I smiled, Jess, when you mentioned typograpy regarding the M- and N-. When I took a print shop class in school (which was a million years ago), we were taught that before the invention of the “Linotype” machine (so called because it had a keyboard and would produce a “line o’ type” (actually MANY lines, for the printing of books and newspapers… now both dreadfully obsolete) - which molded what the operator typed in HOT LEAD, then cooled, could be loaded directly into a printing press and these lines were then inked by the press and squeezed against paper) we were taught to set type by HAND. The letters of type had to be placed, one at a time, into a “type stick” that held them together until you were finished typesetting whatever it was you wanted to print. To make each line the same length, as newspapers do, you would place some other pieces of type, which were called “quads” and did not print, between letters and even between words. The two widest ones were called “M quads” and “N quads”. They worked exactly like what you described in the video. And for your general information, where I come from, a ligature is what is used to hold the reed onto a woodwind instrument’s mouthpiece! I love watching you and Rob on TH-cam, and I learn something every time I do.
The HTML-reminiscent "" absolutely has caught on as a sarcasm marker in at least some social groups, I use it frequently myself and encounter it regularly in the wild.
Though the version I see more often is just the /s, at least these days. I remember there being some others as well, but I don't remember what they were since I haven't seen them in a long time.
Yes and to address Rob's concern about it being sad that it's necessary: There's a reason one only writes the closing tag. You don't want to give it away at the beginning of the statement.
@@Metagrinner In speech you often mark sarcasm with inflections. You can't do that in writing. You also don't know anything of the background and command of language of the recipients. In German you often read the closing statement "wer Ironie findet, darf sie behalten." (If you find irony in this statement, keep it.)
@@HotelPapa100I find the "sarcasm voice" some people do grating, context is usually sufficient, or should be The internet is a little trickier because you don't know that your reader shares your cultural assumptions, which I would guess is why marks like these are popular
The /s for sarcasm is super useful and I see it everywhere online. Probably the best recent punctuation mark and much easier on the eyes than the annoying alternating case. Also I feel that they have different uses where alternating caps is used more for mocking and /s is used for sarcasm
I like words with double contractions like: shouldn't've. The Oxford comma is great for clarifying lists: The prints on her dresses were red, blue, green, black and white. Does she have four or five dresses?
What's really interesting to me as a catholic seminarian is how the psalms are presented in the Brieviary - the two most common punctuation marks are the asterisk at the end of alternating lines, denoting a slight pause, and the obelisk, the dagger-like symbol, denoting a continuation between lines - which brings me on to the comic Asterix (and Obelix), which liberally uses the Grollix to denote swearing! They must have been big punctuation fans! Also very intersting is Gregorian chant - all the marks around the notes are vital to how to sing notes - cool to see the connection between that and modern punctuation.
I always assumed Obelix's name was just a loose reference to the menhir he's always carrying around (not an obelisk, but close enough for an Astérix name pun). Didn't know there was a reference there to "asterisk" and "obelisk" being a matched set.
Oddly enough, for me the most memorable joke from that entire series was from "Asterix and the Goths" where they used the same Grollix in different styles to represent swearing in different languages, but helpfully included footnotes. The first one said "Gaulish swear words which we decline to translate." and the second (a few panels later) said "Gothic swear words which may be translated into Gaulish as follows:" (followed by the same images used in the earlier panel)
Victor Borge did a very funny routine called "Phonetic Punctuation" where he suggests we say the punctuation when speaking. I am sure it can be found somewhere on TH-cam.
At work, walking past an intensive reading program for children, I overheard the students reading out loud, “We must read with expression exclamation point!” 😂
21:51 As someone who used electronic messaging back in the mid 90s on systems where formatting like bold and italics were just not available within the text of a message in most cases, denoting sarcasm was fairly important, and usually done with a "smiley". ( like using " ;-) " to indicate a wink for example. ) The reason for this being that in speech sarcasm is typically denoted almost entirely in the tone of voice. Sometimes there are some fairly obvious context clues, but often there are not, and many misunderstandings resulted from people using sarcasm in their messages where it was not at all obvious to the reader that a given word or sentence was intended to be read sarcastically.
The reason the RAE invented the upside-down question mark is that, in Spanish, it's common to indicate a question by only intonation. In English and French, one usually inverts the subject and verb or adds other words which result in an inversion. The apostrophe is used in Ancient Greek in phrases like "τουτ' εστι" (=τουτο εστι, this is). Some languages have different punctuation marks. You mentioned the Arabic question mark; there's also the Arabic comma, which is rotated 180° from the comma we use. In Armenian, the colon and period are used oppositely to English, and the exclamation and question marks look completely different and are placed on top of a word. Greek still uses the raised dot for a (semi)colon.
And the exclamation mark is also inverted, usually a bit bellow the line of text so that it doesn't get confused with an i like this ¡ that is the inverted exclamation mark
Jess was trying to figure out the pronunciation of some Latin word or phrase. I took two years of Latin in high school from a teacher who seemed old enough to have known the ancient ones directly! She asserted that there were two kinds of Latin speech: that written in documents and that spoken on the street. We know nothing about the street version-apparently they didn't bother to leave us any recordings. Pronunciation hints have been gathered from derivative languages, but is-at best-a big guess.
About the possessive rules: To me “Jess’s bookshelf” and “Rob Watts’s house” are absolutely correct because “Jess” and “Rob Watts” are both SINGULAR nouns. For me, the [s’] ending is for PLURAL nouns ending in s. (I would have underlined those words if I could have.) So to me, this would be correct: “I enjoy Jess’s thoughts about the many cats’ whiskers that are strewn about.” Or: “Rob Watts’s new setup looks fantastic thanks to his lights’ ability to shine in different colours.”
Which then raises the question of how you refer to multiple possessions of something that ends with 's'. Watt's house - the house where Mr. Watt lives Watts's house - the house where Mr. Watts lives Watts' house - the house where the Watt family lives How do you refer to the house where the Watts family lives? In a way which is distinguished from the house where a single Mr. Watts lives?
I have been forced to us /s to denote sarcasm on social media in order to avoid a flame-war over a misconstrued comment. I hate it, but is essential for my sanity.
When my job was to proof customers' cards at Tinyprints, we were trained to recommend The Wattses's for plural possessive of Watts. Most of the time the situation was simpler. These changes would be accepted probably about 75% of the time, higher for wedding sets.
The reason why I use the oxford comma: I would like to thank my brothers, Mark and Frank, and I am glad they are all in my lives. You don't know if the brothers are named Mark and Frank or if Mark and Frank are in a list included with brothers.
In the phrase is still ambiguous, I still don't know if your thanking 'your brothers, [AND] Mark and Frank, and I am glad...' or thanking your 'brothers (Mark and Frank), and I am glad...' But then again if I knew you, I would probably know the names of your brothers and whether you were thanking them specifically or not :)
20:27 I think it is useful to mark sarcasm; sometimes jokes; if something is 'in your humble opinion' rather than a 'fact' A written sentence can mean so many different things to different readers. I recon 🤔Wittgenstein would approve 🦭of emojis (imho;)
The old name for a unit of electrical conductance is a a "mho" which is ohm (the name for a unit of electrical resistance) spelled backwards. There exists precedent Mr. Otistetrax and I second your motion!
You could honestly do an entire episode on words coming from Latin caput: chef, Cabo San Lucas, cabbage I believe…even the Germanic haupt and head itself are technically cognates.
One flags sarcasm to avoid angering the people who cant see it is sarcasm. Which is not as bad as it sounds, lots of people on the internet have English as a second language, including me.
I did this episode a singular honor and paused it when I went for tea, instead of just letting it play in the headphones. Its worth watching, not just listening.
The fact that there are no fewer than three possible ways to denote parentheticals with punctuation, and it's always fuzzy whether you should use (brackets), commas, or-em dashes-is a frequent source of frustration.
1) !!! - Where I grew up in the US (southwest Ohio) we said both Exclamation Point and Exclamation Mark, and I now wonder if that's because of the high % of UK settlers in our area . 2) Dash it all, all these dash rules are dashing my hopes of sanity! 3) Did I mention that I live in a place called Dash Point, Washington (no lie!). Both a dash and a point in one name! 4) We were taught (60's & 70's) to use the Oxford comma prior to university (80's) where they then taught us NOT to use it. Now I use it because I prefer it, but I LOVE the "go for clarity" rule. 5) What are text and thought bubbles in comics called, or is there no special word(s)?
