English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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Tonepoet

04:52

Oh my goodness, I've been transcribing the entries from Google Books by hand and now I have realized there is a way to copy the text directly!

Tonepoet

05:41

Also H.T.M.L. seems to give you more control than markdown over how you format your block quotes. Now that I have figured that out, I do not have to tolerate gaps between lines that never had gaps between them in the first place. I wish more attributes were approved though.

1 hour later…

Rubisco

06:53

@Tonepoet Gaps?

Tonepoet

07:47

When you use > to make a quotation block, if you stack them together like this

>This is text.
>This is more text.
>Text is a noun for the written word, not a verb for messaging on cellphones ya dang teens!

It will render on one line within the blockquote like this:

[This is text. This is more text. Text is a noun for the written word, not a verb for messaging on cellphones ya dang teens!]

Using the HTML <blockquote> and <br> tags, I can get it to render as:

[This is text.
This is more text.

Rubisco

@Tonepoet You don't need to do that. Only one > in the beginning suffices.

You can also add two spaces to create a new line.

If you add two spaces after 'This is text.' and press enter, the next line will begin in the next line.

Tonepoet

I've been doing it like this:

>blah

>Blah

Then the blockquotation connects.

But the lines don't, so it looks like:

[Blah

Blah]

@Rubisco You know, I tried putting two spaces after reading the help doc. but I don't think I thought to actually try making a new line after the two spaces, so the whitespace was just ignored.

Rubisco

@Tonepoet Markdown magix baby

@Tonepoet You can add an empty HTML comment in between to separate the boxes.

Tonepoet

@Rubisco That takes up so much less space than using a break return to do it! I didn't know Stack Exchange supported empty tags because they're not mentioned in this Meta post, or that empty tags existed for that matter!

Rubisco

@Tonepoet What can I say? You waste a bit of time in these lands, you pick up a few things

Tonepoet

08:02

I was trying to learn H.T.M.L. 4 and then the World Wide Web Consortium pulled this H.T.M.L. 5 & C.S.S. nonsense, and I gave up on that because all of the attributes I was learning suddenly became worthless and C.S.S. adds another layer of complexity to the ordeal for a beginner...

@Rubisco Thanks for sharing your arcane knowledge with me.

Rubisco

Chem.SE is a really powerful site when it comes to editing.

We uphold to conventions no SE does.

Generally, chemists are bureaucratic and proud.

So correct typography matters.

Well, you be told to arrange that many compounds, and you'd become bureaucratic too

Tonepoet

@Rubisco Do you imprison chemicals and hold board meetings for their release?

Rubisco

Yes, that's more or less what an enzyme does

Tonepoet

Chemical chains never sounded so oppressive before now.

2 hours later…

Færd

10:14

> [1b] What I am doing for distraction is [to] watch TV.

(from here)

Do you find this sentence grammatically acceptable?

Rubisco

Mhm

Færd

11:10

Well, I don't, but I guess neither of our opinions matters that much.

Rubisco

@Færd Why not?

Færd

The proper question is why (do they matter).

Rubisco

> What I'm doing for fun is argue with people online.

@Færd I was talking about the grammaticality

Færd

Well, if you use the gerund participle in the first part of the sentence, normally a gerund wshould follow.

If not, an infinitive.

> What I do/did/have done is watch TV.

> What I'm doing is watching TV.

Rubisco

I don't really have a strong opinion on it. I don't go as far as calling things ungrammatical these days.

Færd

11:16

> ... ungrammatical is simply ... something which a native speaker would think does not sound right.

(I would change that to an average native speaker though, to make it less subjective.)

Tonepoet

~~Who says is to?~~

Rubisco

@Færd This definition is inaccurate, if not wrong.

Providing that you call people from Wales, Boston, Texas and New York all native speakers.

Tonepoet

11:31

@Færd Honestly, you can't take the subjectivity out of it. Most aspects of any language are intrinsically mental.

Færd

11:43

@Rubisco It's a one-line definition and it works well. You can use the averaging method on different levels of one language to introduce dialects, registers and whatnot.

@Tonepoet Hence less subjective. But really if you rely completely on corpora, the rest is statistics. (Let's for the moment assume that there's a consensus on how a corpus should be assembled and organized and explored.)

4 hours later…

Rubisco

15:31

@Færd What one native speakers considers grammatical because it's odd-sounding another knows as perfectly acceptable.

Færd

15:51

Hence the average native speaker.

Rubisco

@Færd And who's this average native speaker and how are they defined?

Færd

By doing statistical research in well-balanced corpora

Rubisco

O.O

You sound objective. I'm out

Færd

:) You knew that I'm sure.

tchrist

16:10

@Rubisco Not sure that I would have first said objective here; alternative choices include thorough, rigorous, and perceptive, perhaps even perspicacious.

3 hours later…

Tonepoet

18:52

Maybe you'll like this much more subjective rule better:

"11. —Good English is the English used by the best speakers and writers; and the use of such English is 'Only a phrase of good manners.' Bad English, that is, English unlike that which is used by well-informed and careful writers, produces in the mind of a well-informed reader an impression of vulgarity or ignorance similar to that which we get from seeing a person eat with his knife. It is with language as with clothes and conduct. Persons who wish to be classed as cultivated people must not only dress and act like cultivated peopl…

Rubisco

@Tonepoet Nah

Tonepoet

19:10

@Rubisco Hmm, then perhaps this answer will suit you better: