There are many posts about lays/lies on the internet, but half of them contradict the others. It's an important letter - which is the proper form?
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How do I know when to use lay and when to use lie, and what are the different forms of each verb? I'm always getting them confused.
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This question is inspired by comments on . The original poster wrote:     How to correct this error?   And comments say that it's an incorrect question. Better is     How do I correct this error?   I am not a native English speaker, so the fact that both versions sound natural to me is quite irrelevant. But I would like to ask anyway whether the first version is really bad.  I have seen a lot of questions starting with How to, so if you say that the first version is incorrect, could you please summarize when it is OK to use How to and when it is preferable to say How do I.
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I see many questions with really long titles and bodies with nothing more than:     "Title says it all"   "See title. ~thanks~"   "In PHP. thanks!"   Examples (a couple I already edited):        I assume the "thanks" variants at the end are to get around a minimum length. Should these be edited or voted to close? If edited, how? Should I just repeat the title in the body?  It seems like a question that can fit entirely in the title is inherently low quality.  UPDATE: There's over 700 of just the "title says it all" pattern for anyone that wants to have fun editing these:
113962
Which way of writing the word: "Email" or "e-mail" is correct? Both variants seem to be in wide use. If both ones are okay, maybe there is a difference in contexts they have been used (one is more formal than the other)?
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Look at this . The title and question body are the same. I think this is not a good practice. Is it possible to create a mechanism to force a user to give a brief description which is different from the title?
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Someone edited my message on StackOverflow, but it really bugs me out.  I'm not sure what's wrong with it:   As you see, the bigger the circle becomes, the more vertices I need for hiding the straight lines. As you see, the bigger the circle becomes, the more vertices I need to hide the straight lines.   The latter (corrected) sentence just bugs me out for some reason. It would sound better if there was a comma after the word "need", perhaps, but I guess that would be even worse in means of grammatical correctness.  Can someone explain why is the first sentence bad and the second sentence correct? And could there even be better solution to fix the first sentence?
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I see a lot of people saying things such as      Nice work, Nick   Or     Thanks, Mat   Is the comma really needed? I'm not 100% sure because my spelling and grammar is not great, but I think it reads very strange.
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How compelled should I feel to use non-contracted forms (do not rather than don't and so on) when writing in a rather formal text, say an academic paper? In one case I am afraid to seem too stilted, in the other, too casual. Are there good guidelines?  And are there differences in this regard between British and American English?  (In this  there was not much more than "Contractions are more frequent in informal than formal contexts".)
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I'm looking at , which was closed as off-topic a few days ago. Just a few minutes ago, the OP radically revised it; it doesn't even resemble the original question anymore. In fact, the two versions only share about seven words and some punctuation. Here's a screenshot of the most recent revision:    So, the question for the community is this: Is this proper, or should it be rolled back?  Edit: I went ahead and rolled it back because it has a couple of answers already (responding to the old version). But I would still like to know the community consensus on this.
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I just had a strange flashback to a conversation I had when I was in high school, with a man who was regarded by many members of a particular online community as having an impressive degree of knowledge of the English language.  The conversation centered on a claim this man made that I found very difficult to accept. I had made some remark involving the difference between it's and its (a distinction which I trust is quite well-known to the majority of users on this site), to which he had contributed, mostly phrased as an amusing aside, that there was one more word I hadn't mentioned: its', with the apostrophe at the end.  I originally thought he might have been joking, but we ended up debating this rather fervently. I seem to recall that I kept demanding he use the word in an example sentence, but he either could not or refused to do so. Yet he maintained that it is a word.  Is this true? I must concede I haven't put a lot of thought into it just now; but at the time, I was perplexed by the very suggestion that it could be a word (what could it mean?), and at the moment I can't really think of any scenario where it would make any sense.
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Similar to '', is it also ok to add an example?   I was going to  but I noticed that one answer had most of the things I needed to say, except perhaps that the questioner didn't perhaps understand the answer and  I feel that an example may help.
