English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:35 AM

Ah. Rakı table.

2:24 AM

@MattЭллен Oh. didn't know that. But still. Seems unfair. Who even bothers to go there, really. (actually if I didn't know that then probably others didn't know that.) everybody go vote!!

Daniel δ

2:42 AM

Redux

6 1

Could this be another Nortonn S?

Can you mods check the IPs?

I just note the pattern of bold italics, the same sentence with several different tweaks, etc.

MetaEd

Do I want to know?

cpx

3:51 AM

@Danielδ Are you not a mod as well?

Vitaly

@cpx Not on EL&U.

Cerberus

5:03 AM

Hello.

Mahnax

5:37 AM

@Cerberus Hi!

Cerberus

@Mahnax Hi!

Mahnax

@Cerberus So I have just returned from the movie.

How is your morning?

Cerberus

Oh? Which one?

Mahnax

Spiderman!

Cerberus

I take it that it was good?

Mahnax

5:40 AM

Yeah, it was good.

The first three, IMO, were rubbish.

Cerberus

Good.

Really?

This is the fourth movie?

Mahnax

Yeah, I would say so.

Well, they started over.

Cerberus

That is a sign.

Mahnax

It's not a sequel to the others.

cpx

Hi.

Mahnax

5:41 AM

G'day @cpx.

cpx

Is it Spiderman 4?

Mahnax

No.

It's The Amazing Spiderman.

Cerberus

Hi.

I trust Mahnax's assessment.

cpx

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012 film)

| starring = Andrew GarfieldEmma StoneRhys IfansDenis LearyCampbell ScottIrrfan KhanMartin SheenSally FieldChris Zylka | music = James Horner | cinematography = John Schwartzman | editing = Alan Edward BellPietro Scalia | studio = Marvel Entertainment | distributor = Columbia Pictures | released = | country = United States | language = English | budget = $220 million | gross = $125,217,570 | runtime = 136 minutes }} The Amazing Spider-Man is a 2012 American superhero film directed by Marc Webb, based on the Ma...

Cerberus

Oh, it is the actual title.

Mahnax

5:44 AM

Yeah.

Cerberus

@HaveFunSlower I sort of agree with you. I would be interested in having a label like "academic" for interesting questions, so that those who want to can ignore the other questions (which will be the large majority).

Gigili

High-ho.

cpx

Oh so they started all over from the beginning.

Mahnax

9 mins ago, by Mahnax

Well, they started over.

Cerberus

@Gigili How is your phone?

Mahnax

5:50 AM

2

Q: Dot and parenthesis at the end of line/sentence, how to deal?

If I had a parenthesis at the end of the sentence, do I put the dot before or after it? For example, do I write: I have an example sentence (which ends with parenthesis). or I have an example sentence (which ends with parenthesis.) Thanks in advance.

punctuation sentence parentheses ending

12

Q: Where does the period go when using parentheses?

Where should the period go when using parentheses? For example: In sentence one, I use this example (which has a parenthesis at the end.) Period in or outside of the parentheses? What about if the entire sentence is a parenthetical? (Where does the terminal punctuation go here?) Is there a ...

punctuation

Gigili

@Cerberus Still dead!

Cerberus

@Gigili Dead??

It won't start up?

Or locked?

Gigili

Apparently not.

Mahnax

Have you tried charging it?

Cerberus

What happens when you turn it on?

Mahnax

5:52 AM

Earthquakes.

Cerberus

Yes, charge it if it seems dead.

Gigili

I don't know if it's locked or broken, but it doesn't work.

Nothing happens.

Cerberus

Nothing at all appears on the screen?

Mahnax

E-mail me the phone, I'll fix it up.

2

Cerberus

It remains black?

Gigili

5:52 AM

@Mahnax Hey, I know that!

Mahnax

@Gigili Just asking!

Gigili

Remains black ...

@Mahnax OK, what's your email address?

Mahnax

@Gigili You have my e-mail address.

Oh, come on.

