Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Will websites like English Stack Exchange and its ilk become obsolete due to ChatGPT?
I'm seriously worried. I would love to hear thoughts from members of this community.
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Can we get this question back from ELL, please?
A very interesting question, which looks like it was asked by a native speaker, got migrated to English Language learners:
What does 'ever' modify?
The question asks whether the word ever is ...
Andrew LeachMod
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Announcement: AI generated answers are officially banned here
It's really quite unbelievable, but artificial intelligence has recently gotten to the point where, given a question, it can give a stunningly coherent answer almost indistinguishable from a real ...
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Editing Answers in This Site
Is it allowed to leave corrections for answers in the comments regarding grammar on this site? It bothers me that suggested edits have disappeared here. It would be nice to have those. After all, we ...
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Why was my question about word definitions and differences closed by mods and downvoted by readers?
I have a question about my English Language & Usage Stack Exchange post,
What's the difference between backward(s) and backwardly?
Why was my question closed and why are the mods refusing to ...
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recommendations on grammar learning and writing for intermediate level [closed]
hey i need help with improving my English grammar and writing. can anyone recommend me some books or learning materials? My current level, I believe, is intermediate, so I need a grammar or writing ...
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Should we update our site's policy against helping programmers choose names to use in their software?
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:cache invalidation and naming things. ―Phil Karlton
Today we received yet another request for naming help: Is there a term which covers both bank ...
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IELTS test resources [closed]
I want to prepare for the IELTS academic exam, and I am so confused about the best resources. Do you have any suggestion for me?
And in your opinion, which is better Collins or Cambridge books for ...
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Has EL&U stopped tweeting?
Does anyone know why no question has been tweeted since 8 Feb 2023?
The last tweet was How does one pronounce Pompey?, and then nothing has happened for more than a week.
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Where to ask for advice specific to the writing of scientific papers?
Where to ask a question about grammar or word usage specific to scientific papers ?
For a situation of the following type: I wrote a grammatically correct sentence but maybe it is unusual in a ...
Andrew LeachMod
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Should we capitalize divine pronouns on here?
I'm never sure whether to capitalize divine pronouns or not, unless it's a private audience of people I know well. Who knows what all offends strangers?
My aunt, for example, was offended and scolded ...
LaurelMod
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Why were comments locked on my post?
I recently asked a question, and after a while that post was locked and comments were disabled. Why did that happen with that question? The message said:
Locked for 22 hours. Comments on this ...
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Is Python a snake or a programming language? If the latter, why is it choking my dog?
We've been getting a rash of questions asking, essentially, what a programmer should name methods or properties. One such was a request for a word that meant both "add" and "remove" because the ...
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What's difference between oed.com and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Could you help me to compare oed.com vs Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Are they both from Oxford University? Where can I find a list of Oxford official website?
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Detecting output of Large Language Models
Are there any linguistic analysis algorithms designed to detect the output of undisclosed computerized large language models (bots) that pops up on question-answer sites, eg Quora? (vs text written by ...
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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COCA corpus: Is it possible to display a list search result as parts of speech?
I want to know what parts of speech (and in what frequency) follow a word or phrase. If I do a list search, for example "for the purpose of *", the result is a list of the actual words in ...
LaurelMod
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What are the main historical grammar reference books? [closed]
Our main present-day grammars seem to be Quirk's (1980s), Biber's (1990s) and Huddleston's (2000s). Out of historical curiosity, what were main grammar references of the preceding decades? Who or ...
tchristMod
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Why can't we help programmers with English language usage?
As I understand it, questions about nomenclature, including language for use in coding, are considered off-topic at EL&U.
Why is that? What was the rationale for deeming them as such? And does ...
tchristMod
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If a question is too easy, should it be closed, or should it be migrated to ELL?
I've noticed that, when a question is too easy and the answer can be quickly looked up, people respond in one of two ways:
Migrate the question to ELL, since it's too easy for EL&U.
Close the ...
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What are the best text-to-IPA converters that match the IPA transcriptions in the Oxford American English dictionary?
There are so many text to IPA converters available but I am having difficulty finding a text-to-IPA converter that consistently or closely matches the IPA transcriptions in the Oxford American English ...
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Why was my question (which exists on academia with lots of upvotes) migrated to ELL?
I have asked a question about a word (so in my understanding a single-word request but I probably tagged it wrongly as word-choice) for the "text" that often appears in the body of ...
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Why is this community so elitist?
Every question you ask gets showered with people pointing and berating. This is the most toxic Stack Exchange community I've experienced. Better chances on Reddit.
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Unreasonable expectations for questions and pedantic gatekeeping
I recently posted the following question:
is it substitute by or substitute for by
While doing my research on the question, I mistakenly came under the misunderstanding that the passive voice was ...
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Meta and Reference Sources: The Invisible Man?
ELU Meta contains questions that exist as resources for (generally) less knowledgable users. In principle I think this is a good thing as it keeps questions about reference sources (rather than ...
NVZMod
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Is the background color of the ELU SE website based on the background color of the Etymonline website?