I thought you might bring up a tilda “~” as a short form of “about” or “approximately”, carots “^”, and parentheses, square brackets, and angle brackets “”. I use the latter for emphasizing. Also one other casualty of time are umlauts, which I recall being phased out in the ‘60s in American English mainly for the word “cooperation “.
Technically in English that's a diaresis, rather than an umlaut. It doesn't so much change the sound of the letter as indicate that the letter starts a new syllable, and shouldn't be pronounced as part of a digraph or trigraph with the preceding letter(s). I probably only use it for the word "naïve", although sometimes you see it for the name "Chloë". Generally I think it's been dropped because it's hard to type on most keyboards. I used Windows' 'United Kingdom Extended' for those examples, where you press AltGr+2 (the double-quote mark is on the '2' key for UK keyboards) and then press the letter you want the ¨ mark applied to. If you type something that isn't a vowel or semi-vowel (it works for ÿ) then you get ¨ followed by the letter you typed, e.g. ¨n. If you press the space key you just get ¨ with no following space. Also, computer software may sort it incorrectly, unless it's been programmed to ignore accent characters in English. The New Yorker continues to use coöperate, or at least did so in 2020: www.arrantpedantry.com/2020/03/24/umlauts-diaereses-and-the-new-yorker/
My preferred solution to the confusion between "its" & "it's", would be to use "tis" for "it is" and "its" as a possessive and not use the apostrophe at all.
I had been fastidiously typing two spaces after every period/full stop, until my son noticed the two spaces and pointed out (haha) that it was no longer necessary. Turns out on old typewriters each letter would use the same amount of space on the page, regardless of the width of the letter within that space. Two spaces made it clear that there was a full stop there.
I stopped using a double space when I was learning to create web pages. I don't remember the exact details (it's been a few decades), but it had to do with how the sentences would show on the page. I think it (the program, the code, or the display - I forget which lol) automatically put in the single space after a period, and changing that was more trouble than it was worth. I've been single spacing ever since, since most of what I type is online or on the computer anyway.
I never got why people insist that type fonts have anything to do with this rule or the lack of it. When I hand-write, I leave more space between sentences than I do between words. The same has always been, and will always be, true when I type.
@@Pivotcreator0 actually, quite the opposite. When reading my comment in my head, I _don't_ pause before the not. Although I can see that the sentence flows well if I _do_ pause instead. However, purely from a grammatical standpoint, yes, there should have been a comma there.
Oxford comma also applies to triple-or-more "or"s: and mixtures of ands and ors generate good examples of the potential ambiguities. One arose in a law case over a disputed will: depending on circumstances a bequest was to one (only) of "A, B and C, or D". Viewing the actual circumstances, after much (expensive) legal argument the decision was that the bequest went to "C and D", 50/50. British Standard zero, their Standard for Standards, demands the Oxford comma; the corresponding International Standards Organization document follows suit. Both because ambiguity cannot be risked in Standards. PS: note the uses of punctuation in the above to tell the reader more than can easily said - well-punctuated text is superior to mere speech!
When you think about sarcasm and satire, understand that Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" ... an essay that proposes the eating of Irish children in order to solve a food crisis and a population growth crisis simultaneously... was thought to be a serious proposal by *many* of its readers in its day, letters to the editor were off the charts. When taught in modern English literature classes, it is often given to students without explanation and their candid thoughts requested. This regularly results in roughly 50% of the class being horrified by this monstrous proposal and the other 50% being baffled that anyone didn't *immediately* understand it was satire. And there are usually some holdouts that can't be convinced by classmates and won't accept it until the instructor reveals that it is in fact satire. It's a brilliant piece, simultaneously lampooning English attitudes towards the Irish while compelling many of those same Englishmen that held the Irish in contempt to raise their voices in defense of the Irish. Anyway. That's why satire and sarcasm need a warning labels, otherwise you'll be drowned in hate from the people that just don't get it, no matter how obvious it is. Ideally, to preserve the effect, the warning is revealed only at the end, which the combination of spoiler tags and the /s is useful for, or very small font ideally followed by some other text ( "/s even though it shouldn't be necessary" ) so that it looks like a footnote and doesn't immediately draw attention to itself as a standalone /s would.
My late colleague used to get so incensed by the use of an apostrophe before the s in a normal plural (eg a pound of apple’s) that he was known to erase them from the boards outside market stalls.
In Spanish, we don't change word order when we frame something as a question. Sometimes we can be asking something without it actually being a question. I think it is because questions, for us, are also emphasis (or add emphasis), and are not simple enquiries. So, when you need to emphasise, you quite literally "frame" the question between both question marks... Though, I must say, I'm from Ecuador and a native Spanish speaker who learned all (or most) grammar rules, but remember none of them fir Spanish. I sometimes use my knowledge of English grammar to fill those gaps, because, as a second language, I do remember those...
I am Colombian but as a Modern Languages student I have to know Spanish linguistics too. And you are correct and not only on the question mark but the exclamation mark too ¡! With the inverted one being a little below the text line do it isn't confused with an i
other punctuations you didn't cover: the single quote that looks like an apostrophe but is sometimes used to set off a quotation within a quotation. The underscire - which is kind of like a hyphen, emdash, or endash, but is not elevated above the bottom of the line of text.
Yes! Quotes within quotes is a subject worth further discussion. And it's another of those trans-Atlantic differences. Also the use of other punctuation used to set off quotes, and the different uses of quotation marks - they aren't just for things said, but often also used to talk about the words themselves, or to express a claim that may be in doubt.
Would be fun to hear about the difference between typesetters' apostrophes and quote marks “ ‘ ’ ” and the typewriter versions " ' ' ". Also slang terms for punctuation marks like bang and splat. Also one or two spaces after a period/full stop.
Two spaces after the full stop (i.e., the period at the end of a sentence) used to be taught as the standard thing, back when schools had classes in how to use a typewriter. In any other context (e.g., the period denoting an abbreviation) only one space was used. The major dissenting voice on the double-space after the full stop, was the style manual of the American Psychological Association, which came to be adopted by a lot of college teacher-education departments and thus ended up having more influence on usage, than you'd otherwise expect.
I absolutely detest the double space after a full stop. For a long time it seemed as though it had been erased from history, thanks to HTML automatically removing any superfluous spaces from writing. But more recently it seems some sites are specifically including code that forces extra spaces to appear.
@@JimCullen I like the double-space after the full stop, but I hate "Smart Quotes" (the 66/99 shaped versions of quotation marks) with a fiery burning passion out of all proportion to any logical argument that I can produce against them. (They do often lead to mojibake, but that's true of pretty much any character that's not in ASCII, and I don't hate most of the others, apart from certain of the emoji, anywhere near as much.)
@@jonadabtheunsightly Double spaces after periods were an invention specifically for the monospaced fonts typical of common typewriters, where it provided much needed visual clarity for where one sentence ended and another began. For proportional fonts used in professional typesetting it was never a standard, and modern digital word processing almost exclusively uses proportional fonts so that legacy hack around the limitations of old typewriters is no longer necessary at all.
@@Pfhorrest The thing is, proportional fonts tend to make the space narrower than most of the other characters, so if anything, the double space after the full stop is *more* necessary with proportional fonts. Alternatively, in this decadent modern era of widespread Unicode support, it would be possible to use a distinct "wide space" character; but in most common encodings that would take up at least as many bytes as two spaces, possibly more, so there's no real advantage to it.
In my signature, I use some dots - often swiped a bit into a semi-dash - that look random but, taken in bulk - looking at a number of my signatures - become obviously idiosyncratic. [Thank you. I love these videos.]
That's true in English, but in French (and maybe other languages for all I know), the "!" can also be (and is frequently) used to signal an exclamatory word within a sentence, essentially taking on the function of a comma (as well as its "full stop" function at the end of fully exclamatory sentences).
Tolkein (or his publisher) put exclamation marks after words to be emphasized in a sentence. I remember him doing a fair amount of this in Return of the King.
@@lehilehi8636 When I feel the need to do that I put the exclamation mark in parentheses, although that can be confusing because many people do that to denote sarcasm or irony.
An intersting thing about punctuation is that it has allowed grammatical changes in sentence structure, so we can move the word order around and still have it make sense. This has made commas in particular very grammatical. However, when dubbing films I am constantly frustrated when the actors pause because there's a comma, which has been placed for grammatical reasons, and then when it doesn't synch right they say, "That comma shouldn't be there!" Schools seem to teach people that commas denote a pause in speech, which they can, but don't always do, and of course that's how they started out, so it's really a bit of Mediaeval teaching that's going on there. 😆
Hey Rob and Jess. You mentioned sarcasm and identifying it in text and discussed whether we need it nor and the way it should/could be portrayed. In British for the Deaf subtitles, and I think it's the same in American subtitles for the hard of hearing. the way it's denoated is putting (!) at the end of the sentence. Loving these kee up the great work you two :-)
Would that "doubt mark" perhaps be appropriate for the much-maligned "question statement"? A la "I guess I'm going to that party tonight?", where grammatically it's phrased as a statement but it's spoken with upward inflection at the end as though it was a question (and so is often written with a question mark to indicate that).
