h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Traveller in Time again in Boolean land
"Yes, sure you are right. (+ XOR + >> -)
Yes, but you are wrong. (+ XOR - >> ~)
No, and you are right. (- XOR + >> ~)
No, but you are wrong. (- XOR - >> -)

This is not a XORry business, it is more a tristate XNORry.


eXclusive OR
1 XOR 1 = 1
1 XOR 0 = 0
0 XOR 1 = 0
0 XOR 0 = 1

eXclusive Not OR
NOT( 1 XOR 1) = 0
NOT( 1 XOR 0) = 1
NOT( 0 XOR 1) = 1
NOT( 0 XOR 0) = 0

Tristate, depending on external (unknown) value a
a OR NOT( 1 XOR 1) = 0
a OR NOT( 1 XOR 0) = a
a OR NOT( 0 XOR 1) = a
a OR NOT( 0 XOR 0) = 0

(never heard of the song = b) "

>>Oh, and by the way, an ellipsis (like this: ...) consists of three dots, not four.<<

Four is also grammatically correct, although three is more widely used and accepted. More than four, however, is not.

at TiT's post.

Once, I would have been able to follow that; but now, I can't.

*really wishes that she'd spent the last few years doing something practical with her engineering degree, rather than project managing in the name of engineering*

Talking about french.
Would "J'aime marche" be correct?
.
As in "I like to walk?".

I think it would be 'J'aime marcher'.

Even with an accute accent (as in "marché") it would be wrong

Regarding punctuation: should there be a full stop after the smiley or not? Should it be:

This is a sentence .

or:

This is a sentence

or

This is a sentence.

Toy Box, I'm afraid that there's only one 'c' in 'acute'.

As for the positioning of the full stop, I would say it depends on whether you wish to associate the smiley with the sentence you've just typed. After all, the smiley could be the start of a new sentence, or be utterly unrelated to the sentence...

It's a bit like full stops and brackets. Hubby gets grumpy when I put a full stop inside a bracket. (It looks something like this.) He reckons the full stop should go outside the bracket. The rule, as I'm sure you all know, is that the full stop goes *inside* if the brackets contain a complete sentence, otherwise it goes outside. I've given up trying to tell him this, 'cos he just doesn't get it.

Even if what's in the brackets could count in itself as a complete sentence, the full stop could, in some cases, still go outside (the reasons for this are simple, and are illustrated here).

TRiG.

I'm surprised that no one has yet picked on my spelling of /alright/. I was looking forward to an oppertunity to defend it.

Sorry I hurt SWL's head.

TRiG.

Some people persist in using brackets when in fact they are not necessary. A completely separate sentence is much better.

I am continually annoyed by people who use "disgusted' or 'disgusting' inappropriately. The emotion they are displaying is anger rather than distaste.

What about the people who say "I could care less" when they really mean "I could not care less?"

That's an annoying Americanism, healingmagichands, though not all Americans use it.

Why, may I ask, is that question mark within your quotation marks?

TRiG.

Shame on me for the extra "c".

My favourite French author, Jacques Roubaud, is a bracketing specialist. More often than not there are several embedded pairs of brackets, all of which always closing properly and properly punctuated (with full stops at their right place, etc.).

And when I say "specialist", this is not a meaningless emphasis: he really studied some mathematical problems related to bracketing .

What about capitals then? Should I have written "my favourite french author" (since here "french" is an adjective)? I'm not sure about the rule in English.

I got into the habit of using brackets in my writing when I was in junior school - I find them useful as a way of inserting footnotes and additional information that's a bit of an aside from the main drift of my sentence.

I'd still use a capital 'F' for 'French', as you're describing his nationality. However, I wouldn't capitalise the 'f' in, for example, 'french bread'. Hmm... I wonder if that's actually correct?

(PS - have a about the extra 'c', we all make mistakes!)

>why is your question mark<

Perhaps I could attribute such an egregious usage to a tpyographical error????

healingmagichands, breath in and try again.
What is enclosing an insert between -'s called? For example: "My uncle -named Tom- is a fan of the Yankees." (and what's the name for the -? Dash?)

I didn't know they made iron in Aintree, and I live 10 minutes' drive away from it... Old songs can be fascinating.

The - is a dash or, according to my Chambers Good Punctuation Guide (GPG), an 'em rule'. The phrase contained within the dashes is 'bracketed', according to Lynn Truss (Eats Shoots and Leaves) or 'parenthetical' according to the GPG. Basically, the dashes are being used in the same way that brackets (parentheses, to our US friends) could be used, but give a stronger break.

And just to be pedantic, which is what we're here for, there should be spaces on each side of each dash: My uncle - named Tom - is a fan of the Yankees. If I was going to be really pedantic, I'd question the use of dashes in that sentence. I reckon commas would be quite sufficient. But it's just being used as an example, so I'll let it go.