Activity for celtschk
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Text Editors. Suggesting & Tracking Changes to Plain-Text Documents If it is about text changes, I'd use diff files (in particular the “unified diff” format which also many version control systems use), with a caveat mentioned below. You can create the diff file by keeping the unedited file besides the edited file, and then use the `diff` utility, redirecting the out... (more) |
— | almost 3 years ago |
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A: What is the possessive form of et al.? Just use the other possessive form: > The paper of Einstein et al. stated the opposite conclusion. Although it would read better if you replaced “of” with “by”, but then it would no longer be a possessive case, and thus violate your (rather strange) restriction. (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
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Old meta questions are incorrectly marked as imported in the user profile I just noticed that some of my old meta questions here are marked as imported on my profile page, although they clearly weren't (they were meta questions about this site; there's no reason why I would have asked about it on SE). Here's a screenshot showing an example: Screenshot of question inc... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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Finishing link entry with enter sends the post instead I just got caught by something I consider a bug: I wanted to link to a web site, and used the link button above the entry box to do so. After I finished entering (or rather, pasting) the link into the pop-up box, I pressed enter to get it into the post. To my great surprise, this didn't cause the ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: mice don't tap and tablet-users don't click: what word can I use for all audiences instead? I just looked up what Borland wrote in their user manual of the Turbo Pascal UI back when using a mouse was optional and the UI could be operated also by keyboard (you don't click on the keyboard either). The word they used for buttons was “choose”. For example, this is an excerpt from their manual: ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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Move old writing challenges to writing challenge category? I've been away for some time (for personal reasons), and noticed that we now have a category “writing challenges”. Now there are some old challenges in Meta which predate that category, but IMHO would be more logically placed there. Therefore my question: Should they be moved to that category? Is ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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Spammers have found this site! I just noticed that when you go to the users page and select the age tab, the start of the list is dominated by user names that are obvious spam. While they are not very effective because few people are likely to see them, I still think something should be done about them. All of those seem to ... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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Does a point of view need to be introduced when or right after the character is introduced? In the novel I'm trying to write, I probably will have to introduce a second point of view because my initial main protagonist will be mostly unable to act after some point. Now I'm considering to shift the point of view to another character that is also introduced right in the first chapter. However... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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Why can't I upvote this answer? I tried to upvote this answer but my vote doesn't seem to register. Maybe it is because it is owned by System, but then, there are other answers owned by System that already have upvotes. Note that I don't have any problems to upvote other answers on the same question. (Unrelated observation... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: Design changes are a-coming! I just noticed a small problem: When editing a comment, you get a miniscule comment box. Fortunately it can be resized. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: How to write an introverted main character with accidental charisma That he has no ambitions to heroism or adventure doesn't mean he has no ambitions at all. It just means that his ambitions are of a different type. Maybe he has the ambition to learn everything he can about the plants in his surrounding. Not because he plans to do something specific with that knowled... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: Please gray out the usernames of automatically-imported accounts on the main Users listing This was originally intended as comment on ArtOfCode's answer, but got too long for that. Listing a name on the site's Users page IMHO very clearly claims that person is a user of the site. Note that this is not about the name displayed under imported posts (those are marked anyway), but about the... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a formula for creating stakes? Your problem could be summarized as follows: > If your protagonist's life is really totally perfect in any way, he has no reason to change anything. End of story. So if you want to have a story, then the protagonist's life must not be perfect. It may look perfect, but there is still this one li... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: Writing Challenge: A Long Way Home - Feb 1 2020 - Feb 22 2020 The Earth was not at its place. That was of course impossible. But Alice had checked all the data several times, and the space ship definitely was at the place where the Earth should be. Except that there was no planet at this place. Just empty space. It had been her very first interstellar fli... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