Gigili

comes on

Cerberus

@Gigili But it used to say "no SIM", didn't it?

Mahnax

5:54 AM

Why won't anyone vote to close the dupe?!

Gigili

@Cerberus No, it doesn't say that anymore. Last time someone did some weird stuff and I think it's completely broken!

Cerberus

@Mahnax Voted.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Ačiū.

Cerberus

@Gigili I don't think that is possible. Who did what?

@Mahnax Is that Rumanian?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Lithuanian.

Cerberus

5:56 AM

Ah.

Mahnax

Close.

Cerberus

Very.

Only a thousand km off.

And a linguistic branch.

Mahnax

Eh, big deal.

Cerberus

I know.

Mahnax

The people in Newfoundland are a good ways away, and they still speak English.

Gigili

5:57 AM

@Cerberus A mobile repair guy or whatever it's called.

Mahnax

Same with those NYC folk.

Cerberus

@Mahnax Odd. They should just speak Dutch.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Yeccch!

Cerberus

@Gigili OK. So what happens when you remove the battery, put it back in, plug in the charger, and turn on the phone?

@Mahnax What are you talking a boot?

Gigili

Let me try it.

Mahnax

5:59 AM

@Cerberus Niets.

Cerberus

@Gigili Oh, wait, you can't remove the battery.

Because it is an Iphone.

@Mahnax Helemaal niets?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Niets.

Helemaal niets.

Niets, of het niets?

Argh, I don't know.

Haha.

6:01 AM

Niets.

Cerberus

Niets as in nothingness, or do you feel like stapling?

Mahnax

Nothingness.

Cerberus

It can theoretically mean "feeling like stapling".

Mahnax

How odd.

Cerberus

Isn't that a nice word to have?

Mahnax

6:03 AM

Sure.

I feel like stapling all the time.

Gigili

@Cerberus No?

Cerberus

If you add -s to a verb stem, it means you are in the mood to carry out that verb.

@Gigili Nope. So what happens when you plug in the charger? Do any LEDs light up?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Si vous le dites.

Gigili

@Cerberus It might be possible, but I have to follow a 18-step guide.

Mahnax

I'm off for now, bye!

Cerberus

6:05 AM

Bye!

@Gigili Just plug in the charger, tell me what you see.

And try to turn it on.

Gigili

Umm, it flashes and goes back to the previous state or something like that.

Cerberus

What is the previous state?

And what happens when you connect it with your computer?

Gigili

black thingy

I didn't try that.

But I have to go to university.

Bye for now.

Cerberus

I would let it charge for a while.

Look at it again when you get back home?

Gigili

@Cerberus OK, I will.

Cerberus

6:11 AM

Good luck!

Gigili

Thank you!

clabacchio

7:32 AM

hi all guys

small question?

cpx

7:55 AM

@clabacchio Go on, I'm sure everyone here would like to know what the question is.

clabacchio

@cpx :) I'm looking for a word to describe the attempt to prove/disprove a hypothesis

Matt Эллен

8:49 AM

this question is Too Localised:

-1

Q: SAT CR question - which answer makes more sense?

Although the theory that widespread lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire has gained [X], the evidence is still [Y] Should [X] and [Y] be credence, irrefutable currency, inconclusive

word-choice

cornbread ninja

10:25 AM

@MrShinyandNew, did you fix your Browser issue?

@clabacchio experiment?

clabacchio

11:58 AM

@cornbreadninja mh, interesting

I think it should work, thank you

Frank Science

12:34 PM

Is there any difference between consume energy and cost energy?

cpx

Depends on context. 'cost' can mean 'price' i.e. How much does the energy cost?

user19161

@FrankScience Yes, we usually use the former and not the latter. The computer consumes a lot of energy.

Frank Science

What about consumption and expenditure of energy?

the difference between consumption and expenditure.

user19161

Any specific sentence?

Frank Science

No. Our teacher wanted to tell us the exact meaning of consume, but I didn't get it.

cpx

12:43 PM

Again, the expenditure can also mean price, money, time etc.

