Is it normal practice to omit the comma before the quoted sentence?  When John told her, &quot;you missed a trick,&quot; what did he mean?   When John said, &quot;you missed a trick,&quot; what did he mean?
When quoting something said by someone else, should I use a comma before the quote? Suppose I quote the definition given in a dictionary. Am I correctly using the the punctuation marks in the following sentences? (I am using them in the way I think correct in American English.)     One of the meanings of cat is, "a small animal with soft fur that people often keep as a pet."        A cadet is, "a young person who is training to become an officer in the police or armed forces."   Should I use a comma only when I explicitly quote somebody?     Groucho Marx once said, "Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age."   Should I use a comma in this case too?     As Groucho Marx said,            No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.      On Comma Sense, A fun-damental guide to punctuation (Richard Lederer and John Shore), I read the following about using the comma:     Use commas to set off complete quotations:           The great general George S. Patton once said, "No, no—the war is this way, you idiots!"
Julian day of the year in Java Gray iTunes album tracks I noticed that a few tracks from an album appear gray.    The tracks are downloaded, I can play them if I double click them explicitly, but they don't play as part of the album. If I click the album's "play" button, they're skipped (1 gets played, then 3, then 4, etc.)  Why is this happening and how can I prevent it?    I saw a similar question, , but that's not what I'm experiencing — for me, the songs do get downloaded and everything appears to be OK, they just get skipped when playing the album. Prove that $a^2 + b^2 \geq 8$ if $ x^4 + ax^3 + 2x^2 + bx + 1 = 0 $ has at least one real root. If it is known that the equation $$ x^4 + ax^3 + 2x^2 + bx + 1 = 0 $$ has a (real) root, prove the inequality $$ a^2 + b^2 \geq 8. $$  I am stuck on this problem, though, it is a very easy problem for my math teacher. Anyway, I can't figure out. I am able to produce a standard length \sim with a tiny S above it, but I would like the \sim tilde to be longer (maybe one and half times as wide as a capital letter).  Any tips on how to change the width/length of \sim? Any way to send a personal message to another user? There has been quite a few times that I wished I could send a message to another user on SO - not ask a question for everyone to see, but just a short message informing them of something or requesting them to do something.  Are there any plans to allow this to happen in the future?  Related: Transforming multiple rows into a single row Is static HTML the fastest? Why is there a controversy on whether mass increases with speed? Some people say that mass increases with speed, some people say that the mass of an object is independent of its speed.  I understand how some (though not many) things in physics are a matter of interpretation based on one's definitions. But I can't get my head around how both can be 'true' is any sense of the word.  Either mass increases or it doesn't, right?  Can't we just measure it, and find out which 'interpretation' is right? e.g.: (in some sophisticated way) heat up some particles in a box and measure their weight?  ------------------------------  UPDATE  Right, so I've got two identical containers, each with identical amounts of water, each on identical weighing scales, and each in the same g field. If one container has hotter water, will the reading on its scale be larger than the other? If the answer is yes, and g is constant, does this mean that the m in w=mg has got bigger? Does it mean that two threads can't change the underlying data simultaneously? Or does it mean that the given code segment will run with predictable results when multiple threads are executing that code segment? How to match all occurrences of a regex How to change the style of the title attribute inside an anchor tag? So my teacher gave a pretty tough (for me) problem in class today: Does the series $$ \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac {\sin{\frac 1 n}} {\sqrt n} $$ converge or diverge?  So far I've thought of trying the Comparison Test and Ratio Test but couldn't really get anywhere. Intuitively I think it should converge, but how do I actually show this? What is the fastest way to create a 90° joint? I often want to create joints like this:    Since I end up making these more than a little, I'd like a fast way to do it (i.e. on the order of &lt; 10 seconds)  I've found a couple tools which come close to being the ideal solution, but I've had some problems with them as listed below:   When using the spin tool I usually end up having to fiddle with the location for a while in order to to get a natural curve:    Are there any techniques to expedite this process of fiddling? The bridge tool is nice because I can precisely specify where both ends of the joint will be, however I often end up with subtly uneven joints, probably due to my initial mesh being not quite square.    Is there a fast way to correctly line up the initial edge loops in a way that will result in an even joint? So what I'm looking for here is something like PHP's  function.  This is so I can debug my scripts by seeing what's the state of the object in question. How did this person gain possession of the Infinity Stones? Can $n!$ be a perfect square when $n$ is an integer greater than $1$? Can $n!$ be a perfect square when $n$ is an integer greater than $1$?  Clearly, when $n$ is prime, $n!$ is not a perfect square because the exponent of $n$ in $n!$ is $1$.  The same goes when $n-1$ is prime, by considering the exponent of $n-1$. What is the answer for a general value of $n$?  (And is it possible, to prove without Bertrand's postulate. Because Bertrands postulate is quite a strong result.) For example, is it possible to drink a flying potion and cast greater invisibility spell on myself (both spells would require concentration), so I can fly around invisible? Feed can show entries for deleted posts, which viewing them fails I am stuck on how to calculate the following limit: $$\lim_{x\to\infty}x\left(\left(1 + \frac{1}{x}\right)^x - e\right).$$  Definitely, it has to be through l'Hôpital's rule. We know that $\lim_{x\to\infty} (1+(1/x))^x = e$. So, I wrote the above expression as $$\lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{\left(1 + \frac{1}{x}\right)^x - e}{1/x}.$$Both numerator and denominator tend to zero as x tends to infinity. I applied l'Hôpital's rule twice, but I got the limit equal to infinity which is clearly wrong. In the book, it says that the limit should be $-e/2$.  Any help please? Also, in case someone managed to solve it, please tell me which numerator and denominator did you apply your l'Hôpital's rule to in both cases? Thanks a lot  Also, guys can you tell me how to write equations in this forum? Thanks. As the photo - Variable 'n' has already been declared.  I've tried clearing my cache, as well as using a new user profile with no extensions, but it doesn't work.  Might be useful to know so it can be fixed before more people are using Chrome (If it's SO's fault of course!)