Comments on: De inventione punctus

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:31:45 +0000

@Nav: I love your point about the mid-sentence periods. It’s funny how it is 100% not “correct” usage and yet so obviously 100% correct (in terms of communicating what you want to communicate). Awesome.

By: Where Have My Punctuations Gone? < Brain of Dane

Where Have My Punctuations Gone? < Brain of Dane — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:04:44 +0000

[…] I’ve even done a little bit of it myself on occasion (I am a geek, you know). I just read a great post on snarkmarket about grammar being in flux. My own sister and wife have both quit capitalizing basically […]

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:20:59 +0000

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying. There's a performative engagement with the reader of a text that's foregrounded in electronic writing. Less of a sense that the text is timeless, a greater appreciation that there's a temporal attentional frame that actually gives the writer some room to play. It's not quite real-time. It's time-shifted; sometimes I call it "my time," the time of the DVR, the IM chat, the blog comment, the RSS feed. It's there when you want it -- when you, as a reader, are ready to activate it. For instance, check out this older post I wrote about this, called "From space to time." It's pretty good, I think. I hadn't thought about it in a while. Go ahead, read it now. I'll be here when you get back. .... Got it? Right. Thanks. So: The possibilities for working with this, especially given some sophisticated interactive software, are pretty cool. But, as Anne points out, the original technology that shows a reader how to interact with a text, to make it speak, is punctuation. And that's how we (still) use it.

By: Nav

Nav — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:10:00 +0000

Nicely done, dude. It's been interesting to watch how people are experimenting with punctuation, particularly to mimic the emphasis or tone of certain phrases. If you'll excuse me, my favourite example is "What. The Fuck." as it's pretty spot on in terms of capturing the way the pause emphasises incredulity (I think). It deliberately breaks rules of syntax and does so brilliantly. Same thing for the "Best. Post on Punctuation. Ever." formulation. Also, in previous posts, we've talked about writing as performative. Given @atrubek's point about punctuation occupying the distance between the static printed page and 'dynamic' speech, I wonder if the function of punctuation shifts or changes when the medium of visual language (um, I didn't know how to say 'printed word') is dynamic - or, maybe more importantly, has the capacity to exist in time or be temporal or something. Sorry, that's not super clear - I mean to inject that linear temporality into language like Spreed Reader or something. Clearer? Erm... you get what I'm saying right? Punctuation is trying to (re)produce the flow of time - and screens can 'put language in time'. Or something.

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:29:20 +0000

Math and science punctuation is a whole other thing, especially since mathematicians (in particular) are not at all shy from just flat out inventing or repurposing signs to mean different things. Like, I could say {y := ~x | x-d0}, or I could say ~x := NOT x, which is what it sometimes means in formal logic. No problem, so long as I define my terms or make clear which convention I’m using.

(Not coincidentally, my favorite mathematical punctuation symbol is =>, for “implies.”)

I’d say, too, that punctuation’s use in programming and markup languages is a MAJOR part of this story, one which I haven’t really addressed here. Again, established punctuation plays all sorts of roles here, fundamentally different ones from those they play in natural written language. Think about what ., “, @, $, #, %, *, /, ! all mean in markup.

So one part of this story is about changes in the conditions in which human beings are reading ordinary languages on screens. And another is about the changes in the way computers and computer programs are processing these symbols — which in turn, like musical notation, are sight-reading intelligible to an increasingly large portion of the population.

This is all by way of a preview to a sequel post that I’m writing now, which is mostly about Twitter hashtags.

By: Saheli

Saheli — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:08:16 +0000

My favorite little bit of punctuation is importing ~ from math to writing to indicate a statement or sentiment or description that is only approximate or uncertainly held; short hand for anything from sorta to around. “~true.” “He writes about ~San Francisco.”

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:40:23 +0000

I got you, Sloan. I got you. :-)

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:29:38 +0000

Captain Chickpea! *laughs, snorts milk*

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:09:39 +0000

Totally. Petrus Ramus, baby -- one of the most inspired/inspiring reads ever. (And with Ramus's Attack on Cicero, and me lifting "De Inventione" from Captain Chickpea himself, we've come full circle.) Also: "secondary literacy," that's all Father Ong. I really, really want to help that phrase catch on. Especially because it's true.

By: Anne Trubek

Anne Trubek — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:31:23 +0000

let’s give Walter Ong some props for that point ascribed to McLuhan. I <3 Walter Ong. And @tcarmody.

:-) post.