6 ms·

I use them a lot to control the tone of what I write. Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone[1], I often need some other way to indicate a separatio

I use them a lot to control the tone of what I write. Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone[1], I often need some other way to indicate a separation between two complete sentences. For example: "It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y." Using a period could be perceived as anger, but using a comma would make that sentence a comma splice. [1] https://youtu.be/fS4X1JfX6_Q?t=3m3s https://youtu.be/fS4X1JfX6_Q?t=3m3s

behnamoh 5y ago
I wish there were more symbols for other use cases, too. I honestly think the standardization of things in the 20th century actually prevented lots of innovations in language and alphabet. Nowadays, you can't even imagine adding or removing a letter to/from the alphabet. Heck, we can't even change the layout of the current alphabet on keyboards because QWERTY is just too much standardized. In fact, forget about alphabet; we can't even change the symbols on keyboards (who says I must only use `~!@#$%^&* ... on my keyboard?) Sure you can use unicode characters, but why haven't the special characters on keyboards changed at all since the 80s? The answer: standardization. The evolution of languages, words, alphabets, and special characters helped shape the way we think about things, and since the 20th century, that hasn't changed that much.
- dharmaturtle 5y ago
  I totally agree with you. I like using symbols to shape the way I think, and I find using AutoHotKey to to expand typed strings works well for my workflow. Stuff like "qbeta", "qright", "qdegree" and "q@" become β, →, °, and my email. Very useful when I was in university. These days, I use it to type stuff like (ﾟヮﾟ ) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and a black box symbol that HN won't let me type, but is eye catching for when you're scanning logs. Symbols like checkmark, ×, the thinking emoji, and the hourglass are useful when taking notes. Lots can be found in the Windows 10 emoji finder (Win + Period), but AHK is more customizable. Also WinPeriod is juuuuust that much more friction and I find AHK fits into my flow better. This flow shapes the way I think.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    You might find WinCompose useful. It gives you the compose key (⎄): ⎄oo → ° ⎄<- → ← ⎄(12) → ⑫ ⎄25 → ⅖ Of course, you can change the compose key rules.
  - behnamoh 5y ago
    I've been using AHK and snippets (in VS Code) __a lot__. TBH, this functionality should ship with the OS. Instead of having separate AHK scripts, I have "one script to rule them all". When Windows launches, "my precious" loads all my scripts. Many of them I use in MS Word.
- ghaff 5y ago
  The one that gets me is that we have basically three variants of dash/hyphens. And double quotes have to do the duty of about four different use cases.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    And the fact that there are two types of double quotation marks (“opening and closing”), but those are squashed into a third " symbol on the keyboard—blame the typewrite for that one.
- reissbaker 5y ago
  Emojis would like a word with you ;) In all seriousness, I think standardizing letters and symbols has done a lot to promote basic literacy. And there are plenty of language innovations like slang, emojis, kaomoji, new words like email, the prevalence of alternate text treatments like bolds, italics, underlines, strikethroughs, etc etc.
pixl97 5y ago
Heh, I think my daughters generation will just replace them with emojis.
- layer8 5y ago
  ;)
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  That web page that makes combinations of emojis should also be able to combine them with punctuation, so you can make a frowning period, or a goofy semicolon, etc.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Emojis override the natural tone of the sentence. They’re used as legitimate grammar in cases where you want to write something in a tone different than the one it would be normally interpreted as.
ghoomketu 5y ago
Wow never really knew this. I guess you need to have deep understanding of the language and maybe have English as your mother tongue to pick up on such things. No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry about what they think it means all the time. Yet, nobody misreads the tone of your voice or facial expressions. Like in India we have a very common expression "I'm writing to intimate you.." which my American boss got really angry to read. For us it just means i'm writing to tell you, but many people esp from older gen use this a lot here to sound cool.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  > "I'm writing to intimate you.." This is a documented Indian English usage: "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intimate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intimate" (see the verb section). Indian English has retained some strong markers from the British colonial period. There's no clear guide for how prestige and emulation will affect usage, but "to intimate" in either verbal form is a literary archaism in North American English.
  - rackjack 5y ago
    Example of the difference between American and Indian English: https://i.redd.it/fhmx835buxl51.jpg https://i.redd.it/fhmx835buxl51.jpg
  - tacon 5y ago
    >"to intimate" in either verbal form is a literary archaism in North American English While the second (intransitive) version from that wiktionary page is Indian, the first use is most certainly not an archaism in North American English. In fact, it was listed as a normal definition in the first dictionary that Google returned with a definition.[0] The pronunciation does shift with which definition we intend, which nicely keeps "intimate details" from sounding too much like "mating". :-) [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=intimate+definition https://www.google.com/search?q=intimate+definition
