English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Q: Awkward sounding but grammatically correct sentences?

17

What are some examples of awkward sounding but grammatically correct sentences?

grammaticality writing-style

It's got the had had thing in it.

@Robusto i hate that stupid puzzle question

A: Awkward sounding but grammatically correct sentences?

12

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Stupid slow Windows, aedia beats me to it.

@RegDwight Ah but I hadn't figured out how to link to the specific answer, while you had :P

A: What does "had had" mean? How does this differ from "had"?

1

I'm not sure, but as the schoolboy put it... "I had 'had', where I would have had 'had had', if 'had had' had had the teacher's approval."

1

A: Are there other repeated single word sentences like the Buffalo sentence?

You'll probably want to put some punctuation in these: Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and and and and and Chips in my 'Fish and Chips' sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and and, and and...

meaning grammaticality past-perfect

6:09 PM

0

Q: Using had twice

Possible Duplicate: What does “had had” mean? How does this differ from “had”? Is this correct usage? I had had enough food? Thanks.

oh goodness there's even a Wikipedia entry on it. I don't know why I'm surprised

OK, punctuate this: John'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd'd.

/me punches @Robusto in the face

/ducks just in time

given the number of apostrophes in that selection, i'd say you've punctuated it quiet enough already

Apostrophes? Oh, my word. I meant to put in closing curly braces. This is a Lisp macro, not a riddle.

2

Q: What is the largest multiple contraction possible?

6:13 PM

2

Related to this post... I've'n't a clue what the largest word with multiple contractions is, but I'd've thought I'd've seen it here by now. I won't know until you've'd a chance to answer! My initial gambit: The fish'n'chips'll've been all gone by the time we get to the restaurant!

contractions

The rock'n'roll'n'stuff'll've been over with by then. But damn me if I believe it.

Q: What's the difference between "should" and "could" (in the present tense)?

0

I am not referring to could as a past tense of can What is the difference between the following sentences? You should do it. You could do it.

word-choice modal-verbs

D'oh. Just replace "do it" with "punch me in the face", and I bet the difference immediately becomes apparent.

Isn't could the British spelling of cold? Like mould => mold?

That cold be.

i really think you shold use shold though

> you shold punch me in the face

makes much better sense

6:19 PM

I have people who will punch you in the face. I don't do that work myself.

Q: Are "shit burgers" being developed in Japan?

1

A video and some news are spreading like wildfire on the internet about some artificial meat made from human feces. The summary from slashdot, for example, says Hold on to your hamburgers — Japanese scientist Mitsyuki Ikeda at the Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama has invented an art...

scientific-research sustainability

hahahahaha. seriously, skeptics.se amazes me again

I heard about that on Bill Maher's show, so it must be true.

The really funny part is that "shit burgers" are way more expensive than ordinary beef.

But if people eat enough shit, I guess it will bring the price down.

I wonder. Will it be called "Soylent Brown"?

2

@Robusto this says nothing good about our industrial food production system. or our sewage treatment system

It also says "no more fast food for me, tyvm."

psmears

6:45 PM

@RegDwight Ah I see. Your comment can be read in two ways - either "your method is flawed so be suspicious about your conclusion" (as you intended), or "here is an example that proves the opposite of your conclusion" (which is how I first read it)...

By the end of writing my comment it was beginning to dawn on me what you actually meant, resulting in the somewhat meandering wording...

7:07 PM

Freyja, I leave for lunch and a quickie with my husband, and when I return, I am greeted with shit burgers. What is wrong with this place?

explodingdog.tumblr.com/photo/1280/2609534382/1/…

We're obviously still sleeping.

Oh, my image didn't go in a box. Hmm.

@Kit The only rational explanation is that these are dreams. Some of them nightmares, even. How else to explain that I still need coffee at 3 p.m. because I built with virtual Legos well into the night?

@aedia Oh. Wow. That makes a lot more sense when you put it that way.

7:30 PM

@aedia Wow. Virtual Legos. The poor man's option.

@Reg: I wonder why our opponents have a round-numbered score.

