BS: a new punctuation mark

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:13 PM

well..it CAN be done...see this thread where it is analyzed in detail and clarifed (sorta) by John in Kansas...

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:34 PM

ɘ – the upside down e – is called a schwa.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 10:23 PM

Which brings me back to the reason I needed to copy and paste "¥¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅ" in the first place. I was going to say that I met him once. He was the copilot of a spaceship and I was an abductee. It was a very intersting evening. Not an unpleasnt fellow, that ¥¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅ, once you get used to all the extra appendages and the way that he's able to talk without actually having a mouth.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 10:36 PM

Rap, that's the same thing that happened--the box substitutes for the symbol. I did find where it was referred to, but I didn't go in depth enough to find the exact command (you can post the direct link to the exact post if you first go to the thread, then click on the poster's name. Copy the URL at the top and that sends the link to right where you were trying to send me so I don't have to search to hard with my tired eyes this evening--anyone else getting buckets of pollen in the air yet? My eyes are starting down that itchy road.)

And yes, I remembered "schwa" after I clicked "send." Yet another senior moment to add to my rapidly growing list.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 06:56 AM

~~~~~~~~~
brilliant, Mr McG!*

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 04:18 PM

I'm a court reporter, the guy that sits in a meeting and takes down stenographically everything that everybody says, and then if necessary makes a transcript of it. For the first 30 years of my career, if asked for a transcript I would dictate from my notes, on a dictation machine (where else?) for a typist. I would dictate ALL punctuation, all paragraphing, the identification of the speaker, and the Q. and the A. standing for "question" and "answer".

Hold on, I getting to the point. Have faith.

Now the Q. and the A. were dictated as "QUESTION" and "ANSWER". But there was a potential problem, which had been solved long since by my remote predecessors. One would dictate COMMMA and PERIOD and SEMICOLON to indicate punctuation, but never QUESTION MARK. Why? Because the finely tuned, highly trained transcribers would have heard that "QUESTION", and in the blink of an eye they would be on the next line with a Q. before they heard the word MARK. Then they would have sent my soul to hell before going back to erase and correct.

Therefore, the dictation command for the ? was INTERROG, short for "interrogatory mark".   

Thus I might dictate: QUESTION did you go downtown INTERROG ANSWER No COMMA I stayed at home PERIOD"

This would come out:
Q. Did you go downtown?
A. No, I stayed at home.

Conversely, if I were dictating something about some length of time, I dared not dictate "a period of time", because the word "period" would have triggered the punctuation mark. Therefore that time word would be dictated as "PERI-ODD".

There were other specialized dictation practices too, but that illustrates what was done.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 09:52 PM

I think for any new usage, the "\" is ideal. Since, in many programming languages it sends an "Esc" character - which terminates the running process - it would contribute greatly to brevity in posting by those who use all such languages.

Of course - we'd never know if they quit on purpose...

John

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 01:42 AM

I have seen the interabang included in some fonts. It's a superimposed exclamation point and question mark. Used to express incredulity, for instance: "What?!" ( you'l lhave to pretend they're superimposed).

There is also the flabbergasterisk, a double size splat.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 11:30 PM

*

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Mudlark
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 04:50 PM

A flabbergasterisk! I love it!

I've always pronounced "tilde" till-day, the name of the mark over an 'n' in Spanish that indicates the sound en-yay, as in 'ano' (with a tilde over the n), pronounced anyo. I use ~ for 'approximate' a lot too, probably because I typed a lot of equations in my youth; also still use the less than (<), greater than (>) as well. Great shorthand.

I've always thought that a symbol showing support would look like /\ because I like the idea that two weak reeds leaning together make a strong structure.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Doug_Remley
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 05:10 PM

Yet, for answer to the original question, a tilde ~ would be appropriate new punctuation without typemakers to cut a new form.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 05:53 PM

I remember when I was a reporter thay when dictating copy as question mark was referred to as "QUERY", and an exclamation mark was called "SCREAM".

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Mr Red
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 11:10 AM

on the QI TV programme last night (repeat from many years ago) Stephen Fry reckoned that the sarcastrophe had been mooted without too much acclaim.
The description was the use of the caret to denote sarcastic tone.

eg
^Tony Blair - not such a bad liar^

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Bert
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 01:22 PM

I used to have a computer science teacher who called a tilde a tilty.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 03:45 PM

There should be two spaces following the fourth dot.

That hasn't been the case for a long time now. When keyboarding (versus typing) one space after the period before the next sentence is correct.

Three dots at the end of a sentence is called a "reflective pause" or "hesitation." The Harbrace College Handbook says it shouldn't be overused.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 03:59 PM