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A: Letting a (secondary) antagonist leave mid story - Should it be avoided? One way to make the leaving of that secondary antagonist satisfying could be if it gives a problem for the protagonist. Now how could an antagonist leaving be a problem? Well, it is a problem if the protagonist's plans against the other antagonists required the presence of that antagonist. Maybe t... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is anything like the propulsion systems (warp/impulse drives) copyrighted from being use in other sci-fi novels? Disclaimer: I am no lawyer or otherwise law expert, all the following is to the best of my knowledge and does not constitute legal advise; when in doubt, as a lawyer. There are several things to consider. First, the general idea. In the case of Warp drives, the general idea would be: A machine ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces? One possibility on why the readers didn't find the documentation helpful may be that they are unfamiliar to the API, and the reference documentation is the only documentation available. Reference manuals are there for the people who already are familiar with the API, and only have to look up the ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Interface for showing changes in the history is not very discoverable It took me quite a while to discover how to see what was changed in an edit. Some visual clue on how to get it would be a good idea, I think. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Suggestion: Support edit comments As far as I can tell, there is no way to explain the edit you do. There is no field to enter one. Also, in my latest edit, I tried to supply one as HTML comment in my post, but in the edit history I've seen that it apparently got completely discarded. Please add the edit comments in. I conside... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Discussion: Edit history from Stack Exchange not imported - copyright problem? I noticed that only the last edit from Stack Exchange is imported, and attributed as a whole to the original poster. I think this is problematic from a copyright point of view, since if other people have made substantial edits to a post, they may also hold a valid copyright at parts of a post. ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Bug - Unable to Import Content [Note: I tried to post this as comment, but for some reason it didn't work] I guess it's because the URL of QPixel has changed; probably the code interfacing to Stack Exchange somewhere contains a hard-coded URL that no longer fits. Which makes me wonder: Could the application auto-determine it... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Suggestion - clearly mark Meta questions in the Hot Questions box In the hot questions, it is not clear what are actual questions and what are Meta questions (well, if the title starts with Suggestion, it probably is meta). It would be nice if Meta questions would be marked as such, either by a "Meta" prefix similar to the page title, or by grouping Meta questions ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Upvoting imported comment - wait for user to join? Will upvotes on imported posts be included in the authors reputation when that user joins? Or does it make sense to wait with upvoting until the user actually joined? (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: I have a name, and no plot So you have Sir Nathaniel Charles III. A nobleman, obviously. Is he from a famous family? Or some minor, not well known nobility? Did he grow up in a castle? Or did his family lose their estates and he grew up in poverty? Did others respect him for his nobility, despise him for it, or not care about ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a way to make editing enjoyable? See it this way: Your text has problems, if you know them or not. Even the greatest master of the craft will not be able to write a text right out of the box without any problems. Since you know up front that your text has problems, the worst thing that could happen is that you don't find them. And t... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: "Dear Stack Exchange, I am very disappointed in you" - How to construct a strong opening line in a letter? I think there are two important aspects that you should make clear: - That you indeed do care about the issue. Your letter is not just a rant, you sincerely are concerned about the damage the issue does or may do to what you consider important. - Why the addressed should care. The issue is not just... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a "right" way to interpret a novel? If so, how do we make sure our novel is interpreted correctly? As others wrote, you cannot make sure the reader interprets your novel the way you want it to be interpreted. However, you still can influence it. You might read your draft and explicitly look for ways how it might be misinterpreted. You won't find all possible alternative interpretations, but you m... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot For the writing challenge, I'm currently writing from the point of view of a robot. Also another robot is frequently addressed. However I've hit a problem: Referring to the robots as “it” often gives confusing sentences. It probably doesn't help that one of the robot acquired a human male name (whic... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to write references? If their data is used in your work, you have to reference them. This is important for several reasons: - It shows that you didn't just make up that data on the spot. - It doesn't give the false impression that you gathered the data yourself. If you didn't do something, you should not pretend to hav... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What are some standards in naming a software/hardware version? Software numbering There are lots of schemes in use, and sometimes software vendors even switched between schemes. The most important feature of numbered schemes (as opposed to pure naming schemes like "Windows ME, XP, Vista") is that the version numbers always increase, that is, later versions get... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What can a novel do that film and TV cannot? You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them: You can easily omit visual and aural details. If you don't want to tell the age of the protagonist, or the hair colour, or the type of clothes, or if you don't want to tell it yet, ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Does it make sense to (partially) create a conlang that you don't intend to actually use in the story? The story that I'm currently working on is in a very far future. Clearly, people will speak a different language then. Now, I wondered if it can make sense to (partially) create a conlang for the story even though I don't plan to write anything in that language in the final text. I see two potentia... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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How to write a convincing religious myth? In my story the protagonist hears, in a temple ceremony, the reading of a religious/mythological text. Now in the actual story, I don't need the text itself (the role of the text in context, and the protagonist's reaction to it are the important points), but since I've seen the tag challenge, I thoug... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What should be the ideal length of sentences in a blog post for ease of reading? It depends on your intended audience. If your audience is literature professors, then you can use pretty long and complex sentences, as long as you make sure that they are reasonably well-written. Indeed, those professors probably will get quite annoyed if all your sentences are too short and simple... