All Questions

How and when do (prescriptive) grammarians use (descriptive) linguistics? I'm asking because I have a (very nebulous) interest in using learning about linguistics for this reason. Some examples, or ...

Is it only me, or has anybody else noticed that many, if not most of the “nasty” and “mean spirited” requests for pejorative language occur on the weekend? Apart from filtering for “pejorative” tag, ...

I want to use ELU to find out if something is unusual but correct usage: is that OK? So not whether it sounds natural, but if the sentence conveys the meaning I intend, and whether that is not ...

I'm not clear why this question has been migrated Is the sentence "Thora went to the shop for how long?" grammatically correct? I'm concerned that it sounds too awkward, too expressive of ...

What is the best way for non-professionals to have an opinion on questions about grammar that are not settled? I mean anyone who thinks about unsettled or live questions in grammar when there is no ...

I'm looking for valid reasons for the downvote to this question. I have raised this question, on meta, for three reasons. I think the question's OK, should be answered, and I still desire an answer. ...

A similar question was asked here: Should we correct (or point out) language errors in questions? . I fully agree with the advice given in the accepted answer in respect of grammar and the ...

I am looking for sites or communities where I can post my writings for reviews free of charge. Is there any?

I've never studied grammar. I want to know if something is a sentence, but don't know enough grammar to describe it and so ask a general question. Only, I think, create analogous sentences (I think?)....

While on a "search and destroy" mission for my own errant comments, I noticed that this question "Looking for a poem that I have mostly forgotten" was originally posted on the main site, and then "...

I recently left a Comment below an Answer to a post (here - altho' the actual comment & post are irrelevant to the issue raised here). The comment was intended for the author of the original ...

Some questions about language have single answers that are incontrovertibly the case for all speakers of the language (for the standard (yes this is somewhat circular)). But English is large, it ...

In a recent question about what to call words made of other words, one particular answer is just a one liner. Amazingly, it currently has 8 up-votes. I downvoted it because the length of the answer ...

The question "What’s a single word that means Contagious Happiness" was recently put on hold. But before it was put on hold, I commented on how I personally found it mildly offensive, and how I felt ...

Would exchanging quotation marks in the German tradition for conventional English quotation marks be considered a constructive edit on English Language & Usage? This is what I mean by German ...

In one of the first questions on this site, "If I was" vs "If I were", there are a slew of answers. The question had a somewhat more recent (Feb 2018) spate of activity with a very authoritative, ...

Yesterday I was surprised to see an additional 175 points added to my rep as someone had, apparently, voted up a whole series of my past questions (but not, notably, any of my answers). Today that ...

This user posted this answer in October 2018. I have an issue with the link they have provided. The user has provided a definition from the OED and a link that takes you to the OED's homepage. The ...

What's the correct word to refer to a believer of scientism? I don't understand what's unclear with this question. The comment says: Wait... what is scientism exactly? It sounds like a very ...

I would like to enter a word (like the verbs "live" or "die", for instance), and from that word, to see the adjective form ("alive", "dead"), the noun form ("life", "death") and other variations ("...

I am doing a research closely related to dialectical terms. I am aware of DARE which is the dictionary of American regional English. It shows the dialectical terms by region. Is there any Canadian ...

I refer to this question: Insult for someone who “doesn't know anything”? I VTC'd on the basis of Unclear What You are Asking, because I didn't find any context. Is the person to be insulted lazy, ...

With eJoy pages, I can see the word's word link information like this: This info really helped me memorize vocabulary. Do any dictionary sites provide this information?

I added an answer to the discussion of Lou Reed's lyrics and I realized later that it should have been a question in its own right. I’m reluctant to delete that answer because of the comments and ...

I think it'd be interesting to statistically find this out. One could take samples from every year of EL&U and compare the amount of average upvoted and downvoted questions to get a more concrete ...

What is the wife of a henpecked husband called? No idea why you are classifying my response as plagiarism. Really none at all.

I refer to this question (now on hold) and the moderator's repeated observation that the answers, and question, are opinion-based. Isn't the issue that synonyms (like translation questions) are going ...

A recent answer demonstrates its point with lyrics from a Lou Reed song. This has prompted a flag to be raised, calling the lyrics "offensive and unwelcoming". There is also a comment, with 20 ...

Gender neutral alternative to Sir/Madam It's odd that it was closed. It's a very specific question, and given typical everyday context. If you disagree - would like to clarify why it is opinion ...

The question What is the wife of a henpecked husband called?, asked five hours ago as I write this, has currently generated a list of highly gendered pejoratives, from shrew to cow, with virtually1 no ...

I'm looking for a word to encompass position, size, and vector in a cartesian plane, their common characteristic being that they're all expressible as a pair of scalar values. This question is ...

My original question was possibly badly-worded. I do not know how to make it better except to post a new question. If I could, I would delete it, but there are now too many answers to do that. I am ...

If you would review the question.... What is the first date of documented usage and attribution of the term "white race" and/or "white races"? It contains racially charged and ...

RE: Take advice OF or FROM (the comment from Jim). More than any other Stack I use, English.SE users have the habit of answering questions in comments. I've seen a lot of them over the time I've ...

I have seen posts where the OP states a problem, and it is closed as being unclear. As an engineer, I've been trained to "State the Problem." A question does not necessarily need to be answered ...

Once, an English teacher shared with me a website where you can see how certain words are used with others. For instance, you would see the type of words with which "mandatory" and "compulsory" are ...

It is true that this question shows no research and it would be appropriate to close it were it posted by an adult. But the OP is in the sixth grade! Should we not cultivate this budding linguist ...

So I'm researching the difference between "prefer to do" and "prefer doing", and came across this question which asked about the difference in meaning between those two specific forms. It was locked ...

For me, this is the dividing line, the line between what is appropriate for this site, and what is not. I do not know how it is possible that we have become the site to post trash in the name of ...

I have a question about my English Language & Usage Stack Exchange post: Difference between and/or after "you can use" In my question, I asked whether "and" and "or" can have the same ...

2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :) What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads ...

Sometimes questions that seem valid and interesting seem to just pass people by—it has happened to some of my own questions, and I have seen it with other questions too. Often, I think it is a ...

By accident, I clicked Edit on someone else's post. I saw my error immediately, because I wanted to edit MY post, not someone else's. Then I wondered, why in the world is this site allowing people to ...

We’ve recently had a change in UI, resulting in a mostly blank left menu bar, among other things. We also have huge numbers of posts that don’t seem to be coming from the people that the EL&U ...

I am "constantly" running out of closevotes. It used to happen just once or twice a month, but I've now I've hit it for the second time in a week. To be clear, I am referring not just to running out ...

I was browsing through the questions and found so many abandoned [on hold] questions. These wracks clutter up the site and pull attention away from the good questions on our site. Can anything be ...

This question, in my opinion, seems to be concerned with parallelism. I would definitely consider parallelism as part of grammar. The comments are being needlessly specific. First of all, I don't ...

When the pointer hovers over a tag, a tag popup appears. This is fine if you move the pointer to the tag, but it is a nuisance if you scroll the page and the tag slips under the pointer. Can you work ...

The tag correlative-comparitives should be changed to correlative-comparatives because the former isn't properly spelled. I was going to do it myself, but then I realized there's a tag synonym that ...

Please post your personal tips, ticks, and best practices for finding interesting questions to answer. These can be tags to watch, searches you do (even for really old questions, even for old, ...