I remember a phrase I've not heard in decades, "every tittle and jot". I understood the meaning as to include "every tiny thing", but now I know Why those words were used. Yet another reason why I love these TH-cam/podcasts.❤
In Spanish the reverse question mark at the beginning of a sentence is necessary, because of way questions are constructed. In English, a question is constructed by interchanging the order of the subject-noun and the verb ('You are going' becomes 'Are you going?'), whereas in Spanish (and Portuguese, and some other languages) there is no word order change in a question. The order of words is exactly the same as if one were making a statement; it is only the intonation of the sentence that makes it into a question. So, (especially if one were reading aloud) it is necessary to know in the beginning itself how one should intone the sentence.
The inverted marks in Spanish are quite useful (I think it would be useful in Portuguese as well) because, unlike English, syntax doesn't change in a questions, where in Spanish, the only indication that you are actually questioning is the tone (same for Portuguese). So, if you are reading out loud, and it is a long sentence, you may start reading as if it was an affirmative phrase until you realise that it was a question, and only so change the tone. I hope this makes sense for comment readers.
Great episode, thanks! I edit copy of all kinds for publishers the world over, and something I find interesting is how American publishers (including academics) have become increasingly 'em happy', while there are many publishers outside the US (including in the UK) that use them far less. Also, many online publishers nowadays commonly opt for the use of an en dash (straddled by spaces), or even a hyphen, rather than the em, as they claim the latter hampers readability on screen devices. Another obvious difference I find is that American publishers tend to enforce rules of comma usage with considerable zeal and are always going on about the 'Oxford comma', while English-language publishers outside the US mostly ignore it (ironically, OUP most of all). Cheers!
Heavily criticized today because we almost always use a key stroke for the ambersand, hand writing seems to be going the way of the dodo, I was taught the backward three with a vertical line to write it which have found represents a epsilon combine with a "t" for et.
Regarding the Oxford comma (which I dislike, but only because I was never taught to use it - and, indeed, was taught not to use it); if there is ambiguity then it can usually be clarified quite easily. "I would like to thank my parents, Adam, and Eve" can be clarified to "I would like to thank Adam, Eve and my parents" if those two individuals are not my parents. Or, if they are your parents, then "I would like to thank my parents - Adam and Eve"
@@bartolomeothesatyr "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam and Eve, and my Sister." The Oxford comma version would presumably be "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam, and Eve, and my Sister", which seems a bit odd. But there will always be some room for ambiguity. "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam, Eve, Fred, and Joan, and Clarissa" - which are my classmates, and which not? The problem is that a comma-separated list can always lead to ambiguity, with or without an Oxford comma. So I would write that as "I would like to thank my classmates - Adam, Eve, Fred and Joan - and Clarissa" which makes it very clear.
The inherent and ineradicable imprecision of language (not just grammar & punctuation but even words themselves) is why we had to invent mathematics in order to get anything done.
14:37 Ooh that's still kinda in use where I live! When kids mistakenly write a compound word as two words with a space, that kind of curving line underneath to bridge the gap left by the space between words is used to denote that this word should be a compound. I don't know how common that is in the English-speaking world because compounds are done very differently.
Which makes me associate to Cerberus, the Hellenic guardian dog of the land of the dead, whose name apparently after much back-tracking in the language tree means "dot". The lord of the dead has a spotted dog!
Ugh. I first came across the term _niqqud_ during my A-level Biblical Hebrew exam in the 1980s, where the instructions used this (post-Biblical!) term untranslated (along with _binyanim,_ 'forms') despite the word appearing in no common textbook I'd seen, the English having been 'pointing' for three hundred years at that point in time. Oh, past papers hadn't used these terms either. I had no idea what they meant.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Grawlix and its brethren were featured in this video. One of my grammatical pet peeves is when someone wedges an apostrophe before the final S of a plural word; it's like nails on a chalkboard.
My favourite logogram, which was once common in the Nordic languages but has now almost fallen out of use, is ɔ: It translates as "that is" or "i.e." It is/was known in Danish and Norwegian as "forklaringstegn" (ɔ: "explanation mark"). I use it as much as I can, even if I have to copy it from the phonetic alphabet nowadays.
There's the verbal punctuation mark, "Quote unquote". To mark out a word where you think the terminology is significant or strange, where in text you would have scare quotes. Strange in that the "Quote Unquote" is usually put in front of the word, rather than Quote Word Unquote, surrounding the word. And often also accompanied by the gesture that Jess used when describing scare quotes.
I'm curious if the usage of American "period" vs. British "full stop" has to do with the WWII-era telegraph communications using "STOP" to break sentences clearly, and then concentration of that lead to retention of common usage across the pond whereas it didn't have as significant concentration in the US to do the same.
@@KaiHenningsen Between British English & American English, I think we're unified on the "decimal point" with "12.34" being said "twelve point thirty-four" or "twelve point three four" depending on what it's representing. That makes it a bit different from "period" or "full stop" where the punctuation name itself isn't typically part of what's verbally spoken. We get something KIND OF similar if a speaker is attempting to communicate _extreme_ emphasis on concluding a matter (often as a moderator), in which case it's typically written out explicitly in its own statement. *Ex:* _“This matter will not be discussed any more. Period.”_ or _“We're done with this conversation. Full stop.”_ At this point it's more of a contextual term on its own rather than necessarily using the speaker's name for the "." punctuation mark, as I've heard both those sentences in the US used in that context, but am not sure how much that shared usage happens in the UK.
I always thought that there should be a punctuation mark that indicates curiosity. For example, if is said the sentence “George stopped be today.” and you curiously said “George?” This reads as a question, when in fact, you weren’t looking for an answer to “George?” You were just making a curious statement.
The punctuation in the following sentence is correct but not in the resultant sign (I think). A takeaway food shop owner hires a sign writer, and requests a sign that has a comma between fish, and and, and and, and chips.
An interesting point to ponder is that in Spanish and Italian they lead a question and a exclamation with the sign inverted as well as at the end of the statement
Interestingly, when I learned programming on the 1970 and 80s, we had parentheses ( ), brackets [ ], and braces { }. Question: Does the term "jot something down" come from the former English term for a J? Plus I was waiting for the semi-colon.
Apostrophe misuse has become so rampant that I have not only seen people using an apostrophe on a word that ends with S that is neither showing plural nor possessive, but I have also seen where someone put an apostrophe before an S at the beginning of a word, and it wasn't a word or phrase where the front part had been omitted, like 'sup for "what's up". I've come to the conclusion that in 100 years the letter S will simply have an extra line dangling there and people will wonder why folks in the past didn't use it all the time.
The misuse of the apostrophe has been going on since the 18th Century when the rules were introduced ... the rules still exist, and so do the misuses ... it's no worse than it was 200 years ago
Both my degrees are in journalism (with four years of naval service between them). The first came in 1970, so my education and later work in the field is dated. We were taught that an exclamation point was a “Bang” or bang point and it was a question mark. This was just at the end of the “hot type” era, when linotype operators received paper copy marked up by hand, generally in blue pencil. So, an editor might decide to move a paragraph to the lead position, circle it in blue and write “lede” in the circle because the typesetters might insert a correctly spelled “lead” into the text. Bold face received a circle and “bf.” And so on. For me, a period and two spaces is a typesetting mark. And, sorry, I was taught that the Oxford comma, was just an element of style. In the US, most publications used the Associated Press Style Book but many had their own and more had addendums. You’d walk into a job interview and ask, “what’s your style?” If that didn’t include the Oxford comma, you followed style. Don’t argue; that was how it was.
A good reason why Spanish has question marks at the start and end of a sentence is that a statement and a question can look identical (you are tall and are you tall would both be tu es alto/alta).
Another mark that I, and some others, use in place of the ampersand is the “plus” sign with the bottom of the vertical is connected to the left of the horizontal making s continuous line.
Remember there is also the greengrocer's apostrophe - an incorrectly used apostrophe, especially when mistakenly forming a plural of a noun e.g. banana's instead of bananas, originating in the misuse of apostrophes on greengrocers' signs.