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to cue in our readers that we are using an uncommon symbolism? One way to do it subtly might be to show the character's reactions to the symbols. For example: > John was about to enter the room when he noticed the tulip painted to the side of the door. He hesitated. Not that he was superstitious, rationally he certainly knew that this was just the image of a ni... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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What is a good way to foreshadow that magic is actually very advanced technology? In a story I'm working on, humanity had sometime in the past reached a very advanced technological level (far higher than ours), but then had a devastating global war, and afterwards technology had been banned. Now at the time of my story, those events are long gone, and have passed into the realms ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Avoiding repetition when there are two unidentified individuals I think you can achieve a lot by just replacing the “was” sentence by making it an attribute in the following sentence, and making use of terms like “the first”, “the former” and “the other”. > The overwhelmingly tall figure stood in the corner of the room. The skinny figure right beside him sat on ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to explain the main plot with science based concepts, without the non-sci-fi fans getting bored? Let me point out a different risk of providing a too detailed description of how the aliens learned about it: The risk of unnecessarily contradicting established science, and thus losing exactly those who would otherwise be most likely to enjoy detailed descriptions. In this particular case, it is c... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Conflict and antagonist in a certain subtype of erotic novels I think it may be a good idea to first look generically to the possible types of conflict, to then look how well they fit to your definition of a purely erotic novel. I think the most important distinction in this respect is between obstacles and decision problems (note that I just made up that term... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Avoiding spectacle creep While there are already many good answers, there's one option which I haven't seen mentioned (if I just missed it, sorry about that): Your hero may discover that the solution to the problem wasn't actually as good as thought. And now he has to fix it. For example, say the world had been held hostag... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write a convincing character with a opinion that differs from the author's? If the readers think the opinion of your protagonist is your own opinion, then I'd guess the problem is not that the protagonist has that opinion, but that the protagonist's opinion is not or not sufficiently challenged in the story. That is, the book actually seems to promote that protagonist's posi... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to make an email less "me" centric? Maybe it helps if you just change your viewpoint. You probably have written the mail with the viewpoint “I want this job.” Instead, consider the viewpoint ”The company will need to refill that job, and I'm a very good fit.” Think of an advertisement. You'll never find an advertisement that says “We ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How much indirection is too much? I'm writing a chapter with a lot of indirection, and I'm wondering if I'm doing too much of it. To be specific, it is the main character remembering an event from his youth when a merchant who stayed over night in his home village told stories about what other people told him about their experiences... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Do writers write philosophical essays? I don't think philosophy and fiction are really opposites. The difference is that in fiction, you don't describe the philosophy, you show its consequences. For example, if your philosophy includes the claim that whatever bad you do, will come back to haunt you, then in a philosophical essay you'd ju... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What are the Pros and Cons of long names? A compromise might be that you have a long and complicated name, but also have a common short abbreviation of that, which normally is used. For example, using your name: > The city had the almost unpronounceable name Exopeildelivurathneyateyafilen, but usually people referred to it just as Exofilen.... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to differentiate narration and thoughts in the first person POV? I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'll interpret it as distinguishing between thoughts of the first-person narrator as character when the story happened, and the thoughts of the narrator when narrating it. This concept in my opinion only makes sense if the the narrator tells the story in the ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to make the reader think that the *character's* logic is flawed instead of the author's? Usually the narrator knows about the thoughts. And the narrator will know that the thoughts are illogical, and thus can distance himself/herself from the thoughts. Of course that only works if the narrator isn't the villain in first-person. For example, you might write something like: > Dick th... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to demonstrate an evolution of magic without it seeming like it is improvised? It probably depends on the protagonists. Are they themselves magic users? Or even magic researchers? Is there actually a separate magic research (like the science research system in our world), or is magic research something that is done in magic guilds or magic schools that guard their knowledge fro... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: If I'm writing in US English, am I not allowed to use the metric system? Just saw your edit: > However, I'm using it simply just to convey to the reader "the car was going super fast" in a fancier way. In that case, I'd say use neither mph nor km/h. When you see a car going fast, or sitting in a car going fast, you are not making a speed measurement/looking at the speed... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to make the murder's identity less obvious, or make the obviousness not matter? There are two lines of thought that come to my mind: First, this is a first person narrative, so the narration happens at some time after all that happened. Now, having done such a horrible thing, he might be in a state of self-denial. Also, he's a horror story author, so he's used to imagine horrib... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |