Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Resolved: The english language needs more punctuation.

19:20 / 05.04.04

While the Good and Noble technology of html has offered the world the easy use of italics and bold type in order to denote certain Modes of emphasis in an individuals Communications, rather than extending the range of emotional registers communicable on the page (or screen), these typographical variants merely serve to underscore(1) the Paucity of indicators available to the intrepid scribe who wishes to clearly communicate hir meaning without lapsing into l33t or ALL CAPS.

To remedy this awful situation, I'd like to propose, as a start, two new sets of punctuation, both of which hug a term and therefore give no doubt as to the emphasis put on a word.

(a) The tildes. A word enclosed by tildes is to be understood as expressing a playful or ironic emphasis. It's the punctuation of the raised eyebrow, which it resembles. Example: Oh, I wouldn't go ~that~ far, he said archly.

(b) The asterixes. A word enclosed in asterixes communicates shock - unexpected emphasis. Can also be used in the course of drollery.
Example: You want me to put *that* ~where~?

Please help me more rigidly prescribe the use of these helpful marks, extending and amending the rules as modern usage bears out.

(1) The underscore itself being a terribly gauche variant which we will not discuss, because polite people Do Not Use it.

19:23 / 05.04.04

points are better taken when used in conjunction with the proper application of html, SUCKA

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:36 / 05.04.04

TBH, I'd be happier if people got the hang of the punctuation they already had. A working knowledge of the semicolon opens up new vistas of self-expression.

19:40 / 05.04.04

Oh, for *god's* sake, Haus, don't be such a ~pedant~.

19:55 / 05.04.04

no, I agree with him, man. competent semicolon usage is HOTT!

19:59 / 05.04.04

Tildes as arched eyebrows? That's rather good. I have been using them as gay ribbons for happy thoughts. I can change, though.

Underscores should be _given_ a meaning. Waste not, want not!

20:00 / 05.04.04

By "rather good" I meant not bad.

20:06 / 05.04.04

my grammar is horrible! I deserve a yardstick whipping!

