User talk:Ruakh

My to-do list

• Rewrite examples of differential equations to fix inaccuracies and bêtises, to add more examples, and possibly to move a lot of its content to other pages that deal with the different kinds of examples it gives. (There's already a lot of duplication between it and other pages.)
• Somehow address the major duplication between differential equation and method of undetermined coefficients, variation of parameters, linear differential equation, etc. This will probably involve adding lots of links from differential equation to related pages and vice versa, as well as links between various related pages. It will also probably involve creating some pages. Also, differential equations should discuss the history, major people, etc. of that field.
• There should be more/better/different links between Subject (grammar), Expletive, Dummy pronoun, Null subject language, Pro-drop language, and Impersonal verb.

Pages I find useful

• Wikipedia:How to edit a page
  • m:Help:Formula (explains how to use <math> markup)
  • m:Help:Table (explains how to use Mediawiki's pipe syntax for tables)
• Wikipedia:Template messages

From snoyes

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Naming conventions
• Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~~~~

snoyes 19:17, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

From Erin O'Connor

Thanks for the welcome! I know you from livejournal--I'm kirinqueen. I have absorbed some of the tricks to editing and whatnot here, mostly from existing markup. I saw the four tildes thing mentioned somewhere and then immediately forgot it. Thanks for the reminder. :) ErinOConnor 23:28, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Restrictive clause

Hi. I liked your latest contribution to English relative clauses - a very neat and clear formulation of what we've been groping towards. I wonder if you could have a look at restrictive clause (and also its talk page) and say what you think about what's going on there. My own feeling is that it should not just be about English, but the question is whether we have anything useful to say about restrictiveness in other languages. Best, --Doric Loon 18:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Subjunctive

Hi Ruakh, I hope you're having a nice weekend! I like your changes to the English subjunctive; "pluperfect" would be my own word of choice, but I think I convinced myself that it suits the likes of French more than English, and thus opted for "past anterior". One curious thing, though - the OED labels "discernible from" (in the sense of "distinguishable from") as "Obs.," so we probably shouldn't use it - in as much as I've no qualms about its removal, I'm going to have to write to the OED and tell them it's very much alive and well in Belfast. In fact, I would never have imagined that it wasn't a common construction. Well you learn something new everyday! Have a good one, Brian 15:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Einstein and WP:PEACOCK

I reverted your change to the Einstein article. Please take this to the talk page - in the general case, I agree with the policy - but Einstein is special, in my opinion. --Alvestrand 21:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Churchill's adpositions

Hi Ruakh. I agree with most of your improvements to my adposition contributions, but I wondered why you thought it necessary to remove the Churchill quotation. What's your position on that?

best wishes, OrangUtanUK 12:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi OrangUtanUK, thanks for your comment!

One issue is that it's not a genuine Churchill quote.[1] Another is that the article isn't specifically about English, nor about grammatical disputes, nor about preposition-stranding, so it's not reasonable for a discussion of the dispute over preposition-stranding in English to take up more than half of the section on prepositions. (Especially since that section already links to Preposition stranding.) To be honest, I'm not even sure the Fry quote should be there; but the Churchill quote, given that it was misattributed, seemed ripe for removal.

What do you see the Churchill quote as contributing to the section? Maybe we can find a different way to achieve its effect.

Ruakh 13:16, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Continuous and progressive aspects

Thanks for editing my changes to Continuous and progressive aspects. I must have been really tired last night; I didn't realize I made so many errors. —Umofomia 21:42, 11 June 2006 (UTC)