3 ms·

Why not just practice reading it "I love you"? A more charitable interpretation of the writer's intent and less likely to get you so frustrated.

by c22 12y ago

anigbrowl 12y ago
Because basic UI functions should not require ambiguous interpretations, charitable or otherwise. I personally read heart symbols as 'love' as in 'I love New York' on the famous t-shirt, but many people say 'I heart New York' and while I find this asinine in the extreme (because 'heart' is obviously not a verb, but hearts are a well-known metaphor for love) it's not going to change because unfortunately there are a great many ill-educated people out there. So now you have a very basic UI component (which is sadly not very innovative, being just a different version of Facebook's 'like' feature) but people are likely to attach two different names to it. Notice, by contrast, how FB constantly reinforces the use of 'like' as the operative verb. You don't hear anyone saying 'thumb-up this post on facebook' even though everyone recognizes the thumbs-up symbol as being synonymous with liking something.
- c22 12y ago
  I think when someone verbally says "I heart New York" their intent is to invoke the popular-culture graphic as an aide to their point, a (possibly completely) different usage from the more natural phrase, "I love New York". I don't really think of ascii art as a form of basic ui function though...
- egypturnash 12y ago
  YMMV. Personally my circles (20s-40s Seattleite nerds) say "Hearts" to each other on a regular basis. Depending on context, it expands to either "I love you" or "I love the thing you just said", just as if we were typing "<3" into an instant messenger window. That said, the spurious asterisk in 'diaspora' does look pretty inexplicable, and needs way too much explanation to people who haven't drunk the kool-aide already. Add in the fact that 'diaspora' is never capitalized, even if it begins a sentence, and you're kind of way off into the eccentric orthography zone.
javert 12y ago
Becuase our language is not pictographic, it is alphabetic. So that is wrong. Reading a heart symbol as "I love you" is just as wrong as reading it as "I heart you." A symbol is not a word.
- c22 12y ago
  Then either interpret the sentence in context as an atomic concept or conclude that all sentences are merely strings of symbols devoid of meaning and without informational content (this way lies madness).
- some1else 12y ago
  🎩

Why not just practice reading it "I love you"? A more charitable interpretation of the writer's intent and less likely to get you so frustrated.

by c22 12y ago

Why not just practice reading it "I love you"? A more charitable interpretation of the writer's intent and less likely to get you so frustrated.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Because basic UI functions should not require ambiguous interpretations, charitable or otherwise. I personally read heart symbols as 'love' as in 'I love New York' on the famous t-shirt, but many people say 'I heart New York' and while I find this asinine in the extreme (because 'heart' is obviously not a verb, but hearts are a well-known metaphor for love) it's not going to change because unfortunately there are a great many ill-educated people out there. So now you have a very basic UI component (which is sadly not very innovative, being just a different version of Facebook's 'like' feature) but people are likely to attach two different names to it. Notice, by contrast, how FB constantly reinforces the use of 'like' as the operative verb. You don't hear anyone saying 'thumb-up this post on facebook' even though everyone recognizes the thumbs-up symbol as being synonymous with liking something.

c22 12y ago
I think when someone verbally says "I heart New York" their intent is to invoke the popular-culture graphic as an aide to their point, a (possibly completely) different usage from the more natural phrase, "I love New York". I don't really think of ascii art as a form of basic ui function though...
egypturnash 12y ago
YMMV. Personally my circles (20s-40s Seattleite nerds) say "Hearts" to each other on a regular basis. Depending on context, it expands to either "I love you" or "I love the thing you just said", just as if we were typing "<3" into an instant messenger window. That said, the spurious asterisk in 'diaspora' does look pretty inexplicable, and needs way too much explanation to people who haven't drunk the kool-aide already. Add in the fact that 'diaspora' is never capitalized, even if it begins a sentence, and you're kind of way off into the eccentric orthography zone.

javert 12y ago

Becuase our language is not pictographic, it is alphabetic. So that is wrong. Reading a heart symbol as "I love you" is just as wrong as reading it as "I heart you." A symbol is not a word.

c22 12y ago
Then either interpret the sentence in context as an atomic concept or conclude that all sentences are merely strings of symbols devoid of meaning and without informational content (this way lies madness).
some1else 12y ago
🎩