12
votes
The usage of "can not" vs. "cannot" in mathematics
Thanks to Paul Tanenbaum for alerting me to this discussion. In response to these comments, I have modified this item on my grammar page. It now reads:
It appears that some writers of English now ...
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2
votes
The usage of "can not" vs. "cannot" in mathematics
It's funny, but I happened to run across Professor West's little web page myself just a few weeks ago, soon after I got a copy of his textbook Introduction to Graph Theory. Right now there are just ...
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2
votes
The usage of "can not" vs. "cannot" in mathematics
I work more with software specifications than maths, but the problems are similar. The most common problem is with "may not", which is thoroughly ambiguous. Usually the context makes it ...
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1
vote
The usage of "can not" vs. "cannot" in mathematics
A similar ambiguous phrase might be...
How many dogs and cats are there?
The sets of 'dogs' and 'cats' do not overlap. Nothing is a 'dog' and a 'cat' at the same time. So if we associate 'and' with ...
- 131
1
vote
The usage of "can not" vs. "cannot" in mathematics
I partially agree with Professor West.
cannot - as in "I cannot do " means I am incapable of doing it
but too many people conflate "can" with "may"
"Teacher, can I ...
- 129
1
vote
Should the word "cousin" (without specifying which) be used to denote first cousins only or any "cousin"?
If one wishes to analyse the matters of this kind precisely, one needs to separate the meaning of the words involved from the social conventions that govern the settings in which they are typically ...
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1
vote
Is the expression "get shed of" or "get shut of" or "get shot of"?
My paternal grandmother was from Western Kentucky; they moved to Evansville, Indiana during WW2 when my grandfather left coal mining to work in a factory. We visited every summer during the 60s and ...
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