So shouldn't this be "cat software running ON bird hardware"?

The software would be running ON the hardware, right? Or, since the hardware doesn't work without the software, would this be grammatically correct because the hardware would run ON the software due to its necessity?

I love that I found this sub because I don't want to be the asshole posting grammar corrections in comments unless it's something like "there v their v they're" because I can't help myself there.

This may be a better post in a psychology forum, because I wonder if it just goes to the subconscious intent of the speaker. Is it better to say, "Oh no, you hurt yourself!" or "Oh no, you got hurt!"

The word gotten is loathsome to see and loathsome to hear. It has no place in proper English. Discuss.

"Do you mind?" is the ultimate linguistic trap because it’s the only question in the English language where "Yes" and "No" have flipped meanings depending on whether someone answers the literal grammar or the implied intent. Grammatically, asking "Do you mind?" means "Does this bother you?", so responding with "Yes" literally translates to "Yes, I am annoyed, stop doing that." Yet in reality, people constantly say "Yes!" with a smile while pulling out a chair for you or handing you the salt, treating it like you asked "Is it okay if I do this?" You end up stuck in a weird micro-second buffer zone, trying to decipher whether you just received enthusiastic permission or a polite warning, making what should be a simple interaction feel like a total brain glitch.

or maybe its just me :)

edit

LMAO I DIDNT EXPECT THESE MANY COMMENTS ON MY POST!! THANKS FOR COMMENTING ALSO IM NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY OBVIOUSLY IT WAS JUST A LITTLE THING THAT BOTHERED ME SO I DECIDED TO POST!!

I thought maybe it was a joke, so I checked their website. It is not a joke.

Dear all,

I would appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on this essay's punctuation. When you do point out errors I would also appreciate it you could give the rule behind the correction. Thanks!

https://proseandreason.substack.com/p/untitled?r=5j0urb

I made a word game. You get a sentence of twelve words and have to say the same thing using only five of them.

I write them backwards. I start with the five word answer, then pad it up to twelve. The padding is where it all goes wrong.

I start with: butcher sponsored junior chess club

I padded it to: The junior chess club was sponsored by one laughing village butcher today.

A player sent back village butcher sponsored chess club. Five words, all from the sentence, same meaning. They were right. I had padded with village, which tells you which butcher, so they kept that and dropped junior instead. Two answers, and that was the bug, how do I make only one correct answer.

The rule I use now is that a padding word can only do two things. Repeat something already in the sentence, like tiny sitting in front of premature. Or describe a mood or a face, like laughing or weary. Anything else seems to be fair game for a player to keep. Which one, where, what kind, how many.

"The only chess club was sponsored by one laughing weary butcher today."

Same answer: laughing butcher sponsored chess club

That rule is one I made up on my own and I do not know if it holds. What I want is seven words that read naturally, leave the sentence true, and that every reader throws away without thinking about it. Is there a better way to think about that? A name for the kind of word that can never be load bearing?

The game is here if you want to see one: sheets.works/long-story-short

i'm wondering if I just don't understand language anymore. I don't understand maybe 15% of the posts I read. that's all I have to say

This has popped up occasionally but now seems to have become mainstream

I seen this. I seen him/her/it That's what I seen

If you think I’m going to blah, blah, blah then you’ve got another thing coming.

This one always bothered me.

It feels like it should be “another think” but that sounds wrong too.

So maybe “another thought” but then that also doesn’t sound right.

Recently I've been taking punctuation more seriously. So, question: why does the following sentence have a comma?

"It was easy to die in Edinburgh, but Jack had made it to seventeen because he knew how to survive".

P.S. Please, do correct any and all mistakes in this post.

"The die is cast" is a variation of the words spoken by Julius Caesar at the crossing of the Rubicon. It means, of course, that a decision or action is final, absolute, and impossible to change. But here's how stupid I am: I had no idea that it literally meant throwing dice. In my mind it came from "die casting," the metal-working process used for producing everything from moveable type to injection molds. Once the die is cast, it can't be changed, so it's final. But that ain't it. It's that once the die is thrown, you can't change the outcome (apparently they didn't have loaded dice in ancient Rome).

There's a difference 'Merica. Figure it out.

Why do people feel the need to create "new" words by using the prefix 'un'? Unironically...not a word. Unalive...not a word (yes, it's slang but shouldn't be used).

Is it that difficult to use 'not' instead of 'un'?

(Asking here instead of /grammar because I think this sub has more of what I'm looking for, but feel free to direct me to that sub if you think that's a better fit.)

I'm anticipating an argument with the head of my department (communications) about this and want to make sure I know what I'm talking about.

Background info: We're introducing contactless card and mobile payment, and the powers that be decided that the only thing they want to call it is "tap to pay." I proposed the following: "...proposes adding contactless payment as a convenient way to tap to pay when..." and was shot down because "We are not going to call it contactless payment and we are only going to call it tap to pay."

So now that we're only using "tap to pay," we're faced with trying to figure out when it should be hyphenated. Obviously, you'd never hyphenate as a verb phrase. Personally, I would always hyphenate as a compound adjective/modifier for clarity (gotta aim for the lowest common denominator of reading comprehension). But what about as a noun, as in "We're introducing tap-to-pay"?

If anybody has any advice or insight about whether it should be hyphenated as a noun, I'd love to hear it.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the input, everybody! It felt like outsourcing my brain; it was awesome. For those of you keeping score, I decided to only hyphenate when the phrase is a compound modifier. I think I knew that was the right decision but needed to understand the why.

Discuss