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Collection of non-standard punctuation marks we should be using today
- dang 4y agoRelated: A collection of non-standard punctuation marks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15438820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15438820 - Oct 2017 (87 comments)
- CyberDildonics 4y agoThis is nonsense and it looks like they gave themself some sort of award. "Should" be using and "drastically improve our communication" are bold claims, this seems like someone just wants to see if they can get people to start using something they made up. People already have emojis in the first place, this is very obnoxious.
- Y_Y 4y agoI have ¿ and ‽ on my standard android keyboard.
- Name_Chawps 4y agoThe former is used to begin sentences that are questions in Spanish.
- fwlr 4y agoThe interrobang is just a ligature for !?, the love point is just a ligature for <3, the sarc mark is just a ligature for /s. Friendly period is a waste, just don’t type a period, same effect The goals of the question comma and exclamation comma can be achieved with existing constructions - how so? Like this! - that are just as parsimonious. Irony, rhetorical question, and snark mark are actively bad: all three symbols destroy the ambiguity that is necessary for the device to function. The Authority mark already exists[1]. Elrey and Acclamation seem to be fairly niche variations on the purpose of the standard exclamation mark - maybe a combining diacritic mark is the solution!̇ Typists of languages other than English are already there, just waiting to welcome you!̫̑ That leaves Certitude and Doubt. Certainly their case is the strongest, as they replace entire words. Perhaps using entire words is a good thing, though; the spectrum of certitude might be richer than the all-or-nothing binary choice offered by two characters… 1: The current form has the distinct advantage of actually providing some information about the authority being claimed.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> The interrobang is just a ligature for !?, the love point is just a ligature for <3, the sarc mark is just a ligature for /s. And and-per-se-and is just a ligature for et, and yet... > The goals of the question comma and exclamation comma can be achieved with existing constructions - how so? Like this! - that are just as parsimonious. That's seems at least as non-standard (even ignoring the use of hyphens in place of en-dashes) as question-comma/exclamation comma. You can set of a phrase with dashes but that doesn't demote sentence-ending punctuation/capitalization combos within it. (To be fair I've seen other people do something similar rarely, but mostly by also not using initial caps to avoid signalling a new sentence; that’s clearer if still unusual; I’d be surprised if any style manual recommends that construction, with capitalization after the question mark, with the semantics targeted.)
- fwlr 4y ago& is not just a ligature for et. It can be used that way, as in “&c.” for “etc.”, but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and”. Replacing a whole word is one of the best arguments for having a symbol, and there’s no caveat of a spectrum of meaning for “and” like there is for “certainly” & “perhaps”. (See % for percentage/pct., and $ for dollar, as other examples of words with singular meanings we want to abbreviate.) Regarding the hyphen/dash… yeah, I agree I tortured it a fair bit because I wanted to squeeze in both ! and ?. The general principle that you can separate clauses with commas or with dashes is solid. The stated purpose of the exclamation/question comma is to inject an exclamation/question mark into just a clause rather than the whole sentence, and that’s exactly what using dashes achieves.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and” You know that thing where people drop latin into the middle of an English sentence? That used to be more common, because literacy and a use for writing and basic fluency in written Latin were more correlated? It’s exactly that which is why an ligature of “et” (“and” in Latin) became so common that, for quite a while, it was treated as an English letter (whose name—“and per se and”—before it got slurred into the modern form also has the same kind of Latin drop-in in the middle of it.)
- willsoon 4y ago<<I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.>> V. Nabokov
- willsoon 4y agoPeople often use punctuation in very creative ways... this makes for better communication. Some writers use the semicolon to add an alternative explanation or to reinforce what they have written. Others don't use it at all: there are too many signs.
- somat 4y agoI am for less syntax more liberally applied. Think lisp vs apl.
- benj111 4y ago? So the punctuation at the start then
- poulsbohemian 4y agoThe friendly period looks like an upside down version of my family cattle brand - and I do sometimes use it on handwritten items.
- funcDropShadow 4y agoHas the language police found a new target? Punctuation marks. Who says that we "should" use those?
- fortyseven 4y agoLet the record show that this is where the artificial outrage was birthed...
- red-iron-pine 4y agoI predict 13 more posts until it's Goodwin'd, and 200 more posts before it ends up being noticed by buzzfeed bots and turned into another culture-war post.
- mock-possum 4y agoAre the language police in the room with us right now?
- andsoitis 4y agoWait, should I be using a friendly period or no period? Fuck it, I'll use a full stop.
- vivegi 4y agoHated the love point. It looked like someone pooped.
- tpoacher 4y agoIf you're not an "emojis are forbidden in all written language" prude, then none of these are necessary.