@@kevinmcqueenie7420 I don't think she was questioning the correctness of the apostrophe usage in the term; I think she was just enjoying learning the name for it.
I was stationed in Millington, TN in 1971 (north of Memphis), where, I seem to recall, the accent included a rising intonation even at the end of declaratory sentences. My grandfather retired as a senior master printer. I didn't get a chance to learn too much of the printer's jargon before his passing, unfortunately.
I learned that the point size of a font was determined by the "M-height" - the height of the capital "M". The height of lowercase letters is based on the height of the "x" and is called the "x-height". The "/s" in online conversation may go back as far as IRC, when "/x" (where "x" is a letter or group of letters) told the IRC server to add specific information to the line of text. "/me thinks" would appear on the server as "Brenda thinks" (or whatever your username is) in a different color. "/m username" would private-message (dm) "username" with whatever followed "username" in the line of text. In terms of signs for words, how about "commercial 'at'" (@), asterisk, octothorpe (which can mean "number" or "pound [avoirdupois]", depending whether it precedes or follows a number)? Also, I'd love to hear Jess and Rob debate the use of single and double quotation marks (since, IIRC, the conventions of use differ from the King's English and American English... and I'm unsure what the conventions are in other English-speaking nations such as Canada, Australia, and Jamaica).
I transcribed a 24-page will of my 5th great grandfather's without a single punctuation mark throughout - not even at the end. Just one long sentence in legalese and ye olde English script that was difficult to decipher. I was used to seeing the S written more like an F but I was fascinated by the use of "FF" at the beginning of certain words, reminiscent of the Welsh language. My heart sinks every time I see an old will now, knowing I'm going to have to listen to a constant wail in my head for a good few days. 😵💫
I feel you, Rob: Having to denote your sarcasm defeats (part of) the point of it. But I think we have to recognize that body language IRL serves the same function, and it is lacking in written spaces. If you use your eyebrows to indicate your sarcasm, that's as much of a cheat, or a crutch for the recipient, as a "/s", if you ask me.
The moment I saw the title for this video I thought "What's the point?" I'll just show myself out. EDIT: I'm back to point out that omitting the Oxford comma can have consequences. "I went to the party with two friends, the Governor, and the Mayor" clearly says that five people went to the party; "I went to the party with two friends, the Governor and the Mayor" might be interpreted as a party of three. Another common example is variations on "my sister, Nelson Mandela, and a vampire" vs. "my sister, Nelson Mandela and a vampire," the latter of which could be misinterpreted if one's sister isn't a vampire named Nelson Mandela. There have been legal cases where stare decisis stood or fell on a comma.
9:31 In music, there exists the Pythagorean comma which expresses the aural distance after going full circle mathematically through a scale and you end up with a large distance between two pitches.
As a Spanish native speaker and student of modern languages, sometimes I feel the incompleteness of lacking an opening punctuation mark for questions and exclamations when reading in other languages even if those other languages have another way of denoting when the question or exclamation begins. Gotta love the double marks ¿? ¡!
I was going to suggest that "reverse italics" should be called "germanics", not because they're especially connected to Germany but just because Italic (qua Romantic, Roman, or Latin) and Germanic seem like competing kinds of cultural influence on English. However looking up the etymology of the word "italic" in that sense for better inspiration, I found that (to quote etymonline) "the word was used in English for the plain, sloping style of handwriting (opposed to gothic)", so that distinction already exists! Instead perhaps they should be "hellenics", after the Roman (or Italic) and Greek (or Hellenic) division that recurs across history, viz the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, etc.
Rob, the why on marking sarcasm is because of people like me. I am autistic -- my presentation fits those called "social expert" autistics and verbal and socio-emotional learning autistics (take the old stereotypes and put language in place of math or pictures and personality types and/or group dynamics in place of trains or astronomy, if that confuses you). I can understand sarcasm and use it -- though sometimes I accidentally use the sarcastic tone when I don't mean it to be sarcastic -- when speaking in person or on video chat and occasionally when hearing audio only. However, in text I can never tell just from context whether someone is being sarcastic, and I am aware that a lot of people in the autistic community can't reliably identify sarcasm at all and may not understand they need to watch for it in text communications. Since conversing with other autistics usually costs a lot less than conversing with allistics, this means I have many opportunities to use the /s tag or similar notations as a proactive way to prevent otherwise inevitable (and because of the near-universal social trauma most of us have experienced) very painful misunderstandings. So it all depends on whether you want your text-only comunications to be understood as intended by all readers or only 95%.
I find the upside-down question mark in Spanish useful because in a compound sentence, it marks the beginning of the question even if it is the second clause.
This channel can make any subject interesting. To make an interesting video about punctuation shames all uninteresting videos in existence . I can't wait until they tackle the origins of office equipment terminology.
I have always had problems with spelling fruit, build and words with ui also with iu. My solution in writing was a w like squiggle with the dot in the middle.
I'm aware of the historical reasons that an ampersand is/was occasionally considered a letter, but part of me has always thought that if any bit of punctuation should achieve "letter" status, it should be the apostrophe. It's the only one that can actually be considered part of the spelling of a word. (i.e. "it's" vs. "its", etc.) Sure other punctuation marks can change meaning or connotations, but no other punctuation actually changes the letters surrounding it from one lexeme to another in the same way.
in my style guide, hyphens, en, and em dash's have spaces on either side - because i HATE how wordwrap when i'm doing block justification works without those spaces during layout. (and the oxford comma is required)
I smiled, Jess, when you mentioned typograpy regarding the M- and N-. When I took a print shop class in school (which was a million years ago), we were taught that before the invention of the “Linotype” machine (so called because it had a keyboard and would produce a “line o’ type” (actually MANY lines, for the printing of books and newspapers… now both dreadfully obsolete) - which molded what the operator typed in HOT LEAD, then cooled, could be loaded directly into a printing press and these lines were then inked by the press and squeezed against paper) we were taught to set type by HAND. The letters of type had to be placed, one at a time, into a “type stick” that held them together until you were finished typesetting whatever it was you wanted to print. To make each line the same length, as newspapers do, you would place some other pieces of type, which were called “quads” and did not print, between letters and even between words. The two widest ones were called “M quads” and “N quads”. They worked exactly like what you described in the video.
And for your general information, where I come from, a ligature is what is used to hold the reed onto a woodwind instrument’s mouthpiece!
I love watching you and Rob on TH-cam, and I learn something every time I do.
The HTML-reminiscent "" absolutely has caught on as a sarcasm marker in at least some social groups, I use it frequently myself and encounter it regularly in the wild.
Though the version I see more often is just the /s, at least these days. I remember there being some others as well, but I don't remember what they were since I haven't seen them in a long time.
Yes and to address Rob's concern about it being sad that it's necessary: There's a reason one only writes the closing tag. You don't want to give it away at the beginning of the statement.
I definitely agree with his shock at idea that people cant understand sarcasm. I've also been on reddit.
@@Metagrinner In speech you often mark sarcasm with inflections. You can't do that in writing. You also don't know anything of the background and command of language of the recipients.
In German you often read the closing statement "wer Ironie findet, darf sie behalten." (If you find irony in this statement, keep it.)
@@HotelPapa100I find the "sarcasm voice" some people do grating, context is usually sufficient, or should be
The internet is a little trickier because you don't know that your reader shares your cultural assumptions, which I would guess is why marks like these are popular
this is one of my favorite podcasts i wanna thank you guys for doing this so consistently and high quality every week
The /s for sarcasm is super useful and I see it everywhere online. Probably the best recent punctuation mark and much easier on the eyes than the annoying alternating case. Also I feel that they have different uses where alternating caps is used more for mocking and /s is used for sarcasm
I like words with double contractions like: shouldn't've. The Oxford comma is great for clarifying lists: The prints on her dresses were red, blue, green, black and white. Does she have four or five dresses?
Lewis Carol came up with ca'n't which I like a lot
I'd've thought double contractions would be completely acceptable by now.
What's really interesting to me as a catholic seminarian is how the psalms are presented in the Brieviary - the two most common punctuation marks are the asterisk at the end of alternating lines, denoting a slight pause, and the obelisk, the dagger-like symbol, denoting a continuation between lines - which brings me on to the comic Asterix (and Obelix), which liberally uses the Grollix to denote swearing! They must have been big punctuation fans!
Also very intersting is Gregorian chant - all the marks around the notes are vital to how to sing notes - cool to see the connection between that and modern punctuation.