On one hand, it doesn't look as though they had actually beat us by attacking us; on the other, they have more points than 10x their wins, which would suggest they have won several attacks.

@RegDwight Not exactly Legos... Minecraft.

@Cerberus Um. How does that have anything to do with roundness?

If you surrender, they get a round 10.

@aedia Oh, I see. Sorry. In that case, I meant a very poor boy's option.

7:32 PM

You always surrender if you lose, don't you?

@Cerberus Huh? Never. Not once.

Oh!

Pride? Ignorance? Pride=ignorance?

You want points, you have to kill off every single bit of me.

So Pride.

Not at all.

Experience.

7:34 PM

@Cerberus Hubris.

You don't close the tab either, when you're about to die but are past surrendering?

@Kit Indeed!

I've had like dozens of battles in which my commander had just one point left, and my last two cards were facing six enemies. And I won them.

That may happen sometimes, but you will be able to judge that.

I said "if you lose".

I, for one, know when to cut my losses...

Don't forget chance/luck.

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

That all falls within the scope of judgement.

So you never surrender, seriously?

7:36 PM

I am sorry, what is your actual question again?

Ah.

4 mins ago, by RegDwight

@Cerberus Huh? Never. Not once.

Okay...

I can repeat it a couple times if it hasn't sunk in just yet. :P

May I suggest that you step over your pride in wars that are on the fence?

@RegDwight Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?

Actually, this is the first time I hear that surrending gives the enemy points. All the less reasons to do it.

@Cerberus Hold on a sec. What the heck are you talking about.

7:38 PM

Uh... it gives him less points than if you die.

@RegDwight less? Oh, you're killing me.

I am talking about an individual battle, and the "surrender" button.

I never click that one.

@Cerberus less? You're killing me too.

If your commander dies, he gets 15–25 points. If you surrender, 10.

Ah. That's what you're talking about.

Why didn't you say so right away?

7:39 PM

It says how many points he has gained on the Defeat screen.

Gosh, this dog sure is hard to understand.

Can you people send less messages per second? I am having trouble getting used to Internet chats after a break. :P

What else could I have meant?

Aww.

Something different.

Wow, welcome back to World of Warcraft chat.

7:40 PM

You asked about roundness.

@Vit: It is quite safe to skip anything Reg or I says.

Thanks.

@Robusto No, not back, and not WoW, but other than that, you're correct.

@Vitaly Et tu, Brute?

@RegDwight — That's why we go over this stuff.

7:40 PM

Roundness is normally causes by 100 % surrenders and 0 % dies.

@Cerberus Please stop misspelling quite as quiet. First @JSBangs and now you. You're killing me piplz.

@Cerberus Or other things.

What?

whistles

You do realize that ten times anything is round?

Just surrender to the quiet.

All will be still and peaceful.

@RegDwight — How about 10 * e?

7:42 PM

@RegDwight If you don't surrender all the time, there is only a chance of about 1:9 that the result will be a factor of 10.

@Cerberus And this is the how manyth time out of the last 10 that the results are round?

Last 10 what?

Battles? I don't remember. I only noticed it now.

You say that it can only happen one time out of ten. I point out that that's exactly what happened.

In fact, I would go out on a limb and say that this is the first time ever.

Okay, so you have noticed that the number was not round before the last battle?

Sure. It's hard not to notice because it's the default.

I see unround numbers all the time.

And as I said, I never even tried clicking that surrender button, so your point is kinda nil. :P

Anyhow, now let me fix my deck for that raid.

I have invited you, BTW.

7:46 PM

Okay. So that means we don't know whether they have attacked us.

I am fairly certain they have not. I mean, nobody attacks like one or two times. Usually it's like ten in a row.

But seriously, why don't you ever surrender? You didn't know it mattered? You think it against the spirit of the game?

@RegDwight They might stop if they saw they had no chance.

I have stopped in such cases.

@Cerberus How would I know that it's advantageous?

There's no tutorial or anything.