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I was reading an online editorial a week or so ago in which its author employed an awesome word, the meaning of which was "to intentionally and deliberately withhold information [essential to the endeavor at hand, with the underlying purpose of misleading others by its omission]". Yeah, all of that in one word.  Alas, I can't seem to find the editorial online anymore, I've now I forgotten the word!
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As a programmer, I have no problem with seeing or using "and/or" in technical documentation. For example,     I can upvote an answer that satisfies me and/or mark it as accepted.   That's perfectly good English to me. However, if I were writing a novel, or even just an essay, or — heaven forbid — a poem, "and/or" would seem extremely out of place.  My question is, what should I be using instead? (I solemnly swear I will not use that knowledge to actually write a poem.)
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Concerned paragraph:  [Background: a master and his servant (a water tubewell technician) have been living happily for several years. The master owns seven farms spread across a large river. The master "became familiar with this ubiquitous man, who not only accompanied him on his tours of inspection, but morning and night could be found standing on the master bed rewiring the light fixture or in the bathroom poking at the water heater". Now, on this one day, the servant has hesitatingly said this to his master]  [i've redacted the proper nouns for these people's names with "the master" and "the servant" to avoid confusion]     “Sir, as you know, your lands stretch from here to the Indus, and on these lands are fully seventeen tube wells, and to tend these seventeen tube wells there is but one man, me, your servant. In your service I have earned these gray hairs”—here he bowed his head to show the gray—“and now I cannot fulfill my duties as I should. Enough, sir, enough. I beg you, forgive me my weakness. Better a darkened house and proud hunger within than disgrace in the light of day. Release me, I ask you, I beg you.”   Question asked related to this quote     The servant's comments primarily serve to:    flatter the master by mentioning how vast his lands are. boast to the master about how competent and reliable the servant is. emphasize the servant's diligence and loyalty to his master. notify the master that the servant intends to quit his job tending the tube wells.     My question:  Notice the lines of the paragraph: "now I cannot fulfill my duties as I should" and "Release me". Don't they clearly indicate that the servant intends to quit his job? Hence, option 4 should clearly be correct.  However, option 3 has been given as correct by KhanAcademy, saying that option 4 is incorrect because "The servant doesn’t say he intends to quit his job, asking instead only for help doing it"  So, my question is:     Isn't the above a clear example of misinterpretation of the paragraph by KA?     All options with KhanAcademy's explanations - for reference   Even though it initially highlights the vastness of the master’s lands, it primarily focuses on the servant’s dedication and service to the master. This emphasizes not that the servant is competent and reliable but that the servant feels he is no longer able to adequately fulfill his duties. The main purpose of the servant’s comments is to highlight the labor and service he has provided for the master over the years. the servant says “there is but one man, me, your servant” to take care of the tube wells on all the master’s vast lands and that the extensive work has resulted in the servant earning gray hairs on his employer’s behalf. The servant doesn’t say he intends to quit his job, asking instead only for help doing it.
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I have this sentence:     There is an engine inside me that keeps saying "someone must be at the top, why isn't that you?"    Should I write that or leave it out?  I know both ways are correct, but I am asking for the most most most most most formal way.
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So, I noticed last week that . Well, it turns out that the wording is actually completely incorrect.  noticed that all of the users on the front page are the OPs of the questions listed there. This area is the issue:  It reads  Top Network Users These users asked or provided top answers for the posts on this page  I found that confusing, so I proposed this wording (provided by ):  Top Network Users These users provided the top questions and answers on this page  But, again, the users listed there are the ones who asked the questions; none answered them:  (click for larger image) Since all of the &quot;Top Network Users&quot; are the askers, it should be something like this:  Top Network Users These users asked the questions listed on this page  Either that, or answerers of those questions should be included along with the askers.
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Taking notes, I was going to write this:     therefore p′ is a shortest path.   But the topic is APSP which stands for "all pairs shortest paths" so I decided to just write SP instead and...  Is it written with a like this     therefore p′ is a SP   or with an like this (because in my head I would "read" the S)     therefore p′ is an SP