I always assumed Obelix's name was just a loose reference to the menhir he's always carrying around (not an obelisk, but close enough for an Astérix name pun). Didn't know there was a reference there to "asterisk" and "obelisk" being a matched set.
@@MattMcIrvinI think it could be a both/and!
Oddly enough, for me the most memorable joke from that entire series was from "Asterix and the Goths" where they used the same Grollix in different styles to represent swearing in different languages, but helpfully included footnotes. The first one said "Gaulish swear words which we decline to translate." and the second (a few panels later) said "Gothic swear words which may be translated into Gaulish as follows:" (followed by the same images used in the earlier panel)
@@MattMcIrvin yeah, same here.
@@SiblingCreature that's the one I was thinking of! It was on my mind as I had only re-read it the other day.
Victor Borge did a very funny routine called "Phonetic Punctuation" where he suggests we say the punctuation when speaking. I am sure it can be found somewhere on TH-cam.
Yes, it absolutely can! That's where I found it a while back. It is hilarious!
At work, walking past an intensive reading program for children, I overheard the students reading out loud, “We must read with expression exclamation point!” 😂
I love this series
21:51 As someone who used electronic messaging back in the mid 90s on systems where formatting like bold and italics were just not available within the text of a message in most cases, denoting sarcasm was fairly important, and usually done with a "smiley". ( like using " ;-) " to indicate a wink for example. ) The reason for this being that in speech sarcasm is typically denoted almost entirely in the tone of voice. Sometimes there are some fairly obvious context clues, but often there are not, and many misunderstandings resulted from people using sarcasm in their messages where it was not at all obvious to the reader that a given word or sentence was intended to be read sarcastically.
The reason the RAE invented the upside-down question mark is that, in Spanish, it's common to indicate a question by only intonation. In English and French, one usually inverts the subject and verb or adds other words which result in an inversion.
The apostrophe is used in Ancient Greek in phrases like "τουτ' εστι" (=τουτο εστι, this is).
Some languages have different punctuation marks. You mentioned the Arabic question mark; there's also the Arabic comma, which is rotated 180° from the comma we use. In Armenian, the colon and period are used oppositely to English, and the exclamation and question marks look completely different and are placed on top of a word. Greek still uses the raised dot for a (semi)colon.
And the exclamation mark is also inverted, usually a bit bellow the line of text so that it doesn't get confused with an i like this ¡ that is the inverted exclamation mark
Punctuation matters:
"No. No more tequila."
"No, no! More tequila!"
Given that it is about tequila, some Spanish inverse exclamation marks would help
¡No, no! ¡más tequila!
Farewell yellow bike that may or may not have belonged to Rob.
Jess was trying to figure out the pronunciation of some Latin word or phrase. I took two years of Latin in high school from a teacher who seemed old enough to have known the ancient ones directly! She asserted that there were two kinds of Latin speech: that written in documents and that spoken on the street. We know nothing about the street version-apparently they didn't bother to leave us any recordings. Pronunciation hints have been gathered from derivative languages, but is-at best-a big guess.
About the possessive rules: To me “Jess’s bookshelf” and “Rob Watts’s house” are absolutely correct because “Jess” and “Rob Watts” are both SINGULAR nouns. For me, the [s’] ending is for PLURAL nouns ending in s. (I would have underlined those words if I could have.) So to me, this would be correct: “I enjoy Jess’s thoughts about the many cats’ whiskers that are strewn about.” Or: “Rob Watts’s new setup looks fantastic thanks to his lights’ ability to shine in different colours.”
Which then raises the question of how you refer to multiple possessions of something that ends with 's'.
Watt's house - the house where Mr. Watt lives
Watts's house - the house where Mr. Watts lives
Watts' house - the house where the Watt family lives
How do you refer to the house where the Watts family lives? In a way which is distinguished from the house where a single Mr. Watts lives?
I have been forced to us /s to denote sarcasm on social media in order to avoid a flame-war over a misconstrued comment. I hate it, but is essential for my sanity.
Tone indicators are actually pretty useful
Just remember, there's nothing so stupid sounding that it cannot be mistaken for a firmly held belief.
When my job was to proof customers' cards at Tinyprints, we were trained to recommend The Wattses's for plural possessive of Watts. Most of the time the situation was simpler. These changes would be accepted probably about 75% of the time, higher for wedding sets.
The reason why I use the oxford comma:
I would like to thank my brothers, Mark and Frank, and I am glad they are all in my lives.
You don't know if the brothers are named Mark and Frank or if Mark and Frank are in a list included with brothers.
That's not an Oxford comma, though, you're using two commas to disambiguate the word brothers.
@@gabsy6443 without an Oxford comma in the alternative sentence, there is no way to know for sure that Mark and Frank are NOT his brothers.
The Oxford comma disambiguates sentences, but if it's not needed it can be omitted ...
This is precisely equivalent to Rob's example of "my parents, God and President".
In the phrase is still ambiguous, I still don't know if your thanking 'your brothers, [AND] Mark and Frank, and I am glad...' or thanking your 'brothers (Mark and Frank), and I am glad...'
But then again if I knew you, I would probably know the names of your brothers and whether you were thanking them specifically or not :)
20:27 I think it is useful to mark sarcasm; sometimes jokes; if something is 'in your humble opinion' rather than a 'fact'
A written sentence can mean so many different things to different readers.
I recon 🤔Wittgenstein would approve 🦭of emojis (imho;)
I propose we call reverse italics “Scilati”. Sounds suitably latinate, no?
Like.
Quasipalindromic
The old name for a unit of electrical conductance is a a "mho" which is ohm (the name for a unit of electrical resistance) spelled backwards. There exists precedent Mr. Otistetrax and I second your motion!
You could honestly do an entire episode on words coming from Latin caput: chef, Cabo San Lucas, cabbage I believe…even the Germanic haupt and head itself are technically cognates.
This Words Unravelled is not just entertaining, it has an unusual amount of practical application.
One flags sarcasm to avoid angering the people who cant see it is sarcasm. Which is not as bad as it sounds, lots of people on the internet have English as a second language, including me.
I'd call the "love point" the "bat point", watching its negative space. :)
I did this episode a singular honor and paused it when I went for tea, instead of just letting it play in the headphones. Its worth watching, not just listening.
Jess I bought "once upon a word" and it's awesome. Thank you for your hard work! Rob good job too 😅
Thank you so much, Curt!
The fact that there are no fewer than three possible ways to denote parentheticals with punctuation, and it's always fuzzy whether you should use (brackets), commas, or-em dashes-is a frequent source of frustration.
1) !!! - Where I grew up in the US (southwest Ohio) we said both Exclamation Point and Exclamation Mark, and I now wonder if that's because of the high % of UK settlers in our area . 2) Dash it all, all these dash rules are dashing my hopes of sanity! 3) Did I mention that I live in a place called Dash Point, Washington (no lie!). Both a dash and a point in one name! 4) We were taught (60's & 70's) to use the Oxford comma prior to university (80's) where they then taught us NOT to use it. Now I use it because I prefer it, but I LOVE the "go for clarity" rule. 5) What are text and thought bubbles in comics called, or is there no special word(s)?
I thought you might bring up a tilda “~” as a short form of “about” or “approximately”, carots “^”, and parentheses, square brackets, and angle brackets “”. I use the latter for emphasizing.
Also one other casualty of time are umlauts, which I recall being phased out in the ‘60s in American English mainly for the word “cooperation “.
Technically in English that's a diaresis, rather than an umlaut. It doesn't so much change the sound of the letter as indicate that the letter starts a new syllable, and shouldn't be pronounced as part of a digraph or trigraph with the preceding letter(s). I probably only use it for the word "naïve", although sometimes you see it for the name "Chloë".
Generally I think it's been dropped because it's hard to type on most keyboards. I used Windows' 'United Kingdom Extended' for those examples, where you press AltGr+2 (the double-quote mark is on the '2' key for UK keyboards) and then press the letter you want the ¨ mark applied to. If you type something that isn't a vowel or semi-vowel (it works for ÿ) then you get ¨ followed by the letter you typed, e.g. ¨n. If you press the space key you just get ¨ with no following space.
Also, computer software may sort it incorrectly, unless it's been programmed to ignore accent characters in English.
The New Yorker continues to use coöperate, or at least did so in 2020: www.arrantpedantry.com/2020/03/24/umlauts-diaereses-and-the-new-yorker/
My preferred solution to the confusion between "its" & "it's", would be to use "tis" for "it is" and "its" as a possessive and not use the apostrophe at all.
