Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.

Input: Consider Input: I frequently encounter phrases like this: 'It allows to apply these features to customisable sets of fonts'. My question is whether this is proper English or not? In my mind, 'it allows the application of ...' or 'it allows one to apply ...' sound much better. I suspect that this is a Germanism (that would explain why I hear it so often), but it would be nice to know for sure.

Output: I just ran a Google Books ngram and saw that from 1800-2012 the incidence of It allows to has risen from 0.0000011% to 0.0000053%. The biggest rise was from 1980 until now: 0.000002%-0.0000053%. From what I can tell from the books in which this appears, the most recent are technical writing by non-native-speakers of English. A couple from the 19th century are legitimate English: the assembly may compel the observance of a proper decorum by all persons, whom it allows to be present at its proceedings. and It assembles more frequently, and at its own time, without any control from the king ; and it allows to him only a ... Jim's example, It allows to pass certain particles while trapping others, is certainly, as he says, unwieldy because it's not parallel: It allows to pass certain particles and {allows not / disallows} others. which is a style monster regardless of the parallel construction. It should be: It allows certain particles to pass {while trapping / but traps / but disallows} others. The syntax is so bad in that sentence that, however grammatically valid it is, Fowler would retch after reading it. Merely thinking it up would violate the admonition against secret sin in the Sermon on the Mount, and actually writing it for public consumption would cause the reader as much pain as would driving a wooden stake through the heart of the sleeping Dracula cause the vampire. Your conclusion that ''it allows the application of ...' or 'it allows one to apply ...' sound much better' is absolutely correct. That's what language is about in part: what it sounds like. If it sounds bad, it is bad, grammar be damned.


Input: Consider Input: This phrase is all over the internet. They will say that something is free as in 'free beer' and free as in 'free speech'. I have never really understood this. Are these the examples of two different types of 'free'?.

Output: Wikipedia on Gratis versus Libre: Gratis versus libre is the distinction between two meanings of the English adjective 'free'; namely, 'for zero price' (gratis) and 'with few or no restrictions' (libre). The ambiguity of 'free' can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it often is in dealing with laws concerning the use of information, such as copyright and patents. And further: With the advent of the free software movement, license schemes were created to give developers more freedom in terms of code sharing, commonly called open source or free and open source software. As the English adjective free does not distinguish between 'for zero price' and 'liberty', the phrases 'free as in free beer' (gratis, freeware) and 'free as in free speech' (libre, free software) were adopted. [...] 'Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.' Richard Stallman Emphasis added.


Input: Consider Input: Possible Duplicate: This question has been asked at/on SO? Which sentence is grammatically correct? The papers are freely available at the journal website. The papers are freely available on the journal website. Using Google's search results: available at the website returns 72,800,000 results. available on the website returns 106,000,000 results. So, I inferred that both variants are popular. Is this method (comparing the number of results by Googling) sound?.


Output: Speaking as a longtime computer geek, files are said to reside on a hard drive or on a certain machine. Since I know that a website is made of computer files, I think of a website as being on a machine and so any part of the website is also on that machine. A website's 'address' is a 'Uniform Resource Locator' or URL. These terms connote the idea of website as 'place'. In this case the file would be at the website location. So, if you think of a website as it is actually constructed (files stored on hard drives), you will probably say on. If you think in the location metaphor, you will probably say at. Personally I find myself saying 'on' to other geeks and falling into 'at' when speaking with normal people.