@RegDwight Okay, okay, that's fine. I just wasn't sure. It says +10 for them if you surrender—but I suppose you never found out if you never surrendered.

You do have the right fighting spirit for our faction!

Well, again, if anyone, anywhere, at any moment would have said or written, "click here to lose less points", whaddaya think I would have done? :P

7:50 PM

Heh.

THAT is the right spirit as well.

Instead, I only ever saw some pseudo-story blathering. And I even read it.

Aww.

I never read that (not in this game, that is).

To recap: if you close tab or refresh in time (can be hard at speed 4 coming from an input-stealing flash application), it counts as surrendering.

@RegDwight Pfagh! Fewer, damnit! It's fewer points!

Brb.

@Kit No.

7:52 PM

@RegDwight Yes.

28

A: "less" vs "fewer"

Ah, less vs. fewer. Another arrow in the prescriptivist’s quiver of pointless pedantry. There's even a Wikipedia article about the dispute. There is also a Language Log entry about the matter too. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, a usage guide that looks carefully at ...

Every single time you see me using either of these words, you can be 101% sure that whichever it is, I'm using it on purpose.

*using it

@RegDwight hiss

Sorry, I'm a bit tipsy.

And warlike.

@Cerberus Thx, can't believe I a whole word.

7:55 PM

That's OK, you.

It's as bad as when people say continuous when they mean continual.

Or this new trend of using "troop" as a singular.

low rumbling growl

Gives me fits.

Troop? How?

@RegDwight — That assumes Russians have free will.

@Kit It's quiet loud in here! Hopefully we can have continuous improvement going forward and less angry messages.

@Kit Less points is perfectly grammatical. I reserve the right to use perfectly grammatical English.

8:00 PM

@Reg: By the way, that derswolz's wall deck is pretty annoying, isn't it? I have the greatest difficulty destroying it, and I have lost magnificently several times.

I think you misspelled "Les points" ...

@aedia throws rocket on you

@Robusto I think you misspelled "Lez points"...

@RegDwight — I never misspell that.

@Cerberus Is it the one with those five identical buildings?

8:01 PM

@Cerberus Oh no! It's an all-out war. Send in the troop.

@aedia More specifically, an AUM. Anti-Unicorn Missile.

@RegDwight Yup that one.

@Cerberus — Ein Atemzug lang ...

One Silo, five-ish of those strike-all things, and the rest are those counter-3 critters.

@Kit I've really no idea how to use "troop" as a singular. Like "staff"? "We've got five staff lined up to work Saturday?"

@Robusto Eh?

8:02 PM

Well, if you only have one troop, sending it in sure beats not sending it in.

@aedia This ship sports fifty cannon.

@aedia ouch Man, you know how to retaliate hard.

etymology grammatical-number

9

Q: "Cannon" as plural

I'm reading a novel based in ye olde pirate-times, and I have come across the author's usage of "cannon" (without the "s") to refer to multiple cannons. The ship boasted 32 cannon onboard. Is this just an archaic usage that the author is employing for purposes of story-telling? Also, how/why di...

A troop is also a unit of Boy Scouts.

@Cerberus — Just took a sec to catch my breath. Better now.

@RegDwight But plural cannon/craft/etc is standard, right?

@Cerberus You ask me? Who am I, Robusto?

8:04 PM

@RegDwight Pretty damn close.

@RegDwight — He never listens to me. Only to you, even when you don't know the answer.

@Cerberus Whoa.

Tell that to him.

remains silent

@aedia Yes. We lost five troops in Baghdad last week.

Well, better than five troopers. That just sounds too Verhoevenesque.

8:05 PM

@Cerberus I counter your AUM with my YUM (Yoonique Unicorn Missile-evader)!

@RegDwight Plural cannon and craft are normal, aren't they, you there?

@aedia counters by eating it YUM

When speaking of boats, use craft; when speaking of macrame or scrapbooking, use crafts.

@RegDwight No, no, NO! You are only encouraging them! If you don't like "troopers" say "soldiers" or something.

Heh yes.

