character or subject eventually morphed into descriptive verb/genre?

Fecund Ewe ....................

I've noticed that AtillaNYC has been copying questions from other cooking sites verbatim. Is this acceptable and/or encouraged? Edit by Dinah: My original question is above except that I did not include any names. Below is an edit by hobodave as is the user link above. I'm not removing his ed...

This may not be appropriate for this site, I couldn't tell from the FAQ or a quick search on meta. I am looking for the proper attribution, origin, and correct version of the quote: That which is measured, improves. I've seen various versions and attributions to different people. Some ver...

The following is popular on lists of "quotable quotes": Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is. The Google Books drilldown gives its earliest record in Cohen...

About two years ago I saw this quote in Newsweek, where it was attributed to Karl Marx: Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity. Inspired by this, I now ask you: did Marx really say this?

Or something like that. Does anybody know the exact text and source of this quotation?

The best way to know a man is to walk a thousand miles in his shoes. That way, he's a thousand miles away and has no shoes. I'm willing to bet it's a Jack Handey quote, as it's rather in that vein of thinking, but the question came up, and since "walk a thousand miles in [his] shoes" is so ...

I'm trying to remember a certain quote representing the concept of miscellany (or randomness perhaps). I can't give much information except that it is of the form "Of ... and ... and ... etc.", contains various 'unusual' words, and has a rhyming scheme. I could swear it is attributed to Lewis Car...

This is my second (and final) test question for Quotes (to see if that proposal is necessary or if we can add them here). Update: (based on comments below) this is a weekly meeting I am chairing of my group in which we are updated on company wide initiatives and exciting projects (and some dull ...

This is a test question to see whether the Quote proposal is necessary or if the questions can as easily be placed here. Update: (after Chris' comment) this is a presentation about the British politics from 1979 - 2010 covering the rise and fall of all three major poliitical parties. Please not...

Comedians seem to use phrases that employ this type of sentence structure - is there a name for it? Examples of Groucho Marx's one liners seem to fit this pattern - and if memory serves, Emo Philips. "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my pajamas, I don't know." "I've...

This is a message received by our Sales Team at Fog Creek Hello StackOverflow Community – I do apologize for any concerns that our messages over the last few days have created. To clarify a few things I have asked the folks at StackOverflow to post this message on our behalf. ...

Why does "one" pronounce as "wan", not "oh-ne"? Why the spelling and the pronunciation of "one" are so strangely? In French, one is written as "un", and pronounced as "oe" (with nasal sound). The sound is similar to French. Is this English word affected by French?