Frank Science

In IRC, somebody said that consumption means more in and expenditure means more out.

user19161

@FrankScience You know, everything depends on context.

Frank Science

I'm so confused.

user19161

So am I.

cpx

Me too.

MetaEd

12:55 PM

@MattЭллен Why did it take me a year to find out about this!

@Cerberus Probably we can just close the other questions.

MetaEd

1:49 PM

Mornin.

cpx

@JasperLoy I noticed you were 'Will Hunting' with a different flair just moments ago.

user19161

@cpx Yes, I often change avatars and usernames.

cpx

Though your name still appears as 'Japer Joy' on my screen.

MetaEd

Not on mine.

user19161

@cpx LOL

Gigili

1:56 PM

@MetaEd What not on yours?

cpx

:S

user19161

@cpx How is that even possible?

cpx

@WillHunting I should refresh, I guess.

MetaEd

@Gigili On my screen Will Hunting appears where Jasper Loy appeared earlier.

Gigili

@MetaEd Who are they?

user19161

1:57 PM

@cpx I was LOLing at the spelling actually.

Gigili

OK, OK. I'll stop asking nice questions.

MetaEd

@Gigili Or who is they, maybe.

cpx

@WillHunting Ah, my keyboard has some problems.

user19161

@cpx Mine too. The N gets stuck once every day or so.

cpx

Most of time it's just me not able to type though.

I get lazy with spellings.

user19161

2:02 PM

Chat helped me improve my typing. I have to keep up with ten people talking crap at the same time.

Gigili

Good for you.

Cerberus

2:23 PM

@MetaEd But feeling will be hurt, etc.; the "academic" label would be very non-intrusive.

And yet serve the same purpose.

MetaEd

So you are saying forget ELL and use "academic" to separate the expert questions from the basic stuff.

Cerberus

Yes.

It is just a suggestion.

I've been saying that for years. Of course we'll only know how well that works until we try.

But perhaps it would unbalance the system after a while unless we only allow reputation for academic questions.

MetaEd

The real problem with ELL questions is that there are a virtually infinite number of ways to mangle a language. "In this context should I use is or should I use motocross to express what I am after?" Often it's not even clear what's being asked. The site would become mostly crud if that stuff weren't moderated.

Cerberus

How about the converse, attaching a tag to indicate "not very interesting"?

Phrased euphemistically, of course.

MetaEd

Probably the right way to handle ELL is to start writing answers that address many very basic issues of English grammar and vocabulary. Then when we get ELL questions we can dupe them to the appropriate basic answers.

Cerberus

2:34 PM

But why wants to do all that?

I never came to this site to do administrative house cleaning.

MetaEd

I see no problem, though, with using tags in the way you suggest so that people uninterested in either reading or assisting with ELL can just avoid the whole mess.

Cerberus

Yes.

Reg may say that we won't have any means to deter uninteresting-question askers that way.

MetaEd

I think, though, that it's only half the solution. Because, as I said, even if you have elitist tags, the whole site will become unattractive to academics should the non-academic ELL questions be allowed to turn it into grey goo.

Cerberus

But then I say, has not the majority of questions always been uninteresting?

MetaEd

So what we need is to encourage people who are willing to write ELL answers.

It doesn't have to be you.

Cerberus

2:38 PM

I might be willing.

I am in the mood sometimes.

But SWRs...

MetaEd

So the response to yet another ELL question probably should not be: eew, another crappy or general reference question, it should be, how can I turn this into a general purpose ELL Q+A about, say, the present perfect, which can then be used to dupe a whole category of similar questions?

Or, in other words, "here, let me answer the question you should have asked." That could lead to a lot of interesting answers ... which is really what the site is about.

Cerberus

We try to do that.

But a general essay about the present perfect would seem to be too general: there already are many good sites that do that.

MetaEd

But mostly what I see is votes to close.

Cerberus

Yes.

MetaEd

If there is already a good essay about the present perfect, then it could be quoted into an answer.

Cerberus

2:42 PM

But would you really want us to write another grammar of English à l'improviste?