    - heresie-dabord 5y ago
tomcam 5y ago
Former professional journalist and tech writer here. Disagree. At least since Hemingway brief sentences using periods instead of complicated sentences separated by semicolons has been considered not particularly angry. Short sentences also reduce cognitive load on the reader.
- vernie 5y ago
  Younger generations interpret it differently.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Younger generation needs Grammarly too, so there's that. The lack of punctuation in messaging apps is part of where I point to blame.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      The only people using “txt” speak without punctuation is boomers. Young people communicate in complete sentences when messaging, full of memes and in-jokes sure, but not abbreviated or avoiding punctuation.
      - notinty 5y ago
        Periods are often avoided, fwiw
  - tomcam 5y ago
    You are correct. But it’s time for them to learn that a semicolon isn’t a danger to anyone.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Spivak 5y ago
      K. It’s not that they’re a danger or anything. It’s that you write in a certain way to convey a certain tone and short, period punctuated, sentences is just how you convey anger. You can try to fight the river on this one but it’ll be tough.
elb2020 5y ago
"It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y." "It looks like you forgot to do X. That's needed to do Y." I would actually prefer the second one here. It's neutral and to the point. I guess the problem with the first one is that the reader might interpret the semicolon exactly in the way that you intended it, as an attempt on your behalf to "control the tone". Depending on the personal disposition of the receiver he or she may or may not like it.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  Oh, weird, I find the second off-putting. It's a bit.. Patronizing? Like you're some superior giving orders.
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    There's a lesson here; never try to infer too much tone from email messages. Or chat channels. Unless you really know the person well.
    - elb2020 5y ago
      And the corollary; never try to insert too much tone into the same.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Unfortunately there’s a bit of knowing your audience because you can’t really control the tone of voice inside your recipients head. To anyone who’s Millennial or younger the one with the period is straight up aggressive. For generations that grew up as text as the primary form of communication we had to figure out how to convey tone and writing style and emojis is what we had. Tone and the expression of tone are disconnected even when speaking in person and have grammar like rules.
dgellow 5y ago
> Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone I will forever refuse this idea. I use a period to end my sentences because that’s how a sentence ends, not to communicate a tone.
- tpoacher 5y ago
  Fine. Do that then.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    This response is perfect.
    - dgellow 5y ago
      I agree, that made me laugh :)
cryptonector 5y ago
At some point I was taught that in English (not my first language) short sentences are the norm. Now you tell me that short sentences convey a harsh tone. What is one to do?! I use semi-colons as a sort of conjunction, not unlike the example you gave, in part to give me a way to lengthen sentences that would otherwise seem much too short.
- emmelaich 5y ago
  The trouble is you get advice in a context, and that context might not be known. The context for your advice is that writing long sentences is/was popular poor style. Especially for young and new readers of English.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    My observation is that in Romance languages writers (and readers, presumably!) like to create long sentences with lots of sub-clauses. It's almost a game where you have to read the whole 50 word sentence before you can parse it fully, having to push onto a mental stack quite a lot of state that you can only pop at the very very end. So in Romance languages one often finds sentences as long as entire paragraphs are in English! That approach doesn't work well in English for a number of reasons. For example, gendered nouns/adjectives can help disambiguate various parts of a long sentence; conversely, lacking gendered nouns/adjectives makes mixing multiple subjects and/or objects in one sentence much harder to pull off without causing severe ambiguities. Now, I can write that way in English -up to some limit to do with those ambiguities-, but when I do, I find it irritates certain readers. A rewrite of the preceding sentence: I can write that way in English, up to some limit to do with those ambiguities. When I do, I find it irritates certain readers. which is the style I find is more commonly used in the U.S. Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      > Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences. This is interesting to me, because I do the exact opposite. I write my clauses more or less independently, then try to string the related clauses together with linking words punctuation in a way that flows naturally. I can't imagine composing long, complex sentences on the fly, and the only people I've seen that manage to do this in conversation are unusually erudite.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
Didn't emoji somewhat solved this problem?