I had been fastidiously typing two spaces after every period/full stop, until my son noticed the two spaces and pointed out (haha) that it was no longer necessary. Turns out on old typewriters each letter would use the same amount of space on the page, regardless of the width of the letter within that space. Two spaces made it clear that there was a full stop there.
Some computer fonts (known as fixed pitch) also use the same width for each letter. Ones with variable width letters are known as proportional fonts.
@@CharlesStearman I typically use Courier New for quoted computer code, otherwise it's proportional fonts all the way. 🐼
Having learnt to type back in 1966, I still tend to use a double space.
I stopped using a double space when I was learning to create web pages. I don't remember the exact details (it's been a few decades), but it had to do with how the sentences would show on the page. I think it (the program, the code, or the display - I forget which lol) automatically put in the single space after a period, and changing that was more trouble than it was worth. I've been single spacing ever since, since most of what I type is online or on the computer anyway.
I never got why people insist that type fonts have anything to do with this rule or the lack of it. When I hand-write, I leave more space between sentences than I do between words. The same has always been, and will always be, true when I type.
For me, the Oxford comma is essential not just for its disambiguating role, but because it simply is a more accurate representation of how you speak.
I will use or not use the Oxford comma depending on whether I want the reader to pause or not pause before the word "and"...
I think by the same rule you need a comma before “not” there, no?
@@Pivotcreator0 actually, quite the opposite. When reading my comment in my head, I _don't_ pause before the not. Although I can see that the sentence flows well if I _do_ pause instead. However, purely from a grammatical standpoint, yes, there should have been a comma there.
I would like to thank my parents, Joseph Stalin and Mother Theresa.
Oxford comma also applies to triple-or-more "or"s: and mixtures of ands and ors generate good examples of the potential ambiguities.
One arose in a law case over a disputed will: depending on circumstances a bequest was to one (only) of "A, B and C, or D". Viewing the actual circumstances, after much (expensive) legal argument the decision was that the bequest went to "C and D", 50/50.
British Standard zero, their Standard for Standards, demands the Oxford comma; the corresponding International Standards Organization document follows suit. Both because ambiguity cannot be risked in Standards.
PS: note the uses of punctuation in the above to tell the reader more than can easily said - well-punctuated text is superior to mere speech!
When you think about sarcasm and satire, understand that Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" ... an essay that proposes the eating of Irish children in order to solve a food crisis and a population growth crisis simultaneously... was thought to be a serious proposal by *many* of its readers in its day, letters to the editor were off the charts.
When taught in modern English literature classes, it is often given to students without explanation and their candid thoughts requested. This regularly results in roughly 50% of the class being horrified by this monstrous proposal and the other 50% being baffled that anyone didn't *immediately* understand it was satire. And there are usually some holdouts that can't be convinced by classmates and won't accept it until the instructor reveals that it is in fact satire.
It's a brilliant piece, simultaneously lampooning English attitudes towards the Irish while compelling many of those same Englishmen that held the Irish in contempt to raise their voices in defense of the Irish.
Anyway. That's why satire and sarcasm need a warning labels, otherwise you'll be drowned in hate from the people that just don't get it, no matter how obvious it is. Ideally, to preserve the effect, the warning is revealed only at the end, which the combination of spoiler tags and the /s is useful for, or very small font ideally followed by some other text ( "/s even though it shouldn't be necessary" ) so that it looks like a footnote and doesn't immediately draw attention to itself as a standalone /s would.
My late colleague used to get so incensed by the use of an apostrophe before the s in a normal plural (eg a pound of apple’s) that he was known to erase them from the boards outside market stalls.
Good punctuation helps to get the message across accurately. Words Unraveled!
In Spanish, we don't change word order when we frame something as a question. Sometimes we can be asking something without it actually being a question. I think it is because questions, for us, are also emphasis (or add emphasis), and are not simple enquiries. So, when you need to emphasise, you quite literally "frame" the question between both question marks... Though, I must say, I'm from Ecuador and a native Spanish speaker who learned all (or most) grammar rules, but remember none of them fir Spanish. I sometimes use my knowledge of English grammar to fill those gaps, because, as a second language, I do remember those...
I am Colombian but as a Modern Languages student I have to know Spanish linguistics too. And you are correct and not only on the question mark but the exclamation mark too ¡! With the inverted one being a little below the text line do it isn't confused with an i
other punctuations you didn't cover:
the single quote that looks like an apostrophe but is sometimes used to set off a quotation within a quotation.
The underscire - which is kind of like a hyphen, emdash, or endash, but is not elevated above the bottom of the line of text.
Yes! Quotes within quotes is a subject worth further discussion. And it's another of those trans-Atlantic differences.
Also the use of other punctuation used to set off quotes, and the different uses of quotation marks - they aren't just for things said, but often also used to talk about the words themselves, or to express a claim that may be in doubt.
Would be fun to hear about the difference between typesetters' apostrophes and quote marks “ ‘ ’ ” and the typewriter versions " ' ' ". Also slang terms for punctuation marks like bang and splat. Also one or two spaces after a period/full stop.
Two spaces after the full stop (i.e., the period at the end of a sentence) used to be taught as the standard thing, back when schools had classes in how to use a typewriter. In any other context (e.g., the period denoting an abbreviation) only one space was used. The major dissenting voice on the double-space after the full stop, was the style manual of the American Psychological Association, which came to be adopted by a lot of college teacher-education departments and thus ended up having more influence on usage, than you'd otherwise expect.
I absolutely detest the double space after a full stop. For a long time it seemed as though it had been erased from history, thanks to HTML automatically removing any superfluous spaces from writing. But more recently it seems some sites are specifically including code that forces extra spaces to appear.
@@JimCullen I like the double-space after the full stop, but I hate "Smart Quotes" (the 66/99 shaped versions of quotation marks) with a fiery burning passion out of all proportion to any logical argument that I can produce against them. (They do often lead to mojibake, but that's true of pretty much any character that's not in ASCII, and I don't hate most of the others, apart from certain of the emoji, anywhere near as much.)
@@jonadabtheunsightly Double spaces after periods were an invention specifically for the monospaced fonts typical of common typewriters, where it provided much needed visual clarity for where one sentence ended and another began. For proportional fonts used in professional typesetting it was never a standard, and modern digital word processing almost exclusively uses proportional fonts so that legacy hack around the limitations of old typewriters is no longer necessary at all.
@@Pfhorrest The thing is, proportional fonts tend to make the space narrower than most of the other characters, so if anything, the double space after the full stop is *more* necessary with proportional fonts. Alternatively, in this decadent modern era of widespread Unicode support, it would be possible to use a distinct "wide space" character; but in most common encodings that would take up at least as many bytes as two spaces, possibly more, so there's no real advantage to it.
In my signature, I use some dots - often swiped a bit into a semi-dash - that look random but, taken in bulk - looking at a number of my signatures - become obviously idiosyncratic. [Thank you. I love these videos.]
I thought the dot on the bottom of the question and exclamation marks were because they are still the end of a sentence, so are modified full stops.
ha ha far too simple!
That's true in English, but in French (and maybe other languages for all I know), the "!" can also be (and is frequently) used to signal an exclamatory word within a sentence, essentially taking on the function of a comma (as well as its "full stop" function at the end of fully exclamatory sentences).
Tolkein (or his publisher) put exclamation marks after words to be emphasized in a sentence. I remember him doing a fair amount of this in Return of the King.
@@PeloquinDavid Interesting.
@@lehilehi8636 When I feel the need to do that I put the exclamation mark in parentheses, although that can be confusing because many people do that to denote sarcasm or irony.
It's a fullstop. Period.
I always thought that period is the name of the mark and full stop is what it denoted.
Or as we would say in French: "point final".
I disagree. I think it's a period. Full stop.
I don't think anyone got the joke here... Here's a hint: What does it mean when someone says 'Period' as an interjection?
An intersting thing about punctuation is that it has allowed grammatical changes in sentence structure, so we can move the word order around and still have it make sense. This has made commas in particular very grammatical. However, when dubbing films I am constantly frustrated when the actors pause because there's a comma, which has been placed for grammatical reasons, and then when it doesn't synch right they say, "That comma shouldn't be there!" Schools seem to teach people that commas denote a pause in speech, which they can, but don't always do, and of course that's how they started out, so it's really a bit of Mediaeval teaching that's going on there. 😆
Hey Rob and Jess.
You mentioned sarcasm and identifying it in text and discussed whether we need it nor and the way it should/could be portrayed.
In British for the Deaf subtitles, and I think it's the same in American subtitles for the hard of hearing. the way it's denoated is putting (!) at the end of the sentence.