I do agree that making the answer a bit more comprehensive than what the OP is asking for is a good idea.

MetaEd

Sure. An English grammar that would be crowdsourced. A wiki grammar. Why wouldn't that be good?

Cerberus

Is a Q&A site really the place for that?

Robusto

We could create the "I Turned Your Stupid Question Into a Blog" blog.

Cerberus

We don't even have a way to index things.

MetaEd

This site suffers from a bipolar problem. Is it really a Q&A site? Then we should do away with "too local" and just answer the effing question. Or is Q&A really just a way to generate really interesting short essays (i.e., good answers) on the topic? Which is, by the way, what I think it is.

Cerberus

2:47 PM

@MetaEd I think it is both, and I agree that is part of the problem. But I really don't think we should abandon short questions + answers (which is impossible anyway).

MetaEd

I mean, yes, some SE sites are pure Q&A. You have some weird technical problem, you ask the question at Superuser, someone recognizes the problem and you get a good answer. But ELU.SE is not quite like that. It is more like a column in the New York Times, where questions are the excuse to write answers that readers want to read.

And, not incidentally, that experts want to write.

Cerberus

On the other end of the spectrum, I think long articles about very broad and general subjects are perhaps not our thang.

Robusto

@Cerberus But the system, which purports to reward the best questions and answers, disproportionately rewards the dumb questions and quick answers.

It has been gamed to death.

Cerberus

@Robusto True: but that is democracy for you.

MetaEd

I do not think we want answers which are too broad and general. They should be short enough to be short essays that anyone will want to read, and specific enough that you can dupe questions to them without overwhelming the person asking.

Cerberus

2:49 PM

Perhaps it was just your "general essay about the present perfect" that seemed a bit too general.

Though I could see even that work.

Robusto

@Cerberus Look at my five top-rated answers: there isn't one of them that is really worth a serious fart. Hell, look at anybody's.

MetaEd

Don't we have a way for people with plenty of reputation to reward excellent Q&A and create a disincentive to write quick and dirty answers?

Robusto

Actually, if a question or answer has more than 25 votes, chances are it's garbage.

What I consider the very best answers and questions I've offered on ELU are all very low-scoring. I see that your top 5 answers, @Cerberus, are all sober, serious, intelligent, and low-scoring.

MetaEd

As for a way to index things, we damned well do have a way. Anyone who feels moved to index (or even partly index) can write a meta.

Robusto

I'll leave that to someone with "Meta" in his name.

3

Cerberus

2:53 PM

@Robusto Thanks!!

@MetaEd I suppose that is true.

My number 1 is not very interesting, by the way.

Just a Wiki look-up of apocalypse etc.

Robusto

10

A: What's the point of omitting the "e", as in "sceptered" going to "scepter'd", in English poetry?

This was to signify that the syllable was omitted. In most cases today, we don't pronounce the final syllable in many -ed endings that used to always be articulated. You can see a remnant of this in the word learned: We say that word in one syllable in the sentence I learned a lot from him. ...

One of my better answers. ^

47

A: What is the difference between "nevermind" and "never mind"?

Nevermind is an album by Nirvana. "Never mind" means don't bother with something.

One of my least worthy. ^

See a difference in the scores?

It is worth noting that the latter response won me a gold "Populist" badge.

MetaEd

@Robusto Ooh. That gets a vote.

Heh heh heh.

It has snark value.

simchona

Nortonn is definitely using another account again

MetaEd

What's a Nortonn?

Robusto

@MetaEd Yes, and it was intended to. But that really isn't the point of ELU, is it? A snarky answer to a dumb question?

MetaEd

2:58 PM

@Cerberus Exactly. You did research, you supplied a good short essay answer that addressed more than the question, was fun to read, and probably fun to write. Any questions about those vocabulary words now have a place to dupe. That, in my mind, is an example of ELU done right.

@Robusto No, the point of ELU is probably Cerb's Apocalypse answer though.

