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Stack Exchange English LanguageUsage Blog current community chat English LanguageUsage English LanguageUsage Meta more communities Explore other Stack Exchange communities on stackexchange.com Stack Exchange This page is an archive of this blog, and is presented for historical purposes only. Why did I delete your answer? 2015-11-13 by Matt Ellen . 3 comments Imagine someone has a question about physics, say How can I figure out the acceleration due to gravity?” A physicist answers with You can throw a bowling ball from various floors of a multistorey building.” The physicist knows in their head the experiment they would perform. It’s so obvious to them that they skim over the details and say what they see to be the key points, and assume that the person asking will figure the rest out. The problem with this is that a non-physicist has asked the question, and they don’t know the details that the physicist skimmed over. If they did, they maybe wouldn’t have to ask the question. Thus, the person asking the question is little better off than they were before asking. Now imagine this is a single word request: Word for staring wide-eyed at a TV I saw my son staring wide-eyed at the television. His face looked so comical to me. Is there a word to describe such wide-eyed staring? I’d like to use it like My son was staring at the TV last night, it was so funny to see.”, but I don’t like staring because it doesn’t emphasise his wide-eyed-ness. Is there a word that would better describe what I mean? And then there is the answer: I think you’re looking for goggling . Now you and I know that is a good word for the situation, but is it a helpful answer ? If you’re wondering, then let me tell you: it’s not. The Stack Exchange system itself will parse it and flag it as low quality” and it will garner a comment from a moderator or other concerned member and then, if no improvements are made after a week or so, it will be deleted. Yes, the asker now has a word to fill their gap, but the answer does not explain why goggling is fit for the purpose. The asker has no context to decide if this answer is the best fit, and no way to generalize the word to fit other situations. Why is that important? The thing to remember is that the person who came here looking for an answer is unlikely to already know the answer. You don’t get many people who go around wondering how many people know the word goggling ?” (And I suspect most of those who do are crossword designers.) If someone doesn’t already know the answer, then the details are important. When you suggest a word for a given context, you need to explain why it fits the context so that when they try and use it in the future they have a grasp on how the word works and what its connotations are. I know many of you might complain that they should look it up in a dictionary. We’re a site for serious English language enthusiasts, after all. That is irrelevant. An answer needs to be complete. However, to entertain that idea for a moment. Most of our users are not serious enthusiasts. Most people come here looking for an answer and leave with one, without ever posting anything. That is the beauty of Stack Exchange. That is why it is so important to leave a complete answer. With only half an answer, people will only half understand how to use a word. So what does a better answer look like? I think you’re looking for goggling . It’s from the verb *to goggle*, which means to stare at something with your eyes wide open and an amazed look on your face. Instantly this answer is a lot more helpful. By adding a definition the answer now gives a clear explanation why the word is suitable. Also note that the definition isn’t from a reference. When giving the explanation a reference can be useful, but if you have your own way to articulate the meaning, then that is fine, too. If you do use a reference it is essential to cite your source. If you copy and paste without citing your source the answer will be deleted as plagiarism. With a reference the answer would be: I think you’re looking for goggling . From ODO , to goggle means: Look with wide open eyes, typically in amazement The important points to remember: You are writing an answer for someone who doesn’t know anything about the word you’re suggesting. An answer needs to explain the word in order for it to be useful. If you are copy/pasting a definition you must cite where you got it from. Filed under English Stack Exchange , Learning Tagged: answers , main-site , single word requests How we talk about future situations 2015-09-07 by tunny . 4 comments People learning English are often confused by the many ways in which it is possible to talk about future events. They are not helped by the fact that some writers (eg, Sinclair 1 ) claim that the construction with will in front of the base form (bare infinitive) of the verb is the future tense , while others (eg, Quirk et al 2 ) claim that there is no future tense in English. Learners who have read in one book (eg, Thomson and Martinet 3 ) that the BE + going to form expresses the subject’s intention to perform a future action will wonder what intention is present in It’s going to rain . Some course books appear to claim that there is only one way of expressing the future in any given situation, but learners will meet many native speakers who claim that several ways are often possible, and that there is no difference between them. In this blog post, I hope to clear up some of the confusion. Let’s begin by making two clear points: 1. There is little point in considering that English has a future tense. It is more realistic (and helpful) to think that there are several ways in English of expressing futurity . 2. Although each of the ways expresses a different way of looking at future situations, the speaker often has completely free choice at the moment of utterance, and there can be some overlap of meaning. There is often no single—or even ‘most appropriate’—form for a given situation. Now let’s look at the five most common ways of talking about future situations. We’ll do this by considering what forms are possible for the example Lindsay (fly) to New York next month” . 1. The present simple (non-past, unmarked) tense – Lindsay flies … In English, as in many other languages, the so-called ‘present’ tense functions more like a default tense; it is used when there is no need for any additional temporal or aspectual information carried by other forms. The time of the situation denoted by the present simple tense of the verb can be past, present, future, or even unspecified. Let’s look at Lindsay’s future flight. If we imagine the speaker mentally seeing Lindsay’s schedule, and presenting a neutral fact without any of the overtones suggested by other ways of expressing the future (which we shall come to below), we can simply say: Lindsay flies to London next week. The futurity is shown by the context (for example, the previous mention of a schedule) or by explicit-markers (such as next week in the example above). 2. The present progressive (continuous) – Lindsay is flying … A better name for this aspect might be durative , as it is used when the speaker wishes to indicate both that the situation spoken of has duration and that that duration is limited. The fact that the situation has a beginning and an end, and that these are not considered remote in time, is more important than precisely when these occur. Consider these three utterances: 1. I am writing some notes about the English language. 2. The number 22 tram is running through Florence this week. 3. I am meeting my wife at the pub this evening. In [1], the limited duration of the writing is clearly understood from the context. In [2], the known context of the normal route of the 22 tram (which does not usually include Florence) confirms the limited duration of the situation. It is perfectly correct for this to be said at 3 a.m., when no number 22 tram is...