Perhaps it helps to see a question framed before it:

How was the coffee served?
The barista served the coffee black.

What kind of coffee did he serve?
the barista served black coffee.

Firstly, I would suggest that coffee black and wall blue ARE similar constructions. Just like painting the wall blue does not mean the wall is already a blue wall, but is describing the method of painting, causing it to be blue, so is the serving, or preparing of the coffee described in the former example, not the state of the coffee per se. It's a little confusing only because coffee is already black prior to being prepared. I'm not 100% sure, but it would seem that in both cases, black and blue are functioning as adverbs.

Mike, I think you may have missed the point of Sara's question. She's not asking about the phrase "this close". She's asking about the typography of writing "thisclose" with no spaces between "this" and "close"; thus, they are this close together, a visual and contextual doublemeaning.

I'm from New York. I have travelled, well, not extensively, but at least moderately, within the US and the world. I am familiar with "all of a sudden", but have never heard "all the sudden" or "all of the sudden". I have never even heard of it until this post. On the other hand, I have heard the expression "all the rage" describing some latest fad or fashion.

Scott is correct, as is your second link from press.uchicago.edu.
More precisely, the verb "to be" is a copulative verb, not a transitive verb. As such, it connects not subject and object, but two noun phrases of the same case. see:

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxitsmev.html

Interestingly, this doesn't mean that you always use the nominative form. The verb "to be" links nominative to nominative or accusative to accusative. As long as the noun on both sides uses the same form.

oops, thats parenthetical, not paranthetical.

PS - In English (and other languages) it is perfectly acceptable to form statements into questions simply through inflection of the voice (and adding a question mark when writing). Sometimes it implies sarcasm or a challenge, etc.

e.g., "Oh, and I suppose you are going to do it anyway, you stupid fool?"

Possibly because "I wonder why" is somewhat ambiguous. It could imply "I wonder why it works that way." But, it could also imply "I wonder, why does it work that way?", a subtle but relevant difference, with "I wonder" functioning as an introductory or paranthetical clause. I suppose there really should be a comma if there's a question mark, but I never see it written that way, "I wonder, why?" Also, when spoken, I never hear a pause where the comma would be, so I could be completely wrong about all this, but at least it's a possibility.

Or, "There are more users..."

Oh, and every day (two words) does NOT mean "regularly". It means just what it says, "every" "day". Not every other day, not skipping a day here and there. Once a week is "regularly" but it certainly isn't every day.