TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: It is said that XLAT is an abbr of translate. But I don't understand how come it ends up like that? There is no site on internet would explain it but they're all agree that XLAT is shorten of translate. I can get that LAT is in the end part of translate (LATe) but what about the X?.

SOLUTION: 'Trans' is a prefix meaning 'cross', as in 'Trans-siberian Express' or 'Trans-continental railway'. X is used as an abbreviation of 'cross', thanks to its resemblance to a cross, and despite the shift in meanings of 'cross'. So XLATE or XLAT is used as an abbreviate of 'translate'. XFER is similarly used as an abbreviation of transfer.

PROBLEM: My programming peers suggest to use the term count with discrete things: count of words, count of sentences and so on. Then again my instructor suggest me to use the term 'number' for the discrete things in a thesis. I have used the word 'amount' but my instructor says that is only for continuous measures. Please, clarify the different usages. It may be that programming jargon misuses the words. How and when to use the words in official language? Examples about the usages with count, number and amount -- wrong or right? I have 7 liters of juice. This amount is too much to drink alone. I have 17 sparse polynomials. This count is irrelavant. (how my programming would say) I have 17 sparse polynomials. This number is irrelavant. (Used amount but guided to number).

SOLUTION: I believe that amount should only be used for uncountable things, like 'pudding' number and count should only be used for countable things, like 'baby aardvarks' quantity can be used for either, and all of the above are measures of 'quantity'

PROBLEM: Upon answering the telephone, the person calling asks if Joan is available. If Joan is the person who answered the phone, should she say 'This is her' or 'This is she'?.

SOLUTION:
Traditional grammarians prefer the nominative ('she') for the complement of the verb 'to be'. Most usage in my experience prefers the accusative ('her') and regards the verb as having a direct object rather than a complement. I suspect the traditional grammarians, as they often did, have misapplied a rule of Latin grammar. In Latin, 'esse' takes a complement in the nominative case, but Latin declines the verb strongly enough that it doesn't bother with a pronoun as the subject of a verb unless needed for emphasis. 'It is she' in Latin would be 'illa id est', which looks far more natural than the English. Note that it's 'c'est lui' in French, so there isn't a general rule for a complement of 'to be' being in the nominative. Explanation: A normal (transitive) verb, like say 'have' has a direct object, which is in the accusative case. So, for example, 'I have her' uses 'her' as a direct object, and 'her' is in the accusative case, where 'she' is in the nominative case. In Latin, the verb 'esse' ('to be') is special; it doesn't have a direct object in the accusative case, it has a complement in the nominative case. English grammarians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adopted a number of rules of Latin grammar into English; this was one of them. In Latin, 'it is she' and 'she is it' are both the same thing 'id illa est' or 'illa id est' can both be translated either way - the point being that the 'is' ('est') just equates to things to each other - it's like in maths you can have x=y or y=x and they both mean the same thing. English, though, takes word-order very seriously, and a pronoun after a verb is very strongly marked as being in the objective case and you don't get the benefit that you get in Latin from the exception - there's still one before the verb and one after; you don't get to make clear that it's commutative. So you have a special-case for a verb, which you get no useful benefit from. It's hardly surprising that most English speakers have reverted to 'it is her' rather than 'it is she'. A note on cases: Latin is conventionally described as having seven cases (though only five are actually different for most nouns and pronouns). It has two cases, accusative and dative for the objects of verbs. English's residual case system only has the one case for both, which merge into the objective case (in fact, a third Latin case, ablative, merges in too). That's why the two paragraphs above appear to use two different words for the same case.