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Interrobang

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Re: Interrobang

#51

Post by Angostura »

function_seven wrote: post #31
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…

I think you nailed it. More than half of the em dashes and en dashes I type are a result of Word correcting a pair of hyphens in a row. I write "Foo--but not bar" and it renders “Foo—but not bar”. There are no curly quotes on my keyboard either, but any decently professional typesetting uses them of course.

do you really want an em-dash there? they are typically used in sentences to introduce a strong break in a parethetical clause, but without using parentheses :)

Re: Interrobang

#52

Post by skummetmaelk »

falcor84 wrote: post #41
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. Segmenting words is actually a quite complex cognitive task that takes a while to acquire, usually considered in the framework of statistical learning[0]. Another aspect here is that the co…

If you listen to people speaking in a language you do not understand it can be _very_ hard to pick out the space between individual words. When learning a language your brain learns to artificially break up the almost continuous stream of sound into distinct words.

Re: Interrobang

#53

Post by azernik »

Jarred wrote: post #7
hurpaDurpa wrote: post #4

This would really make for a great exception operator, for one-liner exception handling. (alert(null) ‽ console.log(error)); Better than: (x === null ? console.log(error) : alert(x)); EDIT: hey downvotes, let's play funny/not funny .

alternatively: // Would run console.error with the Error object (alert(x) ?: console.error);

You may know this, but others may not: this is an actual thing, and is called the Elvis Operator (think the hair). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_operator

Shockingly, this is actually accepted by GCC's C dialect! And PHP! By the simple implementation expedient of making the second operand of the ternary operator optional.

Re: Interrobang

#54

Post by azernik »

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…

I have a different proposal - ligatures.

I don't know if you've ever played with a font like FiraCode, but it gives you both fancy typographical symbols and compatibility with existing compilers by defining purely-visual translations between certain sequences of characters and purpose-built glyphs. So for example '!=' is rendered as '≠', '=>' as '⇒', '>=' as '≥', etc.

See https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode. They do go a bit overboard, IMO.

Re: Interrobang

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

|√Π÷ק∆≠∞′↑¢₱¥€\][™®©‰…

Interesting the range of characters that are available in Gboard on my Android phone.

Re: Interrobang

#56

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #35
blattimwind wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?!

Re: Interrobang

#57

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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 terrible at French and still struggle sometimes to discern the word breaks. Malapropisms in my native English can arise from that too. Learning a new language it can be v. hard to distinguish word breaks - our brain fills them in when we know a language, which is why it's hard to imagine that people might not agree that "dog" is separate.

Try saying "Hangdogears". Is it "hangdog ears" is it "hang dog ears" is it "hang dogears".

(hangdog = guilty visage; dogears = folded page corners)

Try it on someone else and see how they interpret it.

Re: Interrobang

#58

Post by blattimwind »

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?!

It's ...... longer.

Re: Interrobang

#59

Post by Uberphallus »

azernik wrote: post #54
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…

I have a different proposal - ligatures. I don't know if you've ever played with a font like FiraCode, but it gives you both fancy typographical symbols and compatibility with existing compilers by defining purely-visual translations between certain sequences of characters and purpose-built glyphs. So for example '!=' is rendered as '≠', '=>' as '⇒', '>=' as '≥', etc. See https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode . They do…

Oh, they do. Why should www turn into a ligature?

Re: Interrobang

#60

Post by corobo »

wodenokoto wrote: post #34
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…

> but let's imagine we wanted to start a campaign for it to go mainstream. I believe Reddit has tried it for years. Maybe they should have focused on auto correct.

The main problem of using it on reddit is that every reply to your comment will be "oh my god the interrobang!!!", "upvoted for interrobang", etc
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