Activity for Paul A. Clayton‭

Type	On...	Excerpt	Status	Date
Edit	Post #35535	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #12938	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #12827	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #11907	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #11296	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #11159	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #10147	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #8553	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #8000	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Edit	Post #7871	Initial revision	—	about 5 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? As others have suggested increasing the length of the name in letters and adding markings (accent marks, apostrophes, et al.) may help make the names more distinctive. In some cases this can be accomplished with little or no change in pronounciation. For example: - Elish: Elissh, Eelisch - Ara: Ara... (more)	—	over 5 years ago
Question	—	How does one avoid imposing one's own voice and preferences in critiques? When critiquing another's writing I find myself making suggestions that are clearly biased toward how I would write the work. This effect seems particularly prevent for poetry, where suggestions are clearly biased by my preference for regularity (especially in meter), certain emotional expressions, a... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Answer	—	A: What makes a piece "lyrical"? Lyrical refers to song-like qualities. Songs are inherently emotive and use rhythm and sound to convey a sense beyond the literal. The rhythmic aspect includes not merely higher-level structure but also accentuation, syllabic pacing, repetition of sound patterns, and other mechanisms. Songs generally... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	Should quotation marks for titles of short works be included as part of link text? In a hypertext document, when the title of a short work (which is enclosed in quotation marks) is a link should the quotation marks be included as part of the link text? Do common style guides generally concur on how this should be handled? It seems that such quotation marks should be included as pa... (more)	—	almost 10 years ago
Answer	—	A: When to be specific and when to let context fill in the holes? There seem to be two basic issues in this question. The first is similar to the issue of when a pronoun's antecedent is clear; is the extra information necessary for an understanding of the basic meaning of the text. This is addressed by Lauren Ipsum's answer: "if there is no other reasonable interpr... (more)	—	about 10 years ago
Answer	—	A: Killing the protagonist - should it be done? Even if readers are radically and nearly exclusively committed to the protagonist, there are several ways for the protagonist to "speak after death". The protagonist's legacy can speak. (This is covered in the answers to "Ways for main character to influence world following their death", linked in L... (more)	—	over 10 years ago
Question	—	How does one avoid incomplete changes to documentation? Having encountered errors in technical documentation that almost certainly came from incomplete editing after copying from earlier documentation, I am curious about what techniques can be used to avoid this problem. Sadly, it seems difficult to strictly apply the programming principle of Don't Repea... (more)	—	over 10 years ago
Question	—	Should this introductory quotation be translated, untranslated, or dropped? When I first wrote "Gawain's Guilt-Girdle" (14 lines of verse) I introduced it with a short (modernized/translated) quotation from the Middle English work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I think my intent at the time was to point to that original work as source material, to give a feel for the allit... (more)	—	over 11 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is the following allowed under the ungrammatical exceptions in fiction? It is not ungrammatical to use two absolute phrases connected by a conjunction (like "and"). Long sentences can be more difficult to read and tend to slow the pace of the narrative, but in this case a slower pace is appropriate, like a warm, lazy evening. Taking jwpat7's suggestion about the tense o... (more)	—	over 11 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to better describe "jet-black (pitch-black) darkness"? The following options may be helpful for avoiding overuse of specific noun-adjective pairs: - Replace the noun with another noun which has a similar relationship to the adjective. This is the simplest and most obvious method. In place of "jet-black" you could, e.g., use "coal-black" (I actually had ... (more)	—	over 11 years ago