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Interrobang

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61–70 of 123 posts

Re: Interrobang

#61

Post by dmurray »

computator wrote: post #40

> For thousands of years, in some written languages, there was no space between words. People were expected figure out sentences and clauses while reading aloud. Really?! Addingspacesbetweenwordsseemslikeanobviousthingtodo. According to Wikipedia, spaces weren't added because: (1) Free form of speech is so continuous, adding inaudible spaces to manuscripts would have been considered illogical. (2) At a time when ink…

Reason #3 is not in itself a reason to forego spaces, just a reason why users would not insist on them. And no newsreader or actor today would prefer his cue cards or autocue without spaces.

I suspect a major reason not listed is inertia: people were used to reading without spaces between words, and never considered the alternative. With some help from reason #2, the increased cost.

Re: Interrobang

#62

Post by corobo »

thanatos_dem wrote: post #28

As a daily user of the interrobang, I’ve just gotta say, how awesome is this‽ For any aspiring interrobangers, one thing that helps make them easier to use is to set up text replacements. I have replacements setup on my phone and computers to replace “?!” and “!?” with “‽” automatically.

Honestly it looks too bold (as in, font weight) than the rest of the text. Just realising I'm not a fan

Re: Interrobang

#63

Post by Faaak »

blattimwind wrote: post #33
ademarre wrote: post #18

I don't have a strong opinion on the interrobang either way, but let's imagine we wanted to start a campaign for it to go mainstream. The most important thing that could happen would be for a popular auto-correct tool to start substituting it for '?!' and '!?'. MS Word would be ideal. People would start to get familiar with it when reading other's works. And when authoring, people tend to treat auto-correct like an a…

> substituting it for '?!' and '!?' But these aren't the same!?

On the dvorak keyboard, if you compose ? and !, it replaced by ⸘, whereas ! and ? will give ‽

Re: Interrobang

#64

Post by Faaak »

corobo wrote: post #62
thanatos_dem wrote: post #28

As a daily user of the interrobang, I’ve just gotta say, how awesome is this‽ For any aspiring interrobangers, one thing that helps make them easier to use is to set up text replacements. I have replacements setup on my phone and computers to replace “?!” and “!?” with “‽” automatically.

Honestly it looks too bold (as in, font weight) than the rest of the text. Just realising I'm not a fan

Are you not a fan of the font, or of the character ?

Re: Interrobang

#65

Post by pwelch »

thanatos_dem wrote: post #28

As a daily user of the interrobang, I’ve just gotta say, how awesome is this‽ For any aspiring interrobangers, one thing that helps make them easier to use is to set up text replacements. I have replacements setup on my phone and computers to replace “?!” and “!?” with “‽” automatically.

I’ve done the same thing! It’s awesome.

Re: Interrobang

#66

Post by superflyguy »

computator wrote: post #40

> For thousands of years, in some written languages, there was no space between words. People were expected figure out sentences and clauses while reading aloud. Really?! Addingspacesbetweenwordsseemslikeanobviousthingtodo. According to Wikipedia, spaces weren't added because: (1) Free form of speech is so continuous, adding inaudible spaces to manuscripts would have been considered illogical. (2) At a time when ink…

I can't really do much with the numbered options there but I'd just like to point out that Thai has no spaces between words. I know six year olds who can read Thai properly so I don't know about trained performers or whatever.

Re: Interrobang

#67

Post by hannasanarion »

computator wrote: post #40

> For thousands of years, in some written languages, there was no space between words. People were expected figure out sentences and clauses while reading aloud. Really?! Addingspacesbetweenwordsseemslikeanobviousthingtodo. According to Wikipedia, spaces weren't added because: (1) Free form of speech is so continuous, adding inaudible spaces to manuscripts would have been considered illogical. (2) At a time when ink…

> I'm not convinced by reason #1 because words are distinct even in speech. No matter how fast or continuous your speech when you say, "The dog jumped", everyone will agree that "dog" is a distinct thing, even if you're illiterate. It seems quite logical to separate "dog" from the words before and after when you write.

Clearly you've never tried to learn a second language?

Word segmentation is a very difficult task for non-native speakers. Segmentation failure is a common error in children learning for the first time.

The word breaks are only obvious to you because you've had decades of daily practice parsing them. Look at a speech stream as a waveform or spectrogram, and they vanish: they are objectively not there.

Re: Interrobang

#68

Post by hannasanarion »

ithkuil wrote: post #47
drewrv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we just use two punctuation marks?!

iies indeed, vuhii can't vvue dgust use tvuo gliiphs for sounds that are "obvious" combinations of other sounds?

You don't need to invent new ones, English already has plenty of digraphs: gh, sh, ou, ie, ei, ae, oa, th, ng, gn, wh, ch, ph, kn, tch, ough, ti, zg, ci, wr, and qu.

Re: Interrobang

#69

Post by pssflops »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #56
lifthrasiir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the interrobang or its alikes have different functions in written languages and spoken languages. In written languages they all are just a grab bag of mixed-mode reactions including surprise or rhetorical questions. In spoken languages (or corresponding transcripts), I found a distinction between !? and ?! is valuable because there is temporality not usually represented in written languages, and would avoid ‽…

How do you speak a 4-dotted ellipsis differently to a 3-dotted one?!

One of the four dots ended your previous sentence before you begin speaking again.
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