behnamoh 5y ago

I wish there were more symbols for other use cases, too. I honestly think the standardization of things in the 20th century actually prevented lots of innovations in language and alphabet. Nowadays, you can't even imagine adding or removing a letter to/from the alphabet. Heck, we can't even change the layout of the current alphabet on keyboards because QWERTY is just too much standardized. In fact, forget about alphabet; we can't even change the symbols on keyboards (who says I must only use `~!@#$%^&* ... on my keyboard?) Sure you can use unicode characters, but why haven't the special characters on keyboards changed at all since the 80s? The answer: standardization. The evolution of languages, words, alphabets, and special characters helped shape the way we think about things, and since the 20th century, that hasn't changed that much.

dharmaturtle 5y ago
I totally agree with you. I like using symbols to shape the way I think, and I find using AutoHotKey to to expand typed strings works well for my workflow. Stuff like "qbeta", "qright", "qdegree" and "q@" become β, →, °, and my email. Very useful when I was in university. These days, I use it to type stuff like (ﾟヮﾟ ) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and a black box symbol that HN won't let me type, but is eye catching for when you're scanning logs. Symbols like checkmark, ×, the thinking emoji, and the hourglass are useful when taking notes. Lots can be found in the Windows 10 emoji finder (Win + Period), but AHK is more customizable. Also WinPeriod is juuuuust that much more friction and I find AHK fits into my flow better. This flow shapes the way I think.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  You might find WinCompose useful. It gives you the compose key (⎄): ⎄oo → ° ⎄<- → ← ⎄(12) → ⑫ ⎄25 → ⅖ Of course, you can change the compose key rules.
- behnamoh 5y ago
  I've been using AHK and snippets (in VS Code) __a lot__. TBH, this functionality should ship with the OS. Instead of having separate AHK scripts, I have "one script to rule them all". When Windows launches, "my precious" loads all my scripts. Many of them I use in MS Word.
ghaff 5y ago
The one that gets me is that we have basically three variants of dash/hyphens. And double quotes have to do the duty of about four different use cases.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  And the fact that there are two types of double quotation marks (“opening and closing”), but those are squashed into a third " symbol on the keyboard—blame the typewrite for that one.
reissbaker 5y ago
Emojis would like a word with you ;) In all seriousness, I think standardizing letters and symbols has done a lot to promote basic literacy. And there are plenty of language innovations like slang, emojis, kaomoji, new words like email, the prevalence of alternate text treatments like bolds, italics, underlines, strikethroughs, etc etc.

pixl97 5y ago

Heh, I think my daughters generation will just replace them with emojis.

layer8 5y ago
;)
DonHopkins 5y ago
That web page that makes combinations of emojis should also be able to combine them with punctuation, so you can make a frowning period, or a goofy semicolon, etc.
Spivak 5y ago
Emojis override the natural tone of the sentence. They’re used as legitimate grammar in cases where you want to write something in a tone different than the one it would be normally interpreted as.

ghoomketu 5y ago

Wow never really knew this. I guess you need to have deep understanding of the language and maybe have English as your mother tongue to pick up on such things. No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry about what they think it means all the time. Yet, nobody misreads the tone of your voice or facial expressions. Like in India we have a very common expression "I'm writing to intimate you.." which my American boss got really angry to read. For us it just means i'm writing to tell you, but many people esp from older gen use this a lot here to sound cool.

heresie-dabord 5y ago
> "I'm writing to intimate you.." This is a documented Indian English usage: "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intimate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intimate" (see the verb section). Indian English has retained some strong markers from the British colonial period. There's no clear guide for how prestige and emulation will affect usage, but "to intimate" in either verbal form is a literary archaism in North American English.
- rackjack 5y ago
  Example of the difference between American and Indian English: https://i.redd.it/fhmx835buxl51.jpg https://i.redd.it/fhmx835buxl51.jpg
- tacon 5y ago
  >"to intimate" in either verbal form is a literary archaism in North American English While the second (intransitive) version from that wiktionary page is Indian, the first use is most certainly not an archaism in North American English. In fact, it was listed as a normal definition in the first dictionary that Google returned with a definition.[0] The pronunciation does shift with which definition we intend, which nicely keeps "intimate details" from sounding too much like "mating". :-) [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=intimate+definition https://www.google.com/search?q=intimate+definition
  - heresie-dabord 5y ago

tomcam 5y ago

Former professional journalist and tech writer here. Disagree. At least since Hemingway brief sentences using periods instead of complicated sentences separated by semicolons has been considered not particularly angry. Short sentences also reduce cognitive load on the reader.