I was surfing etymonline and I found its background color exactly identical to the one of our beloved site. Is ELU’s background color based on Etymonline’s or is Etymonline’s based on ELU’s?
tchristMod
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Editing a question for long-term value vs. preserving the original poster's point of view
A recent question on the main site requests an English equivalent of a Hindi proverb rassi jal gayi par bal nahi. Evidently the poster feels that a key feature of the Hindi expression is an element of ...
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Relatively recent instances of foreign language grammar entering standard English usage
I am generally curious about instances of grammar and syntax from foreign languages entering standard English usage within the last century or two. This interest is specifically motivated by my ...
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Question closed for reasons I find inaccurate
At times, I conceive of questions that are vaguely related to more common ones, but entailing much more nuance than generally captured in basic references or guides. In some cases, the answer ...
CommunityBot
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Community Promotion Ads - 2016
It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!
Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to ...
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Community Promotion Ads - 2015 [duplicate]
The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community ...
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"Community" edits are often useless and confusing
I've seen this happen many times: A question will show "Community Bot modified 48 mins ago" on the index page, but when I go there I can't find any evidence of an edit to the question. All ...
LaurelMod
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An answer about spelling was deleted. Why?
December 7, 2022
An answer, which was highly upvoted, has been recently deleted by a mod.
After searching briefly on the net, the content seems to be original and the author's explanation more than ...
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Should we allow Google NGrams to be presented as statistical evidence without qualification? Should we define a set of standards for their usage?
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." — Benjamin Disraeli, attr. by Mark Twain
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything." — ...
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Discourage using number of Google results as a source.
It looks like this is happening with some frequency, and is absolutely fraught with problems.
Primarily, there is essentially no useful information contained in "x gives 230,000 results, but y is ...
LaurelMod
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How can word choice questions be closed for being opinion-based?
I asked a word choice question recently, and it was closed within minutes for being "opinion-based". Fine, I suppose it is.
But there are over 11000 questions tagged for word choice, not ...
CommunityBot
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Check to reopen a perhaps wrongly duplicate-closed question on the right indefinite article before a slash phrase (or before a parenthetical phrase)
I have already flagged it to a moderator who asked me to edit the question and ask to reopen it on meta. I ask the seniors here to think about reopening this:
A or an before slash phrase? A or an ...
Andrew LeachMod
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Why was my Ngram comment removed?
Not a big issue, but I’d like to understand why my comment on the following question was removed. Is provided a link to Google Books on the usage frequency of “you and me” vs “me and you”. Curiously, ...
tchristMod
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Would it be possible to preface each theoretical grammar answer with the specific name of the theory being used?
It's difficult to make the leap from non-theoretical grammar to theoretical ones, especially when one doesn't know the specific name of the theory being expounded upon.
I think it's just a case of not ...
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Heavy-handed question locking? [duplicate]
The question Does this sentence seem weird grammatically? was summarily locked, and the couple of comments I'd posted (primarily in order to advertise and justify my vote to migrate to ELL) were moved ...
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Reason for removal of a comment?
Shortly after the question Is “On Sundays my sister and I never play hockey” correct? appeared on the main site I posted a brief comment explaining how the placement of On Sundays makes sense in a ...
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How to get a better understanding and knowledge of metaphors
I want to incorporate less formal, technical, and literal terms into my vocabulary to help articulate some theoretical points in any scenario. I heard someone say
you'd catch more flies with honey ...
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Are there any websites (or tools) in which I could translate Early Modern English into Present Day English?
I'm an English Learner who is interested in the Early Modern English recently. I have some texts from EModE to read. Sometimes there are words and grammar patterns that I can't relate to Present Day ...
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Why was my question locked and voted to close?
My question was locked without explanation. My best guess, based solely on the fact that comments were disabled, is that it is because there were too many unwelcome comments. But I have no way to be ...
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What fine-tuned word finders are out there?
I know there's a lot of word finders, but I'm wondering if there is some this fine-tuned.
For example, if I want words ending in -ade, but only nouns.
accolade, charade, tirade, façade, balustrade...
...
LaurelMod
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Are there any other sites other than Onelook that search multiple dictionaries simultaneously?
Somebody said I should try Onelook but whatever I search in there, including the word hello or book (see picture below), nothing seems to work.
Are there other sites like Onelook?
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Online dictionary that lists number of complements for verbs
Is there an online dictionary that lists not only whether a verb is intransitive or transitive (e.g. Merriam-Webster does that), but also how many arguments it binds?
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Can you suggest to me an English Esperanto dictionary?
Writing English is not a problem for me. However I get stumped when English words I thought that in my thinking would be pronounced in this way, are pronounced in a totally different way.
One ...
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Mobile apps being completely sunsetted
I’m guessing that I may be the only EL&U regular this impacts, but just bringing it to your attention for those who don’t follow the big Meta:
StackExchange native mobile apps being completely ...
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Has there been research on how things look if we represent a dictionary as a graph of nodes from entry words to words appearing in the definitions?
I am curious if there has been research on a topic I'll describe in the next paragraph.
The topic: Suppose that we have an English dictionary and a huge piece of blank paper. For every entry in the ...
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