Interrobang!
October 11, 2012 6:13 AM   Subscribe

 
Came for the interrobang, was not disappointed. The rest are silly, though I may have to start using exclamation commas if I can find a font set that supports them.
posted by 256 at 6:16 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Need to say something with unwavering conviction? End your declaration with the certitude point...

We have this already and I'm never going to use anything else PERIOD.
posted by DU at 6:21 AM on October 11, 2012 [5 favorites]


To a lot of people, a semicolon is just a wink. They don't even know how to use commas, they use them to join two independent clauses like this.
posted by pracowity at 6:23 AM on October 11, 2012 [22 favorites]


I wish that the English alphabet would adopt the Spanish inverted question mark ( ¿ ) as a way to start interrogative sentences. ¿Wouldn't that make it easier to tell which sentences are questions, right from the start?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:23 AM on October 11, 2012 [13 favorites]


Yeah, I'd prefer we first work on going to war with the punctuation marks we have, before we start worrying about the punctuation marks we wish we had.
posted by Forktine at 6:24 AM on October 11, 2012 [5 favorites]


14. The colonic tilda
15. The hyperpoint
16. The nonathorpe
17. The tetracommadic stop
18. The inverted dagger
19. The semipilcrownian guillemetted hedera-bang
20. The blob
21. The parascore
22. The metantheses
23. The apostrophism
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:25 AM on October 11, 2012 [53 favorites]




The Editor's Kama Sutra, by the quindunc kid
posted by griphus at 6:29 AM on October 11, 2012 [8 favorites]


The "love point" seems apropos - two questions marks staring at each other thinking "do you love me? do you really, really love me?

.~
posted by incandissonance at 6:29 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


This semipilcrownian guillemetted hedera-bang - you will show it to me.
posted by empatterson at 6:29 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


¿Wouldn't that make it easier to tell which sentences are questions, right from the start?

But it ruins the surprise?
posted by oulipian at 6:30 AM on October 11, 2012 [9 favorites]


¡Oh hell no?
posted by griphus at 6:32 AM on October 11, 2012 [12 favorites]


Is there a difficulty in determining which sentences are questions, right from the start?
posted by DU at 6:33 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


The New Yorker's weekly Twitter competition, appropriately named "Questioningly", was recently about New Punctuation, specifically using two existing marks in combination to express a new meaning. The winner, the Backsquash \?, is designed for rhetorical questions, but aren't they all\?
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:34 AM on October 11, 2012 [3 favorites]


14. The colonic tilda

Oh, man, I had that once. Painful.

It was interesting to watch the procedure on the monitor, though, and the anaesthesia was a gas.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:35 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


I just want air quotation marks differentiated from regular quotation marks.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:36 AM on October 11, 2012 [7 favorites]


The colonic tilda

I had a colonic tilda once, but I recovered....

Also, the "authority point" looks like it's saying "I AM USING WINDSHIELD WIPERS!"
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:36 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


24. The undercaret
25. The vertical bullet
26. The exclamation bracket
27. The hashlipsis
28. The intrapunct
29. The amperstroke
30. The broken obelus
31. The inverted dash
32. The back-up-tack-at-each slash
33. The tri-sectional lozenge
34. The therefore fist
35. The anti-space
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:37 AM on October 11, 2012 [11 favorites]


Oh, man, I had that once. Painful.


Why wasn't I quicker to hit post!?!
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:38 AM on October 11, 2012


I just want to say that, if they had included examples of these marks that were text and not graphic files, that previous comment might have been a lot funnier.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:39 AM on October 11, 2012


What we need, I think / is a way to do line breaks in tweets / perhaps like so, or / bring back the pilcrow ¶
posted by oulipian at 6:39 AM on October 11, 2012


See, Microsoft? Not even people this loopy consider smartquotes a thing.
posted by ceribus peribus at 6:41 AM on October 11, 2012 [8 favorites]


Back in the days when you could type a letter and then backspace and type another letter right on top of it my favorite was a period with a quotation mark on top

I called it the fly footprint and typed rows and rows of them up and down the page

As long as we're celebrating made up punctuation the fly footprint demands recognition

I shall use no other punctuation until the fly footprint is included in a top fifteen list of something somewhere or until I forget whichever comes first
posted by ook at 6:42 AM on October 11, 2012 [12 favorites]


The question/exclamation comma would solve SO MANY OF MY PROBLEMS.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:43 AM on October 11, 2012


12 & 13. Exclamation Comma & Question Comma

Now you can be excited or inquisitive without having to end a sentence!
I've seen folk do this with an everyday question mark. Like:
Will you come to the party? and will you bring a bottle?
I think it's quite reasonable.
posted by Jehan at 6:44 AM on October 11, 2012


I just want so-called "air quotation marks" differentiated from regular quotation marks.

