Talk:dip one's pen in someone's inkwell

RFM discussion: May 2018

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dip one's pen in (someone's) inkwell

Good entry, but it shouldn't have parentheses in the pagetitle. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:09, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Please move it -- I couldn't figure out the best way to do the title, since the someone seems optional, but if you have an idea of how to do that, you are welcome to. Kiwima (talk) 00:23, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

In this case and many similar cases the slot occupied by a term like someone's can be occupied by any determinative, eg, an article, a possessive, a determiner word (any, this), quantifier (three). Actually it could also include an adjective (hairy). IOW, it's in the nature of a snowclone. At one extreme one could rely on a dictionary user's own sense of metaphor to interpret that expression. At another one could have lots of entries for variants. Or one could force users to use grammatical notation to see the full range of possibilities: verbal inflection, determiners, adjective, plurals. IMO, if we can count on users' willingness to search using lemmas of the component non-grammatical terms (noun, verb) and look at the failed search page, the less essential possible variations of possible search terms and entry titles would not matter very much.

Finally, if we don't put parentheses around one's, I don't see why we would put them around someone's. DCDuring (talk) 02:56, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• Move complete. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 10:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)