Robusto

I think my answer about the elided "e" in poetry was a good answer too. But it's just too easy to drop the standards here for a big score.

MetaEd

@Robusto Still, the point of ELU is to entertain and educate about the wonder that is the English language. Your snark also made a good point, even if it was just use the fucking dictionary.

Robusto

My snark scored well because it worked the audience for nudges of recognition involving Kurt Cobain's band.

MetaEd

Of course -- but also because it worked the audience for nudges of recognition involving the use of references before you ask a dumb question. ;-)

Robusto

Make no mistake: I know how to play the game to win. I just don't feel there's a point to playing that game any longer, which is why I rarely answer questions these days. Also, bad questions invite more bad questions, which invite bad answers, which invite more bad answers, and so on, ad infinitum.

MetaEd

3:04 PM

I don't think bad questions invite more bad questions, not really. Most of our bad questions are not from repeat offenders. The problem is like Eternal September. There are billions of people on the Internet who want to learn English, and there are always brand new ones coming here.

Cerberus

@Robusto Democracy =~ populism.

Robusto

Getting a high rep score on an SE site is, to borrow an analogy from Pauline Kael, nothing more than a feat: it is like building a scale model of the Pentagon entirely out of toothpicks. A lot of work went into it, and it is something of a minor marvel, but what are you left with at the end?

simchona

@meta a major knitter of socks

MetaEd

If we had a lot of good reusable answers to basic questions, ELU could be a more broadly useful resource for ELL people.

Robusto

There are books for that.

Cerberus

3:06 PM

@MetaEd I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I find my Wiki loop-ups a bit dull. Practical, but not very interesting.

Robusto

@Cerberus You are a lapidary craftsman, but a craftsman nonetheless. Also, I think you mean "look-ups" — not "loop-ups" ...

MetaEd

A person could possibly build an ELU reputation by writing reusable answers to basic questions. Because then they would get lots of dupe referrals and correspondingly lots of votes. And that would be a reputation worth having: it would reflect that a lot of people would have been helped with their basic English quetions.

Like how to spell "questions".

Cerberus

@Robusto Too late to edit.

And why lapidary?

Robusto

Look at the new flavor of the month who plays the game: Barrie England. As I did before, he answers a lot of unworthy questions with answers of one or two sentences.

Cerberus

Agreed.

And he's not even stupid.

It is sort of addictive.

MetaEd

3:10 PM

The answer he just posted could be rewritten to not only answer the question but serve as a general answer about finding out what's more common.

Robusto

No, and his credentials are on paper better than mine. But most of his answers are a waste, because most of the questions are just awful.

MetaEd

So the next question, "the fastest versus fastest" could be duped to his answer.

Robusto

@MetaEd Yeah, but democracy is ill-suited to reward that kind of quality.

Cerberus

@MetaEd I agree that expanding an answer to become more interesting and comprehensive is good.

MetaEd

Well I have asked Barrie to do it.

simchona

3:15 PM

Nortonn is now both Redux and MailS

Cerberus

Good.

Robusto

@MetaEd I don't even see his answer to that question as meeting the bare minimum qualification for an acceptable answer. Saying one phrase is used more than another is an evasion, not an answer. Also, it's a stupefyingly inane question. Who the fuck cares? Are we smarter about English for having read that Q & A?

MetaEd

@simchona Problem user? Did I feed a troll?

Cerberus

@MetaEd I think he will just say "I looked it up in that corpus."

simchona

@Meta the user is the one under discussion in Meta

Cerberus

3:18 PM

@Robusto I agree that the question is a bit meaningless without more context.

Robusto

@Cerberus I bet half his answers involved the same thing.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes.

So I don't think he will appreciate Ed's suggestion that he expand on his methods.

Mahnax

@MetaEd You can tell it's him by that formatting style.

MetaEd

@Robusto The question was which is more common. So the answer is responsive, but doesn't give people the tools to answer such a question themselves. I'd say the relative frequency of one phrase over another is not inane as a question though.