Cannon sounds a bit like military jargon? But correct.

Encouraging whom? Nobody calls soldiers "troopers".

8:07 PM

@Cerberus I just finished him off. Got exactly 20 points.

@Cerberus — Cannon or cannons, you can use either.

@Robusto Ack! That's my point. They've started calling them "troops."

@Kit — But they are troops.

@RegDwight Nice.

Send in the troops! Now!

8:08 PM

@Robusto F*ckin' A.

@Robusto OK that's what I thought. But cannon sounds a bit less common, less ordinary, doesn't it?

I know they are troops. A collective band of troopers.

Troopers are state policemen in Massachusetts.

But news outlets have started calling individual soldiers "troops."

@Kit — Well, write a freakin' letter. I can't do anything about news organizations. God knows I've tried.

8:09 PM

So "Four troops were killed in fighting" means "four soldiers were lost in fighting" instead of "four groups of soldiers were lost in fighting."

@Kit Oh. Ugh. I don't know if I can wrap my head around that one.

@Kit — "Four troops" is an acceptable usage to mean four soldiers.

It's asinine and it makes me crazy.

@Robusto No, it's not.

Well, asinine is an anagram of is inane, if it makes you feel any better.

2

Troop is a collective noun.

8:11 PM

@Cerberus It's all because of you. I went in to try out the Surrender button, only to win five (six? seven?) battles in a row. They just won't let me try out stuff.

If you're talking about Boy Scouts it is a collective noun.

@Robusto That does actually make me feel better.

@Robusto If you're talking about anything, it is a collective noun.

@Kit — I'm pretty sure you aren't going to win this argument.

@Robusto Well, it's not for lack of being right.

dictionary.reference.com/browse/troop

See sense 2b here: thefreedictionary.com/troop

8:14 PM

Yes. See?

Collective noun.

You are right that it can be a collective noun, but you can't deny news organizations the right to use it in the sense of "soldiers".

Not "soldiers," they are using it for "soldier."

One troop was shot while on duty.

WTF? You think that's acceptable usage? A. Sin. Ine.

I see that as a natural extension of the use as a synonym for soldiers.

How can I convey to you how little I am bothered by this?

Then I will start using "flock" for one bird.

@Kit Are they really saying that?

8:16 PM

Well, that's just silly. One bird is a fleck.

npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2010/08/13/129183352/…

There was a flock sitting on my telephone wire this morning. It pooped on my windshield.

I threw up a little bit in my mouth when you shared that little bit of information.

It seems they themselves have already had this question. No "one troop" for you at NPR, I guess.

8:18 PM

@Vitaly No, I said "one flock" not "one flock." duh

Oh. So this then:

@Vitaly Good God. I hope that is not the view out your window right now.

A rabble flew by as I was feeding the troubling, and I almost stepped on a cloud. These are my new favorites en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

z7sg

After that act of defiance Vitaly was never heard from again.

I'm going to be at the forefront of making them all singular.

@z7sg Hullo, my unicorny friend!

8:22 PM

@aedia And thus Kit engenders a new archnemesis.

@z7sg Can you translate the Russian? And tag me; I've got to jet. Thanks! TTFN.

z7sg

@aedia Hiya unicorn sista!

@Kit Hmmm I'll try

@Kit Oh dearie. I'm going to have to hope lil' foxes can't eat unicorns.

@Kit Bye!

Q: When to use "I was ... " and when "I had been ... " ?

@RegDwight Man you suck at surrendering. You with your blue car...

I remember watching Birds one day when I was on my own at night, as a kid, not knowing what the film was about. Pretty scary.

Bye Kit!

Jez

8:49 PM

what's going on

i look in here and i see a load of pictures of birds.

Jez

9:16 PM

0

I guess it's about simple past vs. past perfect usage but some examples are welcomed, I'm really not sure if I understand it correctly.

grammar

very generic question.

It's kind of a language-learning question; I think any number of other resources answer it better. There's zillions of tutorials.

A: How do the tenses in English correspond temporally to one another?

