So in the first example that you gave, the " / 3 " was hanging on to the side with the a more loosely than anything else. So you get rid of it by doing the opposite (x 3 ).
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, is a multilateral free trade agreement that aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region; specifically, Article 1.1.3 notes: “The Parties seek to support the wider liberalisation process in APEC consistent with its goals of free and open trade and investment.” The proposals have been accused of being excessively restrictive, providing intellectual property restraints beyond those in the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreeme...
@Cerberus It's because people were taught passive voice in school, probably in the context of a science class where they were encouraged to use it for lab reports. And then later on, they forgot what little they learned about it and remembered only the label "passive" which they no longer understand.
Even Strunk and White's book on avoiding the use of the passive doesn't accurately provide examples of the passive voice in action.
Well, it's not the word voice that's the problem. They just think "there are different 'voices', one passive, one active" and the "passive" one must be the opposite of aggressive. or something.
@KitFox yeah, see? This is the part that makes me wish Reg had posted an answer. The answer is: "It was imported to English that way, see the etymology. In latin it had already changed to a p because of [john's answer], a process that also happens to other words in English." That, I think, makes for a useful answer that is relevant to modern english.
Instead, John gets snarky, then posts an essay that explains part of the problem but glosses over an important detail, which is that nobody used the word in English until long after it was already changed.
Today’s Washington Post article titled, “Romney wins big in Arizona, AP says” begins with the following sentence:
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was headed for a decisive victory in Arizona Tuesday night, where he had the support of the state’s governor, Jan Brewer, and a sizable c...
@MrShinyandNew安宇 hey most of my answers are now gen-ref as well. In fact, right when the gen-ref close reason got introduced I closed a bunch of questions on which my answer was the accepted one.
And then the whole Jeff-explodes-in-our-faces thing happened, and nobody would post anything anyway.
Dear everyone, if you don't like the rules, we can work on changing them. But simply breaking them at will won't cut it. As long as a rule is in place it has to be followed. Otherwise there's no point in having rules at all.
The idea behind any StackExchange site is to build the ultimate resource on a given topic. Just like StackOverflow, with which it all began, we eventually want to cover all questions that are on-topic, even those already answered elsewhere. Just because an answer to a question is right there shou...
This was the original thinking. Not mine, mind you. This is what we started off with.
@KitFox It is very easy to give an etymological answer that goes well beyond what Etymonline has to offer, if only because often a bit more explanation helps a great deal.
Why am I talking? I don't actually care. I think a bunch of things get closed as gen ref in an abrupt and snarky fashion when they aren't really gen ref if you don't know where to look, and I don't like that.
see
http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/197/should-trivially-easy-to-find-be-a-benchmark-for-moderating-the-site
specifically some new close reason proposals:
not sufficiently interesting: this question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link...
I resisted the gen-ref close reason after it got introduced. Sometimes by not closing at all, sometimes by picking a different (but still valid) reason.
But then it started getting traction in the community.
Oh and when Jeff assploded and Rchern and Dori were here, I tried to stand up for our supposedly too basic questions, but they completely missed my point (and in fact so did Rob, though for a different reason).
I don't even remember the question now, but it was something along the lines of grey vs gray, to which I tried to provide an answer that went beyond being gen-ref. The point I was trying to make was that sometimes it really depends on the answers whether or not a question can be considered gen-ref.
@Robusto You thought it was just blatant rep-whoring.)))
And in fact it ended up not far away from just that. Because Dori and Rchern just went there and upvoted my answer and I got a pat on the back, but they missed my point.
My problem with all of this is that while I don't like how that 'absorb' question was written, and I'm annoyed at the snark in the comments, I like the "question" and I learned something from it. I think that is a good kind of question to have because it teaches about how words get borrowed and how pronunciation changes.
And if this question is not a good fit for this site, why do we even bother? We should just write a grammar textbook or style guide, post it on the blog, then shut down.
My problem with all of this is that while I don't like how that 'absorb' question was written, and I'm annoyed at the snark in the comments, I like the "question" and I learned something from it. I think that is a good kind of question to have because it teaches about how words get borrowed and how pronunciation changes.