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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What's the status of ELL relative to ELU?
Since English Language Learners beta is up & running (in "private" mode, whatever that means), is it now reasonable to close and/or migrate questions like When is it correct to use no and nope?
I ...
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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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Is there a reference/archive of English verbs and their argument structure (± their theta roles)?
Is there a reference/archive of English verbs and their argument structure? That is to say, how many and what categories of arguments they require. And maybe even their theta roles? I don't expect ...
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Why is it not possible to comment on questions deleted by the post author?
The following question was posted not long ago:
Causative Structures: have + object + ing-form
The question interested me so I started working on an answer. Before finishing my answer, I saw that the ...
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Request for undeletion and reopening of a question on the main site: "Retriable or retryable?"
A poster asked the question Retriable or retryable? on February 9, 2016. It was closed for lack of research on February 15 of that year. On November 9, site participant sumelic edited the question to ...
LaurelMod
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Why was my question about '(s)he' vs. 'he/she' closed as being opinion-based?
Could somebody please explain to me how is Between '(s)he' & 'he/she' -- which is recommended/ preferable? opinion-based.
The question explicitly contains
Are both "(s)he" and "...
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What does recent research tell us about how English sounded in Shakespeare's time?
I am interested in finding a present-day pronunciation that I could point to as close to that which was spoken in Shakespeare's era, much as if I were directing one of Shakespeare's plays and were ...
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How is this question opinion-based?
How is this question opinion-based? ("May I have a mango!" is it an Imperative, Optative or Interrogative sentence?)
There is nothing that seems inherently subjective about it, nor does it ...
tchristMod
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Is there any dictionary or app that list/orders words by their parts of speech?
I want to expand my English vocabulary. So, I need a dictionary or mobile app that can show me the relevant words grouped by their parts of speech. But I am not able to find anything like it after ...
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Is "english stackexchange" full of downvoting trolls?
I asked two valid legit writing-related questions and they got sufficient downvotes to prevent me from asking any more questions.
Is this place usually so maliciously hostile?
Hope someone is capable ...
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ELU, or Writing?
As the editor/curator of a game fanzine, I have an agreement with the editor/curator of a similar fanzine written in Spanish that allows each of us to select articles from the other and translate to ...
LaurelMod
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Backing up i.imgur.com images that may be at risk due to their new ToS
Now, you should be using the "add picture" feature in the editor to get an i.stack.imgur.com address for your images in your posts. That is hosting that SE pays for and images there won't ...
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When are list-questions on topic?
Perhaps this is a bit too broad a question, but we'll see. Here goes.
Right now, the consensus seems to be that list-question SWRs are opinion-based or too broad (and thus off-topic). List-question ...
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Are there any differences between U.S. Grammar & Usage and British Grammar & Usage?
Are there any differences between U.S. Grammar & Usage and British Grammar & Usage? Are there separate areas here in English Grammar & Usage for U.S. English use and for British English ...
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Do the upvotes gained on ELU meta affect your reputation? [closed]
I was just wondering whether my upvoted questions or answers on ELU meta affect my reputation. If they don't, would we be able to make this a feature?
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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. It provided a link to Google Books on the usage frequency of “you and me” vs “me and you”. Curiously, ...
tchristMod
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How do you get reputation?
Every time I try to comment on this site; it says I need "50 reputation"; but as far as I can tell, you have to comment to get reputation.
Did everyone who is currently commenting sign up and comment ...
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http://english.seeore.com/ scraping EL&U content
The site http://english.seeore.com/ appears to be reposing a lot of EL&U content plastered with ads (5,047 posts at time of writing). I can't see any proper attribution, other than this footer ...
LaurelMod
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Protocol when a comment provides a reasonable answer [duplicate]
Please bear with me: I am still a learner in this forum.
In a question such as this, where a correct answer (well, one I would have given) has been provided and the question seems interesting, is it ...
LaurelMod
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What is an "unupvote"?
I'm familiar with points, upvotes, downvotes, etc. It's not very interesting, but it's understandable. However, I recently got some points deducted for an "unupvote".
I don't mind; points are not ...
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John Lawler's ELU answer links, by topic
This is more of an announcement than a question. But it's intended for Meta.
For a class I'm giving, I've recently made up links to my answers here,
on various grammatical topics. This list is on my ...
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Why was this question closed as 'opinion based'?
This question was closed as being "opinion based," and I am interested in knowing why. The main part of the question is as follows:
I am trying to find a word that can be used in formal ...
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Why the phobia of anything linguistic?
Wanting to learn about sentence diagrams, and on the recommendation of an English teacher, I picked up the book "Syntactic Analysis: The Basics" by Nicholas Sobin. The thin book is, as it ...
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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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4
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1
answer
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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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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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1
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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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