3 ms·

Agreed, but structure is prose is important too. Who wants to read something that is not broken into paragraphs, has not capital letters to indicate sentences,

Agreed, but structure is prose is important too. Who wants to read something that is not broken into paragraphs, has not capital letters to indicate sentences, etc.

caconym_ 5y ago
This actually has me wondering if some version of "syntax highlighting" could make prose easier to read.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Some language teaching software does use syntax highlighting for specific lessons. Rosetta Stone at least does, where it specifically highlights things like noun/adjective agreement, verb conjugation agreement with pronouns and names (io pago, capello rosso [italics for highlighting since we can't color text here]). And then we use various types of brackets, bold, italic, dashes and commas, and other things to isolate what we write. If I want to emphasize something, on HN, I use a pair of asterisks around the text: *emphasize*. We use all sorts of typographical conventions to draw attention to the things we want emphasis drawn to or to encode some notion. In many novels, in English at least, a character's thoughts are italicized rather than quoted. The noir detective might be found at his desk thinking, I knew I'd seen her before, but no name came to mind. In textbooks you have a mix of bold and italics used to identify specific kind of content. Bold for new keywords students of the book should keep in mind, usually adjacent to a definition. Italics might indicate a name assigned to something: Using the pumping lemma we can... Perhaps in our code editors we've overdone highlighting, or coloring could be a poor (certainly for some colorblind readers) method of highlighting, but syntax highlighting itself can make a great deal of sense. It's worth considering that in the examples from prose, we usually don't draw attention to syntax, but to semantics. What does the thing with different typography mean, why is it given that special formatting or why is it surrounded by special brackets, dashes, or quotes. We don't highlight (as in the example in the article) nouns one way, verbs another, adjectives a third, and adverbs a fourth. Or verbs different ways depending on the tense or number. We highlight individual words in some manner to bring attention to them, or groups of words to indicate their logical separation in some sense from their surroundings.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  When you’re reading a book out loud to a child one thing that matters is who is talking (so you can do their voice) so colour-coding characters would be nice!
- dschuessler 5y ago
  It might help identifying arguments. It's a huge cognitive load to identify the premises and the conclusion of an argument.[0] I've seen quite a few philosophers using text markers to help themselves navigate through arguments in prose. [0]: https://philpapers.org/archive/DAVCAM-8.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/DAVCAM-8.pdf
xondono 5y ago
Yeah, but that’s not syntactical structure. When you read prose you aren’t thinking about subject, verb, and predicate, because semantics are far more important.

Agreed, but structure is prose is important too. Who wants to read something that is not broken into paragraphs, has not capital letters to indicate sentences, etc.

caconym_ 5y ago

This actually has me wondering if some version of "syntax highlighting" could make prose easier to read.

Jtsummers 5y ago
Some language teaching software does use syntax highlighting for specific lessons. Rosetta Stone at least does, where it specifically highlights things like noun/adjective agreement, verb conjugation agreement with pronouns and names (io pago, capello rosso [italics for highlighting since we can't color text here]). And then we use various types of brackets, bold, italic, dashes and commas, and other things to isolate what we write. If I want to emphasize something, on HN, I use a pair of asterisks around the text: *emphasize*. We use all sorts of typographical conventions to draw attention to the things we want emphasis drawn to or to encode some notion. In many novels, in English at least, a character's thoughts are italicized rather than quoted. The noir detective might be found at his desk thinking, I knew I'd seen her before, but no name came to mind. In textbooks you have a mix of bold and italics used to identify specific kind of content. Bold for new keywords students of the book should keep in mind, usually adjacent to a definition. Italics might indicate a name assigned to something: Using the pumping lemma we can... Perhaps in our code editors we've overdone highlighting, or coloring could be a poor (certainly for some colorblind readers) method of highlighting, but syntax highlighting itself can make a great deal of sense. It's worth considering that in the examples from prose, we usually don't draw attention to syntax, but to semantics. What does the thing with different typography mean, why is it given that special formatting or why is it surrounded by special brackets, dashes, or quotes. We don't highlight (as in the example in the article) nouns one way, verbs another, adjectives a third, and adverbs a fourth. Or verbs different ways depending on the tense or number. We highlight individual words in some manner to bring attention to them, or groups of words to indicate their logical separation in some sense from their surroundings.
jonplackett 5y ago
When you’re reading a book out loud to a child one thing that matters is who is talking (so you can do their voice) so colour-coding characters would be nice!
dschuessler 5y ago
It might help identifying arguments. It's a huge cognitive load to identify the premises and the conclusion of an argument.[0] I've seen quite a few philosophers using text markers to help themselves navigate through arguments in prose. [0]: https://philpapers.org/archive/DAVCAM-8.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/DAVCAM-8.pdf

xondono 5y ago

Yeah, but that’s not syntactical structure. When you read prose you aren’t thinking about subject, verb, and predicate, because semantics are far more important.