20:17 / 05.04.04

~~~~~~~~~

20:30 / 05.04.04

Haus, perhaps you could be persuaded to educate us all in the correct usage of the semicolon? I’ve gotten in the habit of *acting* like I know what I’m doing, and just brazenly throwing it into sentences any which way; usually when I’m fed up of using commas. I’ve been kind of hoping that because it’s the ~mysterious semicolon~, you’d be the only one who’d notice. More generally, my abysmal grammar embarrasses me if I sober up enough to care.

07:58 / 06.04.04

I use the semicolon; all the time!

Ex

08:17 / 06.04.04

Squiggly brackets should be an extension of the tilda to indicate arch loud whispering. As performed when communicating something one knows one ~shouldn't~, but still at a perfectly audible volume.

Example: She couldn't come to the meeting, she was unavoidably delayed {DRUNK AGAIN}.

08:25 / 06.04.04

Bedhead: commas indicate the start or end of a subordinate clause; semicolons link two main clauses. If a clause has a main verb in it, and could stand on its own as a sentence, it is a main clause; if not, it is a subordinate clause.

Subordinate clauses are also those introduced by 'but', 'because', and a few other conjunctions I can't be bothered to think of right now, but not - and I can't stress this enough - 'however'. 'However' introduces a new main clause and must have a comma after it in order to prevent its being read as in "however you read it, it boils down to the same thing". However, to judge from my students' essays, this seems to be dying out, and the correct usage of 'however' will probably go the way of the first apostrophe in sha'n't.

And Barbelith already uses %s to indicate sarcasm, doesn't it? Or am I the only one doing that these days?

08:28 / 06.04.04

%no%

08:45 / 06.04.04

Deva, oh punctuation-prescribing light of my life, where to you stand on not putting 'however' at the start of the sentence, but moving it from 'However, Skinner said blah blah' to 'Skinner, however, said blah blah', as I was recently taught.

And does the object in the post-semicolon caluse have to be a different object? If not, will a pronoun on refering to the original object suffice? The more I think about that, the more redunant using a semicolon there appears to be...

08:49 / 06.04.04

Underscores should be _given_ a meaning

Foot-stamping. There's nothing else they _can_ mean.

08:56 / 06.04.04

He is my boyfriend; I love him. No, it can be a pronoun referring to the same object (you could also punctuate "He is my boyfriend. I love him). And deferring the 'however' from the beginning of the sentence is not only possible but desirable: it gives your sentences a rakish, louche air.

Ninjas make great pets

09:34 / 06.04.04

bah humbug to your punctuation who needs it?

that that is is and that that is not is not

09:47 / 06.04.04

Deva, when did the first apostrophe in 'shan't' stop being widely used? Or is it still being used everywhere apart from in badly punctuated Olulabelleland?

10:07 / 06.04.04

I'm not sure if it was ever particularly widely used -the only time I remember seeing it was in Lewis Carroll books when I was wee, and even then the introduction dedicated about a page (beginning with a sentence something like 'Dodgson was a little odd about grammer') to Carroll's explaination of why sha'n't was correct. Although maybe things I've read since have had the double apostrophied (sp?) version replaced with the current version, and the only reason they were left in the Carroll books is because he had such vehement views on the matter.

Ninjas make great pets

10:15 / 06.04.04

what about the §.. Is that used for anything? looks kinda like a turbine to me.. or something that flips around..

denoting an opposite meaning to what is being said perhaps?

"that James woods, he's just so §handsome§!"

..and it would save on libel costs.

11:14 / 06.04.04

I remember seeing the underscore used back in the day by especially geeky academics to denote underlined text, for titles etc.

What about colour? A nice pink, perhaps, to denote lurve?

Ninjas make great pets

12:01 / 06.04.04

a *smidge* off topic.. but do you think that predictive texts are an atempt to repare the damage done to a generations worth of spelling? Just a thought.

12:21 / 06.04.04

I love "{}", forgot about "%%" (I think this might be a British usage; correct me if I'm wrong), think *everything* Haus types should be enclosed in tildes, cannot loccate those paragraph symbols on my standard keyboard , and had NO FREAKING IDEA that we can use colored type on the new Barbelith (Unfortunately, that's also gauche, but thanks for your help)!

This really isn't a question of prescriptivist grammar, and I'm mystified that people are treating it as such. It seems that whenever punctuation is mentioned half of the room will drop to its knees and beg for guidance and the other half will scowl and bestow their manly wisdom. Not that those are the only two reactions evident in this thread, or to say that those reactions are *evil*.

I'd merely like to extend the range of emotions a single word can clearly communicate. Of course, it's not going to be ~perfect~, but I'm confident that these new marks - what should we call them? dialexical is my only effort right now - will reduce misunderstanding by about, oh, 15% or so. And that's a Good Thing.

12:24 / 06.04.04

That being said, however, I'd like to encourage the sharing of any tips {Deva} that would possibly louchify my writing. I'm pretty sure I need to be about 30% more rakish. Coining "louchify" probably doesn't help, does it?

Ninjas make great pets

12:27 / 06.04.04

yeah.

what he said.

so there.

(tis wonderfull to have the vocabulary and spelling of a schoolkid I tells ya)

12:35 / 06.04.04

You are such a bunch of nerds. I'm going to give you all wedgies.

12:40 / 06.04.04

I'm finding the transition from ~joy~ to ~irony~ very difficult.

15:55 / 06.04.04

And Barbelith already uses %s to indicate sarcasm, doesn't it? Or am I the only one doing that these days?

I *think* that's something I carried here from a local BBS, where the sysop invented them and called them "sarcasm delimiters". There's a chance he may have picked them up from elsewhere, but this is 1994-6 we're talking, when there wasn't much internet to speak of. If they existed independent of that BBS at that same time, I'd really like to know about it.
For online communication, though, they're really useful, since the brevity of most messages leaves little room for context.

16:01 / 06.04.04

[thread rot] Pianist Victor Borge did a hilarious sketch (at least, it was hilarious when I was 14 or so) demonstrating what we really need is vocalized punctuation, possibly with hand gestures, to clarify our sentences. Fun if you get a chance to see it. [/threadrot]

16:04 / 06.04.04

I'm finding the transition from ~joy~ to ~irony~ very difficult.

Ah, but ~joy~ was ~irony~ all along. {Are these words from the future?}

16:39 / 06.04.04

How can joy be the same thing as irony? There's joy in irony, but.... What are people meaning when they say irony? When I say irony, I basically mean denoting an opposite meaning to what is being said.

I think that irony is perhaps best unpunctuated!

16:47 / 06.04.04

As is sarcasm, really. Doesn't that defeat the purpose.

This new punctuation is not in service of *rhetoric.* It's in service of mood and tone and emphasis.

16:51 / 06.04.04

so, yeah, I was wrong in the first post to suggest tildes for irony.

16:56 / 06.04.04

Oh, I ~totally~ agree.

Munt Punctuation Key
~happy~
*serious*
_depressed_ <--in trials