Monday, February 1, 2010

Punctuation, anyone?

To the right we have the "irony point," proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm in the 1890s. And this is just one of many novel punctuation marks that have been proposed over the years. According to Wikipedia, French writer Herve Bazin proposed several others:
such as the doubt point (Point de doute.svg), certitude point (Point de certitude.svg), acclamation point (Point d'acclamation.svg), authority point (Point d'autorité.svg), indignation point (Point d'indignation.svg), and love point (Point d'amour.svg).
Now my basic intuition is that such marks would only be irritating distractions, and that people ought to be able to figure out what you mean. But given how much misunderstanding and anger I have seen in internet discussions, and how much use people make of smiley faces and winks to unbarb their words, maybe there is something to marks like these.

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