I see the State Library of New South Wales has adopted the interrobang as its logo.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 08:10 PM

Some progress has been made in handling of Unicode characters in newer versions of Windows (and Office) since this thead was current; but whether or not someone reading your cute stuff will see what you meant does still depend on the reader having an appropriate font installed on their computer, use of an appropriate encoding in their browser, and in some cases may depend on whether their computer/OS is a 32-bit or 64-bit setup.

It is still advisable to USE EXTENDED CHARACTERS WITH CAUTION, since those who read them may not see what you think you sent.

It may be of interest to Microsoft Word users to know that sometime after Win95 the "quick key" Ctl-X appeared, allowing you to type the Unicode HEX number for a character, and with the cursor immediately on the right of the last number Ctl-X will "flip" it to the glyph (character picture) your computer uses. This is a "toggle" so you can repeat Ctl-X to flip back and forth between image and number at will.

(If you encounter a character in html that doesn't display, you usually can copy the unkown thing and paste it in Word, then use Ctl-X to flip it to the Hex number and look up what it was meant to be in the Unicode standard - if it matters.)

For some uses, once the HEX code is flipped to the character glyph in Word, you can copy it from Word and paste it here and get a correct display. It's not guaranteed that this will always work, so preview before you submit, and code the char if it doesn't.

For the "neutral stop" proposed by the original post, I might suggest HEX CHAR 2601. (Code it &#x2601;). The character has another use, but as my computer renders it, it looks to me a little like a pile of "bunny pills" - a cutesy cowflop?. (The Microsoft "cow splat" would be appropriate but it's © and you'd have to use an image to display it.)

☁ for those whose browser displays it

For the most recent note, Unicode says the interrobang can be coded:

&#x203C; = ‼
&#x203D; = ‽
&#x2047; = ⁇
&#x2048; = ⁈
&#x2049; = ⁉

John

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Mar 14 - 09:26 PM

Could this help?

Pile of Poo

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Mar 14 - 03:45 AM

My recollection is that the "PileOfPoo" character was discussed in an earlier thread here, but I wasn't able to find the thread. It must be noted that the "Char Number" is FIVE HEX digits (1F4A9) and Windows and Office, through Win7 and Office 2007, do not install any font in the default installations (or in "easily added" fonts) to use these "high number chars" except possibly as "extension fonts" for (mostly Asian?) languages, it's unlikely that very many people will see it if you try to use it here.

As I see it, the one main use of the new punction mark might be to indicate "I didn't really have anything to say," so maybe an invisible mark would be appropriate. (With that meaning (not the only one possible) the mark could be used a lot, although those who need it probably wouldn't know what it was.

(I might be the only one using it?)

John

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Mar 14 - 07:16 AM

I put a character generator on my website though I display the codes in decimal not hex.
The displayable characters go way up but there are some curious gaps. I can't remember but I probably chose the fonts "Arial, Helvetica, sans serif" (Win/IE, Apple, other) which covers most peoples' installation. Though I haven't tested on Tabs and Smart Phones.

In Firefox 28.0 it displays rubbish between #4625 and #7400 (eg) and it looks to be going Chinese in the region of #12288. Chrome looks to be the same, with nothing above #13311 for a long ways.

Have a play (click here - (new tab/window)) and click on the +100 a few times.

and there is a converter if you are website building and want to hide things like e-mail addresses from web-bots. Not that a clever web-bot would be fooled much these days. But if you surround it with spoof e-mail addresses like [e-mail] and [e-mail] etc etc you are improving the odds - using the halo effect. They play the percentages - so should you.

Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Mar 14 - 02:50 PM

The Unicode Consortium web page has been cleaned up a lot since I last spent a little time there, and is a lot prettier than before.

At the Code Charts page you can find a list of charts, and a search box where you can insert the HEX number for a character and find which chart(s) contain that character . Down at the bottom of this page, there's a link to Character Names where you can look up a character (glyph) by its name and find the proper HEX code for it.

Each Code Chart generally is two or three pages and contains characters for a (fairly short) sequence of char numbers. Each chart is a pdf that you can download and save on your own machine if you like. The © disclaimer says you are free to download these for "personal and internal business use," and I have found it convenient to have charts for the range of HEX codes Windows can (more or less) handle. I keep copies of the charts for HEX 0001 thru HEX 7FFF (Decimal 1 thru 32767)handy on my machine, just in case I want to look for something (32 charts). Many of the charts do have "gaps" for character numbers that are "reserved," "undefined," and/or just "unprintable."

Recent Windows versions may contain two fonts that are "extended" to include lots of characters not in the majority of common fonts, but they may not be installed automatically since they are "very large" and may bog down your computer if used for general correspondence:

The Character Map will show one as "Arial Unicode MS" (it's 22,731 KB on your disk) and the other as "Lucida Sans Unicode" (a mere 318 KB). Note that NEITHER OF THESE is even remotely close to including "all the Unicode characters."

I do find two fonts on my Win7 computer with larger file sizes than the Arial Unicode, "Microsft YaHei" at 35,519 KB and "Microsoft JungHei" at 35,328 KB, but have no real idea what they're good for. (My current Win7/Office2007 shows 226 fonts available in the Character Map, but the only explanation I can offer for most of them is "they came with her when I married her.")

John