vernie 5y ago
Younger generations interpret it differently.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Younger generation needs Grammarly too, so there's that. The lack of punctuation in messaging apps is part of where I point to blame.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    The only people using “txt” speak without punctuation is boomers. Young people communicate in complete sentences when messaging, full of memes and in-jokes sure, but not abbreviated or avoiding punctuation.
    - notinty 5y ago
      Periods are often avoided, fwiw
- tomcam 5y ago
  You are correct. But it’s time for them to learn that a semicolon isn’t a danger to anyone.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spivak 5y ago
    K. It’s not that they’re a danger or anything. It’s that you write in a certain way to convey a certain tone and short, period punctuated, sentences is just how you convey anger. You can try to fight the river on this one but it’ll be tough.

elb2020 5y ago

"It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y." "It looks like you forgot to do X. That's needed to do Y." I would actually prefer the second one here. It's neutral and to the point. I guess the problem with the first one is that the reader might interpret the semicolon exactly in the way that you intended it, as an attempt on your behalf to "control the tone". Depending on the personal disposition of the receiver he or she may or may not like it.

ajkjk 5y ago
Oh, weird, I find the second off-putting. It's a bit.. Patronizing? Like you're some superior giving orders.
- emmelaich 5y ago
  There's a lesson here; never try to infer too much tone from email messages. Or chat channels. Unless you really know the person well.
  - elb2020 5y ago
    And the corollary; never try to insert too much tone into the same.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Unfortunately there’s a bit of knowing your audience because you can’t really control the tone of voice inside your recipients head. To anyone who’s Millennial or younger the one with the period is straight up aggressive. For generations that grew up as text as the primary form of communication we had to figure out how to convey tone and writing style and emojis is what we had. Tone and the expression of tone are disconnected even when speaking in person and have grammar like rules.

dgellow 5y ago

> Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone I will forever refuse this idea. I use a period to end my sentences because that’s how a sentence ends, not to communicate a tone.

tpoacher 5y ago
Fine. Do that then.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  This response is perfect.
  - dgellow 5y ago
    I agree, that made me laugh :)

cryptonector 5y ago

At some point I was taught that in English (not my first language) short sentences are the norm. Now you tell me that short sentences convey a harsh tone. What is one to do?! I use semi-colons as a sort of conjunction, not unlike the example you gave, in part to give me a way to lengthen sentences that would otherwise seem much too short.

emmelaich 5y ago
The trouble is you get advice in a context, and that context might not be known. The context for your advice is that writing long sentences is/was popular poor style. Especially for young and new readers of English.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  My observation is that in Romance languages writers (and readers, presumably!) like to create long sentences with lots of sub-clauses. It's almost a game where you have to read the whole 50 word sentence before you can parse it fully, having to push onto a mental stack quite a lot of state that you can only pop at the very very end. So in Romance languages one often finds sentences as long as entire paragraphs are in English! That approach doesn't work well in English for a number of reasons. For example, gendered nouns/adjectives can help disambiguate various parts of a long sentence; conversely, lacking gendered nouns/adjectives makes mixing multiple subjects and/or objects in one sentence much harder to pull off without causing severe ambiguities. Now, I can write that way in English -up to some limit to do with those ambiguities-, but when I do, I find it irritates certain readers. A rewrite of the preceding sentence: I can write that way in English, up to some limit to do with those ambiguities. When I do, I find it irritates certain readers. which is the style I find is more commonly used in the U.S. Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    > Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences. This is interesting to me, because I do the exact opposite. I write my clauses more or less independently, then try to string the related clauses together with linking words punctuation in a way that flows naturally. I can't imagine composing long, complex sentences on the fly, and the only people I've seen that manage to do this in conversation are unusually erudite.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

Didn't emoji somewhat solved this problem?