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Interrobang

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Re: Interrobang

#81

Post by jgtrosh »

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…

FORTRAN code requires no space (to save space on punchcards) ; it seems an appropriate similitude between protohistoric languages.

Re: Interrobang

#82

Post by jmmcd »

The same people who like this kind of thing usually also like portmanteaux (the lowest form of wordplay) and then offer it as evidence that they love language.

Re: Interrobang

#83

Post by computator »

hannasanarion wrote: post #67
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 f…

Since several people made the same point about word segmentation, I obviously didn't express myself very well.

What I was trying to say is that, assuming you speak the language, you will recognize "dog" a separate ‘ thing’ in a sentence. If I point to a German Shepherd asking what that is, anyone who speaks English can reply "dog". It can't be shorter; it could be longer but then you're adding information ("big dog").

Even illiterate people know "dog" as a distinct ‘ thing’. Since even spoken words are distinct concepts, with a beginning and end, and having boundaries (even if the speech waveform looks continuous), it seems natural to show the boundaries (eg., by placing spaces) if you going to starting writing down the words.

Well, we know the spaces weren't added in early writing, by why not? Wikipedia's reason #1 is that adding inaudible spaces would be illogical. I'm not convinced that that was the main reason. The other reasons seem more plausible.

Re: Interrobang

#84

Post by Sharlin »

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

It would need some typographical refinement in many fonts where it's currently not much more than superimposed ! and ?, making the bowl especially too tight. But in some fonts it's rather well designed and aesthetically pleasing.

Re: Interrobang

#85

Post by Sharlin »

Faaak wrote: post #64
corobo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

The rendition of the character in a specific typeface, most likely.

Re: Interrobang

#86

Post by crazygringo »

My problem with the interrobang, besides the fact it's unnecessary ("?!" does just fine, the same way we don't need to replace "th" with "θ"), is that it's so damned ugly and hard to distinguish.

The counter [1] -- the open space between the vertical bar and the question mark curve -- is just too cramped ("‽"), so it's aesthetically unbalanced at large sizes, and just looks like a question mark with an accidental smudge at small sizes. It just doesn't "fit in" with any of the other glyphs of the alphabet, it's badly designed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_(typography)

Re: Interrobang

#90

Post by craftyguy »

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…

It exists on AnySoftKeyboard (FLOSS android keyboard): ‽
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