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.

[Q]: Should I write it like this? Or perhaps like this? Should I write it like this? or perhaps like this? What about after an exclamation mark or semicolon?.
[A]: Did the sentence end after the question mark? Yes. Then you need a capital letter to start the new sentence, just as usual. No. Then the question mark shouldn't have been there, since it ends a sentence. Right, I should expand on that rather than just be a grumpy old man. The capitalization rule that we care about here is that the first word of a sentence starts with a capital letter, so the question is really about what ends a sentence. The answer to that is easy: terminal punctuation, i.e. a full stop (or period if you're American), question mark or exclamation mark. There's a visual clue in that '?' and '!' are decorated full stops; you just have to remember that a colon (':') isn't really a decorated full stop, not that you'd ever know by looking at it. Colons, semicolons and commas aren't terminal punctuation, so they don't end a sentence and so don't force the next letter to be a capital. It may be a capital letter for some other reason such as being the start of a proper name, but not because it is starting a sentence. There are exceptions to this rule, occasions when '?' and '!' become non-terminal punctuation. The most obvious is in quoted speech: if the speaker asks a question or makes an exclamation, the '?' or '!' doesn't have to be terminal if the sentence carries on after the quote. 'Should I write it like this?' he asked. 'Or perhaps like this?' The other class of exception is for what are probably really parenthetical comments. If you have a short phrase that you could have put aside in parentheses or dashes, then a question mark or exclamation mark can be used at the end of that phrase without ending the sentence. Be sparing with this. It looks wrong at a first read, and engenders the sort of argument I had with Jason in the comments below! Should I write it like this, or abracadabra! like this? Going back to the examples, and adding a few more for fun: Should I write it like this? Or perhaps like this? Should I write it like this? or perhaps like this? Should I write it like this, or perhaps like that? 'Should I write it like this?' he asked, 'or perhaps like that?' Example 2 with the lowercase 'or' is just plain wrong. Crusty old grammarians who disapprove of starting sentences with conjunctions may frown at example 1 all they like, but it's a perfectly acceptable fragmentary sentence. Whether it's the right answer or not is another question entirely. Example 1 makes the point that the questions are distinct, though they are strongly linked otherwise the whole structure wouldn't work. Example 3 on the other hand emphasizes that the two questions are options in a common situation, as well as reflecting a different way of saying them. That is obvious in this case because the two questions really are tightly coupled alternatives. However, consider the following: Are the lights green? Or is the switch up? Are the lights green, or is the switch up? Both of these examples imply that the state of the lights and the state of the switch are related somehow. Version 2 couples them more tightly; I would usually assume (without more context) that either this is the same question being asked in two different ways (i.e. that the switch being up should cause the lights to be green), or that they are an exhaustive list of possibilities (either the switch is up or the lights are green, but not both or neither). This isn't an absolute rule, but it is quite strongly implied. Example 4 is also wrong, though it has a better disguise. If you unwrap the quotes, what you get is: Should I write it like this? or perhaps like this? which is our duff example 2 back again. What you actually want is one of: 'Should I write it like this?' he asked. 'Or perhaps like this?' (i.e. example 1) 'Should I write it like this,' he asked, 'or perhaps like that? (i.e. example 3) depending this time on how much of a break there is supposed to be in the middle of what was said. But speech-marking is a topic for another question :-) Exclamation marks work just like question marks for this purpose! Semicolons don't; they end a clause, not a sentence.


[Q]: What am I doing when I search for something on the internet and the search provides for some other interesting stuff apart from what I was looking for and I end up opening an infinite number of browser tabs and browsing more and more it goes in an endless loop and the whole episode makes for after thought to ponder upon. PS: I lost the term I had found on Wikipedia and I cannot get it back.
[A]: Tab-surfing From wikipedia: Tab-surfing, also more accurately known as 'Branching' is a type of link-surfing in which, rather than click directly through to the next web page, the link is opened as a new window or new Tab. This method is used by people wishing to read as much information as possible on a variety of subjects which may or may not be related. The parent article is about Link-surfing: Link surfing is the process of starting on one article on a website and clicking on various hyperlinks to eventually finish on a different (pre-determined) article. There are all sorts of web browsing details here.


[Q]: As generally agreed and as extensively discussed in this question, 'an' should be used in place of the more common 'a' where the following word begins with a vowel sound. I have just encountered for the first time an instance of the phrasing an mule in the book Why Chemical Reactions Happen (James Keeler and Peter Wothers, Oxford University Press, 2003). (This book is not mine. I was sitting opposite a friend when the friend mentioned the unusual phrasing.) This phrasing appears to contradict the rule discussed above, since 'mule' is, as far as I am aware, pronounced /mjul/ (see Wiktionary). Here is the context. The author is using an analogy to explain a chemistry concept (the italics are not mine, but the bold emphasis is): A useful analogy here is that of an mule, which we get by crossing a horse with a donkey. To describe an mule as a horse or a donkey would be inaccurate and it certainly does not interconvert rapidly between the two! Rather we need to recognize that although an mule has parts that are reminiscent of a horse and parts that a reminiscent of a donkey, it is something altogether different. Looking for other examples online, I have managed to find one on Wikipedia's List of Siege engines. Discussing a Siege engine, the Scorpio: Similar to the ballista, but smaller. Was sometimes mounted on an mule-drawn cart. Other examples are difficult to find, but here's one from a user-posted question on Answers.com (referring, notably, to a kind of deer rather than the animal, a mule): Is an mule deer an omnivore? No. Mule deer are herbivores. ... What is going on? Is there an irregular pronunication of 'mule' of which I am not aware? Is this some strange language quirk, some archaic spelling that I am encountering for the first time?.
[A]:
The original printing had 'an ass' instead of 'an mule'. That error was not lost on the chemistry community. See, for instance, Krenos's 2004 review of the text in the Journal of Chemical Education: In Chapter 10, bonding in extended conjugated systems and resonance are introduced with the horse + donkey = ass analogy (it is likely the hybrid animal mule is intended instead of ass, however). It seems the editors subsequently made an error mistake.