Robusto

@Cerberus I've chided him before, and he shrugs it off. He's not about educating, he's about gaming. It would be hypocritical for me to fault him, because I went through that phase. But at least I usually gave an illuminating response instead of a minimum-effort statistical regurgitation.

Cerberus

3:21 PM

@MetaEd Not if some kind of reason is provided.

Robusto

@MetaEd Frequency proves nothing if the comparison terms are not equivalent. The "most" vs. "the most" comparison sounds cut and dried, but there are different uses for each example, and that is something a corpus look-up, like an NGram survey, will fail to show.

Cerberus

@Robusto Gaming...could be; in any case he just reads an answer narrowly and answers accordingly. He also expresses some irritation at questions now and then.

@Robusto Agreed: it has too little context to be a meaningful question.

MetaEd

3:35 PM

What kind of voting irregularities resulted in that suspension?

simchona

He had multiple accounts and voted on himself I think

Robusto

Also, how could there not be more records for a single word vs. a word combination? Are you taking into account all uses of most as adverb, determiner, and pronoun? Compare corpus responses for best, worst, and least vs. adding the to each. — Robusto 3 mins ago

Cerberus

@Robusto +1

Robusto

It had to be said.

Cerberus

I might even be inclined to down-vote that answer for being misleading, but it's just not bad enough.

Robusto

3:49 PM

But it's skating, it's dodgy, and if I knew Barrie better I might even call it disingenuous. He clearly has the capacity to provide better answers, but he doesn't. It's like the underachieving bright kid in class who turns in work that's just good enough to get by. You hate to see it, and it provides a disincentive for others to do good work.

Cerberus

Heh.

Robusto

And John Lawler raises some good points, illuminating part of my objection nicely.

MetaEd

@Robusto My impression of Barrie's answers over time is that he provides the minimal answer when the question is less interesting or doesn't show any effort at research. So pretty much the questioner gets what they deserve. But if he is answering an interesting (to him) question it'll go into depth.

Robusto

@MetaEd What is he, a ticket machine? The more money you put in, the longer the ride you can take?

Look at his response to the comments:

Cerberus

Like my neighbours.

Robusto

3:59 PM

> english.stackexchange.com/questions/73812/…

Ah, @Cerb tweened me.

Cerberus

I prefer to think of myself as a ninja dog, but OK.

ninja moves

MetaEd

@Robusto Given that we vote down questions that show no research, it's arguably overgenerous to give any answer at all. So yes, the more money (research) you put in, the longer the ride you can take (the more thoughtful the answer you can expect). Isn't that realistic?

Robusto

I was being flippant. Sorry. The measurement implied fails at the extremes, just like IQ tests.

MetaEd

@Cerberus The question as it stands shows no research, and the answer as it stands shows bad research. Arguably bad research is much worse than no research, because it's not just lacking in information but actually misleading. So why wouldn't you downvote it?

Cerberus

@BarrieEngland: So just to be clear: the numbers in your answer are simply for "most" and "the most", no context? If so, do you think that is relevant to the question? Why don't you replace what you have now with these results for "love most" and "love the most"? — Cerberus 18 secs ago

MetaEd

4:15 PM

See, I'm learning … I have done my first two COCA searches. "I love most" has fewer records than "I love the most", which is the opposite result to the more general searches. So where does that leave us? — MetaEd 4 mins ago

Cerberus

By the way, @JosephWeissman, we now have two more parties in parliament, because people are splitting off from the populist right-wing party (such populist parties always go through similar cycles before they disappear):

@MetaEd One might be inclined to edit those results into Barrie's answer...

(The table shows seats per party in the lower house. Total should be 150.)

MetaEd

@Cerberus No, that would completely change the sense of his answer. It would be a different answer. Technically, yes I could edit it, but I don't think it would make sense to do so. Furthermore, as this is my first COCA search I am not confident enough that I got it right to create a new answer. Hence I relegated the results to a comment.

Cerberus

Yeah I understand.

user19161

7:31 PM

@Robusto Yeah, some of them have even been downvoted.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…