Loving these kee up the great work you two :-)
Thanks again for another pleasant discussion of words and symbols. I do look forward to these.
Would that "doubt mark" perhaps be appropriate for the much-maligned "question statement"? A la "I guess I'm going to that party tonight?", where grammatically it's phrased as a statement but it's spoken with upward inflection at the end as though it was a question (and so is often written with a question mark to indicate that).
Video is just starting...but😂
I keep threatening to get my British Boyfriend a box of commas 😂😂😂😂😂
I remember a phrase I've not heard in decades, "every tittle and jot". I understood the meaning as to include "every tiny thing", but now I know Why those words were used. Yet another reason why I love these TH-cam/podcasts.❤
In Spanish the reverse question mark at the beginning of a sentence is necessary, because of way questions are constructed. In English, a question is constructed by interchanging the order of the subject-noun and the verb ('You are going' becomes 'Are you going?'), whereas in Spanish (and Portuguese, and some other languages) there is no word order change in a question. The order of words is exactly the same as if one were making a statement; it is only the intonation of the sentence that makes it into a question. So, (especially if one were reading aloud) it is necessary to know in the beginning itself how one should intone the sentence.
The inverted marks in Spanish are quite useful (I think it would be useful in Portuguese as well) because, unlike English, syntax doesn't change in a questions, where in Spanish, the only indication that you are actually questioning is the tone (same for Portuguese).
So, if you are reading out loud, and it is a long sentence, you may start reading as if it was an affirmative phrase until you realise that it was a question, and only so change the tone.
I hope this makes sense for comment readers.
Great episode, thanks! I edit copy of all kinds for publishers the world over, and something I find interesting is how American publishers (including academics) have become increasingly 'em happy', while there are many publishers outside the US (including in the UK) that use them far less. Also, many online publishers nowadays commonly opt for the use of an en dash (straddled by spaces), or even a hyphen, rather than the em, as they claim the latter hampers readability on screen devices. Another obvious difference I find is that American publishers tend to enforce rules of comma usage with considerable zeal and are always going on about the 'Oxford comma', while English-language publishers outside the US mostly ignore it (ironically, OUP most of all). Cheers!
Heavily criticized today because we almost always use a key stroke for the ambersand, hand writing seems to be going the way of the dodo, I was taught the backward three with a vertical line to write it which have found represents a epsilon combine with a "t" for et.
Gosh I realise I am a nerd, I must be a nerd, I LOVE this stuff!!
Many years ago my sister text me without using either punctuation or spaces. It was surprisingly hard to read and understand
I work for an IT company. When spelling out a password that uses a !, we say "bang"
This is like the description of #! in code as "hash-bang"
@@TechnicalBardalso commonly referred to as a shebang
Regarding the Oxford comma (which I dislike, but only because I was never taught to use it - and, indeed, was taught not to use it); if there is ambiguity then it can usually be clarified quite easily. "I would like to thank my parents, Adam, and Eve" can be clarified to "I would like to thank Adam, Eve and my parents" if those two individuals are not my parents. Or, if they are your parents, then "I would like to thank my parents - Adam and Eve"
If there is ambiguity, then it can usually be clarified most easily of all by just using the Oxford comma to begin with.
@@bartolomeothesatyr "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam and Eve, and my Sister." The Oxford comma version would presumably be "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam, and Eve, and my Sister", which seems a bit odd. But there will always be some room for ambiguity. "I would like to thank my classmates, Adam, Eve, Fred, and Joan, and Clarissa" - which are my classmates, and which not? The problem is that a comma-separated list can always lead to ambiguity, with or without an Oxford comma. So I would write that as "I would like to thank my classmates - Adam, Eve, Fred and Joan - and Clarissa" which makes it very clear.
@@steveknight878those example sentences are bad writing. You make them clearer by writing good sentences, not fiddling with punctuation
In Jess bookshelf, amen.
The inherent and ineradicable imprecision of language (not just grammar & punctuation but even words themselves) is why we had to invent mathematics in order to get anything done.
Mathematics is indeed a language.
Always a good day when Jess and Rob release a video.
14:37 Ooh that's still kinda in use where I live! When kids mistakenly write a compound word as two words with a space, that kind of curving line underneath to bridge the gap left by the space between words is used to denote that this word should be a compound. I don't know how common that is in the English-speaking world because compounds are done very differently.
Now I know why we say 'not a jot' and 'not even one iota', splendid. Also, 'absquatulate' has to be one of my favourite words.
The “vowel marks” or “vowel points” are called Niqqud (HE: ניקוּד) which comes from nequda (HE: נקוּדה) means “point, dot”
Which makes me associate to Cerberus, the Hellenic guardian dog of the land of the dead, whose name apparently after much back-tracking in the language tree means "dot". The lord of the dead has a spotted dog!
Ugh. I first came across the term _niqqud_ during my A-level Biblical Hebrew exam in the 1980s, where the instructions used this (post-Biblical!) term untranslated (along with _binyanim,_ 'forms') despite the word appearing in no common textbook I'd seen, the English having been 'pointing' for three hundred years at that point in time. Oh, past papers hadn't used these terms either. I had no idea what they meant.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Grawlix and its brethren were featured in this video.
One of my grammatical pet peeves is when someone wedges an apostrophe before the final S of a plural word; it's like nails on a chalkboard.
Nail's ?
Agree! And it is so confusing as well
yeah, those kinds' of people are twat's
It is often referred to as a greengrocer's apostrophe.
Or grocer's apo'strophe, if you're being especially unkind :)
My favourite logogram, which was once common in the Nordic languages but has now almost fallen out of use, is ɔ:
It translates as "that is" or "i.e." It is/was known in Danish and Norwegian as "forklaringstegn" (ɔ: "explanation mark").
I use it as much as I can, even if I have to copy it from the phonetic alphabet nowadays.
Maybe can do a series on mispronounced words? Such as tuition, and why abalone when read out there is is a y sound?
There's the verbal punctuation mark, "Quote unquote". To mark out a word where you think the terminology is significant or strange, where in text you would have scare quotes. Strange in that the "Quote Unquote" is usually put in front of the word, rather than Quote Word Unquote, surrounding the word.
And often also accompanied by the gesture that Jess used when describing scare quotes.
I'm curious if the usage of American "period" vs. British "full stop" has to do with the WWII-era telegraph communications using "STOP" to break sentences clearly, and then concentration of that lead to retention of common usage across the pond whereas it didn't have as significant concentration in the US to do the same.
I wonder what either side (I'm not a native speaker) call it when used in '12.34'.
@@KaiHenningsen That would be called a "decimal point".
@CharlesStearman not all languages use a decimal point. The French, for example, use a comma - so it would be 12,34
@@KaiHenningsen Between British English & American English, I think we're unified on the "decimal point" with "12.34" being said "twelve point thirty-four" or "twelve point three four" depending on what it's representing.
That makes it a bit different from "period" or "full stop" where the punctuation name itself isn't typically part of what's verbally spoken. We get something KIND OF similar if a speaker is attempting to communicate _extreme_ emphasis on concluding a matter (often as a moderator), in which case it's typically written out explicitly in its own statement. *Ex:* _“This matter will not be discussed any more. Period.”_ or _“We're done with this conversation. Full stop.”_ At this point it's more of a contextual term on its own rather than necessarily using the speaker's name for the "." punctuation mark, as I've heard both those sentences in the US used in that context, but am not sure how much that shared usage happens in the UK.
I agree that an abrupt interruption is well-specified with an em-dash as ellipsis definitely trails off...
I always thought that there should be a punctuation mark that indicates curiosity. For example, if is said the sentence “George stopped be today.” and you curiously said “George?” This reads as a question, when in fact, you weren’t looking for an answer to “George?” You were just making a curious statement.
To me, this would mean "Which George?" or even "Do I know a George?"
The punctuation in the following sentence is correct but not in the resultant sign (I think).
A takeaway food shop owner hires a sign writer, and requests a sign that has a comma between fish, and and, and and, and chips.
Is "&c" unusual for 'etcetera'? I use it a lot longhand anyway, when writing notes &c.
An interesting point to ponder is that in Spanish and Italian they lead a question and a exclamation with the sign inverted as well as at the end of the statement
Interestingly, when I learned programming on the 1970 and 80s, we had parentheses ( ), brackets [ ], and braces { }. Question: Does the term "jot something down" come from the former English term for a J? Plus I was waiting for the semi-colon.
