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The melancholy decline of the semicolon

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Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#151

Post by dharmaturtle »

behnamoh wrote: post #137
mac-chaffee wrote: post #128

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

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 alpha…

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.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#152

Post by msla »

__s wrote: post #64
kreeben wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> at this very point. & sometimes Unless you're a famous writer, isn't that against the law? I thought you're supposed to start a sentence with a capital letter, or can anything follow a hard stop? E.g. is this kosher (?): Microsoft copied Java. .net, they called it. Final question; what if your name is kreeben with a lowercase 'k', is this kosher: Grammar is hard. kreeben does not understand it. ?

That's kosher Writing has no laws, only rules meant to be broken English is also a descriptivist language, rather than prescriptivist. ie English has no spec, unlike French (tho you then have French as it is spoken & French as it is specified) . As much as Oxford might want to reign it in, they are only cataloging what the collective spews Examples of miniscule starts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/of_Montreal where…

> (tho you then have French as it is spoken & French as it is specified)

Which means French has no spec, either, merely people trying to create a specification and failing.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#153

Post by ghoomketu »

mac-chaffee wrote: post #128

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

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.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#154

Post by heresie-dabord »

ghoomketu wrote: post #153
mac-chaffee wrote: post #128

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

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.." whi…

> "I'm writing to intimate you.."

This is a documented Indian English usage: "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.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#155

Post by helmholtz »

I wish using the word "Melancholic" was more of a thing, rather than the pedestrian and, in my firm belief, incorrect, "Melancholy"

I was feeling Melancholic, not melancholy. I know Oxford disagrees and fuck them too. Melancholy already is a perfectly nice noun.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#156

Post by zdragnar »

ghoomketu wrote: post #153
mac-chaffee wrote: post #128

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

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.." whi…

While "intimate" can mean be familiar or familial, "intimidate" is a much more common and threatening word; due to being so much more common I can imagine it would be easy to misread and get a very different feeling from what you had intended. "I am writing to intimidate you..." is definitely not a good message to send to your boss.

> No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry

Native speakers definitely struggle with this as well. There is a diffucult balance between being too succinct (curt, impolite) and excessively wordy (feels forced or contrived, muddles the message).

Personally, when I communicate st work, I tend to phrase things as questions- either as a standalone comment or as a preamble to my argument. That way, I am (hopefully) clear that I am trying to be inclusive, rather than divisive, and I think it makes people less likely to project emotion from their own assumptions into what I write.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#158

Post by _def »

jmnicolas wrote: post #157

Fun fact: the semicolon won't decline soon in France (and a few other countries I think): it's what we use instead of commas for CSV files! However I never use it when writing anything, I'm not even sure what's its usage.

I'm not super sure but you probably could've used one instead of the comma in your last sentence. I think people just use other symbols instead: comma, dash and period.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#160

Post by rackjack »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #154
ghoomketu wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.." whi…

> "I'm writing to intimate you.." This is a documented Indian English usage: " 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.

Example of the difference between American and Indian English:

https://i.redd.it/fhmx835buxl51.jpg

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