27

EDIT: Added past continuous, trimmed image so it would be slightly larger, and gave it a transparent background. EDIT 2: Added middle line, made some adjustments per @Kosmonaut.

@RegDwight OOOH

9:31 PM

Pretty, huh?

I never saw that before. I mean, I have never seen that before. I mean, I would have never seen it before, but now I have seen it, so I will have never seen it before five minutes ago.

Will you just have seen it already?

@RegDwight I had just seen it already a moment ago.

meaning word-choice phrases single-word-requests vocabulary etymology meaning-in-context

In unrelated news, welcome to the 3k club @mthead

MT_Head, Los Angeles, CA

3.1k 2 16

@RegDwight I will have understood it someday.

single-word-requests word-choice meaning phrases etymology grammar idioms

9:34 PM

Oh, and welcome to the 3k club @z7sg!

z7sg, United Kingdom

3.1k 3 19

Chris Dwyer and Stan Rogers are in da club, too, but I haven't seen them lately.

Why in GL&U it's written 3000 but here 3k?

meaning single-word-request differences pronunciation nouns adjectives dialects

But hey, as @aedia would put it, perhaps one day I will have been having willing see them. Lately.

Tim N ♦, Munich, Germany

3.2k 4 31

@Gigili I don't see it being written 3000.

Maybe if it's exactly 3000.

@RegDwight oops, Sorry, the question sucks more than I do.

@Gigili I am actually looking for a user with exactly 3000 reps.

Kinda hard to hunt down.

Iuls

3k 7 21

substitutions baking food-safety fruit vegetables preparation herbs

That's 3021, the closest I could get to 3000 so far.

Knives ♦, Colorado

3k 10 27

baking substitutions pie preparation drinks cookies sauce

That's 2987.

But in the main site?

9:44 PM

Well, on the user profiles it's always spelled out.

But everywhere else, where space is an issue, it's abbreviated.

And not just reps. Question views and votes, too.

For example, my most popular question has 2k views according to my user profile. But if I hover over the number, or visit the question page, I see that it's actually only 1590.

Hey, am I the only one seeing those boxes wrong?

CSS floats.

Make your window wider, or the font smaller.

And who the hell is "RegDwig
ht"?

@Cerberus They're totally normal for me, but I can kinda make them do that if I bump up the font giant oodles.

@aedia Or if you make your window smaller.

I always have that stuff. I have made the font smaller, but still not perfect.

9:50 PM

@Cerberus That's not smaller enough. Try smaller still.

@Cerberus crtl +?

I don't want smaller!

Hi Gigi.

@Cerberus Heya

@Cerberus I'm not saying that you should always read the chat at 3pt, only that this is status-by-design.

9:52 PM

@Cerberus Use smaller + glasses

@RegDwight Oh, wow, got it ridiculous now. I never thought to make the window this small, since I've got dual monitors in my normal workspace.

Hey wow, we don't have a single status-by-design question! We are so unlike MSO! Hooray us!

I can hardly read that, but the names on the left are still cut off...

@Cerberus Well, I am not sure about that vertical cutoff.

But the horizontal cutoff at large font sizes is totally intentional.

We do have status-bydesign, and terrible-design:

meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/terrible-design

9:53 PM

Feb 4 at 14:57, by RegDwight

Oh, that. Yes, I can understand that... though it should go over to the second line if possible.

Well, that's an old screenshot.

Obviously it does just that now.

5 mins ago, by RegDwight

And who the hell is "RegDwig
ht"?

Q: Why are comment lists abridged in the middle?

8

In longish lists of comments the list gets abridged and a "more comments" link shows up at the end, kind of like an ellipsis. Normally, one would expect that such a list would be trimmed at the end, but on English.SE (and possibly on other SE sites) the elisions can occur anywhere in the list. F...

bug feature-request status-bydesign terrible-design

Here is status-bydesign.

@Cerberus Ah, I see. Why the hell is it status-bydesign and not status-by-design.

That tag is probably by design.

9:56 PM

Golf clap.

Wha?