Apostrophe misuse has become so rampant that I have not only seen people using an apostrophe on a word that ends with S that is neither showing plural nor possessive, but I have also seen where someone put an apostrophe before an S at the beginning of a word, and it wasn't a word or phrase where the front part had been omitted, like 'sup for "what's up". I've come to the conclusion that in 100 years the letter S will simply have an extra line dangling there and people will wonder why folks in the past didn't use it all the time.
It’s the auto fill that no one proof reads. It’s actually harder to fix that just accept what keeps popping up!
The misuse of the apostrophe has been going on since the 18th Century when the rules were introduced ... the rules still exist, and so do the misuses ... it's no worse than it was 200 years ago
@@megb9700 Predictive Text is the first thing I shut off on any new device or software.
S'acred and S'ad sounds like names from a fantasy novel.
Period is a better description of what a comma does.
Both my degrees are in journalism (with four years of naval service between them). The first came in 1970, so my education and later work in the field is dated. We were taught that an exclamation point was a “Bang” or bang point and it was a question mark. This was just at the end of the “hot type” era, when linotype operators received paper copy marked up by hand, generally in blue pencil. So, an editor might decide to move a paragraph to the lead position, circle it in blue and write “lede” in the circle because the typesetters might insert a correctly spelled “lead” into the text. Bold face received a circle and “bf.” And so on. For me, a period and two spaces is a typesetting mark.
And, sorry, I was taught that the Oxford comma, was just an element of style. In the US, most publications used the Associated Press Style Book but many had their own and more had addendums. You’d walk into a job interview and ask, “what’s your style?” If that didn’t include the Oxford comma, you followed style. Don’t argue; that was how it was.
A good reason why Spanish has question marks at the start and end of a sentence is that a statement and a question can look identical (you are tall and are you tall would both be tu es alto/alta).
Tu es alto
¿Tu es alto?
Another mark that I, and some others, use in place of the ampersand is the “plus” sign with the bottom of the vertical is connected to the left of the horizontal making s continuous line.
Remember there is also the greengrocer's apostrophe - an incorrectly used apostrophe, especially when mistakenly forming a plural of a noun e.g. banana's instead of bananas, originating in the misuse of apostrophes on greengrocers' signs.
love it, the 'greengrocer's apostrophe'
@ I know, but that’s the way it is written! Maybe it’s just about one guy! Or they’re using it as a joke!
@@kevinmcqueenie7420 I don't think she was questioning the correctness of the apostrophe usage in the term; I think she was just enjoying learning the name for it.
@ ha! You’re probably right! Me overthinking as usual!
When in doubt, always use more commas.
You must be one of those comma chameleons we keep hearing about.
When, in doubt, always, use more commas.
I was stationed in Millington, TN in 1971 (north of Memphis), where, I seem to recall, the accent included a rising intonation even at the end of declaratory sentences.
My grandfather retired as a senior master printer. I didn't get a chance to learn too much of the printer's jargon before his passing, unfortunately.
I learned that the point size of a font was determined by the "M-height" - the height of the capital "M". The height of lowercase letters is based on the height of the "x" and is called the "x-height".
The "/s" in online conversation may go back as far as IRC, when "/x" (where "x" is a letter or group of letters) told the IRC server to add specific information to the line of text. "/me thinks" would appear on the server as "Brenda thinks" (or whatever your username is) in a different color. "/m username" would private-message (dm) "username" with whatever followed "username" in the line of text.
In terms of signs for words, how about "commercial 'at'" (@), asterisk, octothorpe (which can mean "number" or "pound [avoirdupois]", depending whether it precedes or follows a number)? Also, I'd love to hear Jess and Rob debate the use of single and double quotation marks (since, IIRC, the conventions of use differ from the King's English and American English... and I'm unsure what the conventions are in other English-speaking nations such as Canada, Australia, and Jamaica).
I transcribed a 24-page will of my 5th great grandfather's without a single punctuation mark throughout - not even at the end. Just one long sentence in legalese and ye olde English script that was difficult to decipher. I was used to seeing the S written more like an F but I was fascinated by the use of "FF" at the beginning of certain words, reminiscent of the Welsh language. My heart sinks every time I see an old will now, knowing I'm going to have to listen to a constant wail in my head for a good few days. 😵💫
Menstruation? I don't want to talk about it.Period.
Today I learned : absquatulated ... like Antigonus in The winter's Tale ...
I feel you, Rob: Having to denote your sarcasm defeats (part of) the point of it. But I think we have to recognize that body language IRL serves the same function, and it is lacking in written spaces. If you use your eyebrows to indicate your sarcasm, that's as much of a cheat, or a crutch for the recipient, as a "/s", if you ask me.
I love you guys because you always dot your t's and cross your i's.
The moment I saw the title for this video I thought "What's the point?"
I'll just show myself out.
EDIT: I'm back to point out that omitting the Oxford comma can have consequences. "I went to the party with two friends, the Governor, and the Mayor" clearly says that five people went to the party; "I went to the party with two friends, the Governor and the Mayor" might be interpreted as a party of three. Another common example is variations on "my sister, Nelson Mandela, and a vampire" vs. "my sister, Nelson Mandela and a vampire," the latter of which could be misinterpreted if one's sister isn't a vampire named Nelson Mandela. There have been legal cases where stare decisis stood or fell on a comma.
9:31
In music, there exists the Pythagorean comma which expresses the aural distance after going full circle mathematically through a scale and you end up with a large distance between two pitches.
As a Spanish native speaker and student of modern languages, sometimes I feel the incompleteness of lacking an opening punctuation mark for questions and exclamations when reading in other languages even if those other languages have another way of denoting when the question or exclamation begins. Gotta love the double marks ¿? ¡!
I was going to suggest that "reverse italics" should be called "germanics", not because they're especially connected to Germany but just because Italic (qua Romantic, Roman, or Latin) and Germanic seem like competing kinds of cultural influence on English. However looking up the etymology of the word "italic" in that sense for better inspiration, I found that (to quote etymonline) "the word was used in English for the plain, sloping style of handwriting (opposed to gothic)", so that distinction already exists!
Instead perhaps they should be "hellenics", after the Roman (or Italic) and Greek (or Hellenic) division that recurs across history, viz the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, etc.
My brain hurts now - tHaNkS
Rob, the why on marking sarcasm is because of people like me. I am autistic -- my presentation fits those called "social expert" autistics and verbal and socio-emotional learning autistics (take the old stereotypes and put language in place of math or pictures and personality types and/or group dynamics in place of trains or astronomy, if that confuses you). I can understand sarcasm and use it -- though sometimes I accidentally use the sarcastic tone when I don't mean it to be sarcastic -- when speaking in person or on video chat and occasionally when hearing audio only. However, in text I can never tell just from context whether someone is being sarcastic, and I am aware that a lot of people in the autistic community can't reliably identify sarcasm at all and may not understand they need to watch for it in text communications. Since conversing with other autistics usually costs a lot less than conversing with allistics, this means I have many opportunities to use the /s tag or similar notations as a proactive way to prevent otherwise inevitable (and because of the near-universal social trauma most of us have experienced) very painful misunderstandings. So it all depends on whether you want your text-only comunications to be understood as intended by all readers or only 95%.
And now the phrase 'Out of sorts' makes more sense. Thanks for another enlightening video.
Did you move, Rob? New room or background. It looks very nice.
Anyway, excellent episode, as always. 😊
I'm so happy about the sarcasm writing. ItS sO CoOl
I find the upside-down question mark in Spanish useful because in a compound sentence, it marks the beginning of the question even if it is the second clause.
This channel can make any subject interesting. To make an interesting video about punctuation shames all uninteresting videos in existence . I can't wait until they tackle the origins of office equipment terminology.
For sarcasm, I've noticed that subtitles on TV, (!) is used at the end of the sentence.
I'm most familiar with 'pointing' as the finish to the mortar between bricks.
Now it feels like there's a link to the marks between words.
I have always had problems with spelling fruit, build and words with ui also with iu. My solution in writing was a w like squiggle with the dot in the middle.
I'm aware of the historical reasons that an ampersand is/was occasionally considered a letter, but part of me has always thought that if any bit of punctuation should achieve "letter" status, it should be the apostrophe. It's the only one that can actually be considered part of the spelling of a word. (i.e. "it's" vs. "its", etc.) Sure other punctuation marks can change meaning or connotations, but no other punctuation actually changes the letters surrounding it from one lexeme to another in the same way.
in my style guide, hyphens, en, and em dash's have spaces on either side - because i HATE how wordwrap when i'm doing block justification works without those spaces during layout. (and the oxford comma is required)
Hyphens can also be used to join words between lines which goes back to medieval manuscripts.