Why is it that traditional formal grammar does not permit statements that are bound by context alone? (The rule is often summarized as Thou shalt not begin a sentence with a conjunction.) You would be expected, in formal English, to write something like My

lectures are “terrible” because I don’t know what you don’t know.

Why is there a question in Quora: why is X? is in plain view…, you would still be required to say X because Y rather than simply Because Y, even though it is unlikely that you would use X because Y in conversation unless you were being very explicit (perhaps because you needed to pick out an individual X from a question containing many things in the class X ) etc.

You are not free to ignore this rule as it applies to other text. No doubt you will get some grief from the language mavens (Stanley Pinker, MT) if you go with the less formal and more natural formulation even if there is no Guardian Editor standing between you and your audience, but your formulation is only wrong according to Artificial imposed rules rather than according to the actual grammar of the English language.

Is the phrase “platform agnostic” defined beyond its scope? In a platform-agnostic software, it’s not so much that the software doesn’t care about the host operating system or the underlying architecture, but that it can remain blissfully unaware of it. How do I extract my access to the hardware and/or software from my computer and how do I access it without needing to believe in or know if there is another java virtual machine or something similar? Does the program, then, analogous to an agnostic to whom or why would the world look just about the way it does right now whether ount there is a god?

What is the good reaction that applesauce in your first example is likely to “believe” in the existence of apples — otherwise it’s just a sauce.

Addendum:

(For some reason I can’t add a comment today — did the whole flushing of cache thing, but still no Ajaxy goodness)

The question presupposes the existence of a single word that can be dropped into the places vacated by the deletion of “agnostic”. There is no single English word in common usage that can fulfill that role, since this particular usage of the word “Agnostic” was introduced into the language in a fully grammaticalized form at its coinage. From the tiny world of compilers, it makes a degree of sense (even if it is wrong), but it takes the place of several entire phrases.

Noun “Indifferent” has been proposed but denotation is not enough. A century or more ’s back in time? Other words with similar meaning in limited technical realms have a similar meaning in limited technical realms, like “Separate”, but they don’t fit into a more general context and are as likely to be misinterpreted

as “Indifferent”.

If you believe the Bible, the Bible is A Bowdler’s version of “Good God!” They have been titled “Good Lord! ‘ “”, which is, in turn, a shortening of the liturgical response “Good Lord, deliver us”. In this case, it’s a response to a clear and present bit of unpleasantness, often a mechanical device that won’t co-operate or a vexatious person.

Could the little Peanuts characters of Charles Schulz had no bad word for “Good Lord”??

It is an expression of exasperation, informal.

Staking a claim is the physical act of marking territory (by driving marked stakes into the ground) over which you have a claim of mineral or other usage rights. It can be metaphorically extended to the sense of “calling dibs” on things. The term is likely to be a more common and intuitive phrase in areas that have a significant prospecting or mining tradition that evolved under descendants of legal system. Staking is asserting exclusive rights which may be granted de jure if there are no existing countervailing claims over the same land. What are the rights you have claimed and what are their obligations?

What is better phrased as having a share in a stake where the stakes mean a gambling or investment pool, or the expected returns on that pool.

The word “hustler” can be very appropriate depending on what is going on in the situation. I need a person who is willing to put in the effort “to get things done”. At its broadest, the term mean nothing more than someone that is willing to do it for the person or organization. In the dark corners of the streets, it carries a different connotation (“one who will do anything to make a deal”), but the word lives a respectable life in the suburbs as well.

Any nickname makes sense, but the “killer” not necessarily means the killer. It can mean nothing more than a reliable close in a sales department.

Is the term gangster (or any street-spelling variation thereof) not appropriate in the workplace — even if you work for, um, “legitimate business men” whose legitimate businesses seem to do very little actual business. They have their private preferred vocabulary, and it doesn’t involve entertaining any outside parties who ought to be disinterested.

One of the best new words you know has a hyphenated hi-viz in its name. This would probably be the hyphenation of s.

Which was the first case when I pronounced “hi con” as if it were the plural of “hi sa” if the term hadn’t been explained, and I think that would be the first inclination of most readers.

If the plural was a greeting for hi-vizzes, then it would probably be best spelled as hi-vizzes, but there’s probably a better way around it — like instructing people to wear their hi-viz gear rather

than their hi-vizzes.

I’ve always heard barbers refer to it as the crown, not matter where on the head it could lie.