DemonstratedTFY
posted by DU at 6:45 AM on October 11, 2012


These proposed ☝☝punctuation marks☝☝ would be far less useful than having legitimate characters to represent finger quotes.
posted by Riki tiki at 6:45 AM on October 11, 2012 [13 favorites]


We need punctuation for "special snowflake".






posted by zamboni at 6:46 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: .~
posted by mazola at 6:46 AM on October 11, 2012 [5 favorites]


OOK PLEASE JOIN MY SOCIETY FOR NEW PUNCTUATION

36. The fly footprint
37. The lizard's shadow
38. The sneeze

TOGETHER WE SHALL PUNCTUATE A NEW WORLD ORDER
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:46 AM on October 11, 2012 [12 favorites]


Emoticons are punctuation.

Y'all prescriptivist.
posted by LogicalDash at 6:48 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


Some times it is more difficult than others to tell from the start if a sentence is a question, no?
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:48 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


I would probably use the question comma if it were available. Some might say that having a hard time figuring out how to punctuate sentences that start with a question and then trail off into a declarative statement is nature's way of telling you to stop using run-on sentences, but to them I say, "Is anyone really that concerned about run-on sentences, because I find them to be natural in some circumstances?"

☝☝

YES
posted by Copronymus at 6:48 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


Seriously though what we need is a computer key that lets us backspace without deleting the original character to allow overlapping letters like that

Boom there you go half of these made up letters become possible to type and many more besides including the very important fly footprint

Probably it is just American keyboards that cannot do this as I imagine it would be useful in languages that include many diacritics which I have always felt a lack of when typing in American

If I had known about the umlaut back when I invented the fly footprint that probably would have blown my fucking mind
posted by ook at 6:49 AM on October 11, 2012


In some IRC channels I frequent, the tilde is in use to indicate a wavering tone. Usually it appears on its own. I'm actually not sure what it was originally for--I mean, as a combining character in Spanish and the like, sure, but on its own, the way that U.S. keyboards have it? What's it for, apart from my home directory?
posted by LogicalDash at 6:51 AM on October 11, 2012


The SarcMark (short for “sarcasm mark”) was invented, copyrighted and trademarked by Paul Sak, and while it hasn’t seen widespread use, Sak markets it as...

Yeah, a little too much self-promotion going on there for me to get promote this being adopted for the public good.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:51 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


ook: that already exists, and it's called the compose key.
posted by LogicalDash at 6:52 AM on October 11, 2012


Been there, done that, hamburger.
posted by phunniemee at 6:52 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Some times it is more difficult than others to tell if a sentence is a question, no?

Aha, but that's a declarative statement followed by an interrogative clause, isn't it? Oh hey look so was that.
posted by echo target at 6:52 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


AWESOME I WANT ONE
posted by ook at 6:53 AM on October 11, 2012


My main concern with the SarcMark is that it would start to make Metafilter's awesomely stark design look a little heavy on comment threads.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:54 AM on October 11, 2012


So you'd like a StarkSarcMark?
posted by zamboni at 6:55 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Please tell me it's not the new thing to have the font change paragraph by paragraph as you move down a page.
posted by headnsouth at 6:56 AM on October 11, 2012


Questions can easily be indistinguishable from a statement out of context?
posted by panaceanot at 6:56 AM on October 11, 2012


Funny, I was just thinking about the punctuated equillibrium theory of evolution this morning.

These elephantine glyphs have all the marks of the giant ground sloths and other extinct megafauna that didn't make the cut.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:57 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


ALSO I WILL JOIN THE NEW SOCIETY FOR NEW PUNCTUATION we will not rest until all writing is done in punctuation only

I will continue to abstain from punctuation until this is accomplished or until I forget because it is surprisingly fun to do

This makes sense

ALL HAIL THE NEW PUNCTUATION
posted by ook at 6:57 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


39. The funlaut - makes existing words more exciting than they actually are (see: Mötley Crüe)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:58 AM on October 11, 2012 [20 favorites]


That is not even a question
posted by ook at 6:59 AM on October 11, 2012


¿Really?

Really?

Really.
posted by panaceanot at 7:00 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


Emoticons are punctuation.

This is the only emoticon you will ever need

^(;,,;)^

and you will not need that one for long.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:03 AM on October 11, 2012 [10 favorites]


Couldn't tell you why, but I really like the asterism.


posted by flippant at 7:04 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


40. The wordsheath
41. The antikythera
42. The rotunded guillemot
43. The baby snakes
posted by Monkeymoo at 7:05 AM on October 11, 2012 [5 favorites]


Ah, the SarcMark. The Jump To Conclusions Mat of punctuation.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:07 AM on October 11, 2012 [3 favorites]


Well you want something soft to land on because some conclusions are awfully tall
posted by ook at 7:08 AM on October 11, 2012


Note also the lovely Irony punctuation article on wikipedia, which includes copy/pastable unicode of many of these and more. (Sadly, "authority point" seems to be only available as SVG, else I'd finish with it !^).

⸮⁂☞‽؟◊※⊤⊥∴∵⁀«»,„”
posted by yourcelf at 7:12 AM on October 11, 2012


ALL HAIL THE NEOPUNCTUATORS

DOWN WITH THE EXISTING FASCIST PUNCTUATORY REGIME

OR FASCIOPUNCTUALISM AS I CALL IT

ALSO ALLCAPS ARE PRETTY GOOD DONT GET ME STARTED ON LOWERCASE LETTERS

OR LOWERFASCIOCASISM AS I CALL IT
posted by the quidnunc kid at 7:15 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


44. The misanstrophe
45. The androgynot
46. The octomatter
47. The sesquipedal pusher
posted by rdone at 7:18 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


ephemeral brackets
sub-period
overcomma
hearsay marks
elizardbitsenlaut (aka "the grievous grave")
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:19 AM on October 11, 2012 [5 favorites]


“Interface expert Jef Raskin came out strongly against modes, writing, "Modes are a significant source of errors, confusion, unnecessary restrictions, and complexity in interfaces." Later he notes, "'It is no accident that swearing is denoted by #&%!#$&,' writes my colleague, Dr. James Winter; it is 'what a typewriter used to do when you typed numbers when the Caps Lock was engaged'."”

That's right, that sentence ended in three different types of quotation marks. Clearly what we need is more order among the punctuation marks we already have….
posted by oulipian at 7:25 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Most people can't manage the hyphen and the semicolon. Do we really want to see what a mess the average Joe can make of thirteen new ones?

Or if that doesn't get to you - Imagine reading anything by a tween girl ending every... goddamned... sentence with a "love point".

/ Looks around for a bottle of cyanide...
posted by pla at 7:27 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


ee cummings
posted by tommasz at 7:28 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


pla's use of bold in his messages reminded me of this alternative for sarcastic scribblings.
posted by nushustu at 7:30 AM on October 11, 2012


elizardbitsenlaut (aka "the grievous grave")

man, I want my own punctuation mark....
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:40 AM on October 11, 2012


So you'd like a StarkSarcMark?

Sarcasm is coming.
posted by arcticseal at 7:47 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THAT USING ALL CAPS MAKES THE USE OF ANY DAINTY LITTLE GIRLY PUNCTUATION OBSOLETE IT IS OBVIOUS WHAT I AM SAYING YOU DONT NEED NO LITTLE MARKS TO KNOW IT IS A QUESTION AM I RIGHT OR TO KNOW WHEN A THOUGHT ENDS IF WE WOULD ALL JUST TYPE LIKE THIS THE INTERNETWEBS WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE RIGHT OF COURSE IM RIGHT REMEMBER IT WAS PUNCTUATION AND LOWER CASE THAT KILLED GEOCITIES THAT AND THE PROFESSIONAL WHITE BACKGROUND

IM DONE NOW
posted by HuronBob at 7:51 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


This thread has now been enabled for the hard of hearing.
posted by phunniemee at 7:52 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


I AM READING THE INTERNET BY TELEGRAPH STOP THE BANDWIDTH IS MEDIOCRE AT BEST BUT IT FEELS VERY STEAMPUNK STOP
posted by ook at 7:57 AM on October 11, 2012 [10 favorites]


N'T TELL IF MY TELEX IS HOOKED UP RIGH
posted by griphus at 8:04 AM on October 11, 2012 [4 favorites]


You can punctuate anything you want with the "fly footprint." Your only limit is yourself.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:06 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


People I work with already tell me to please, por favor, for the love of God, stop using semicolon, so these wouldn't really fly…

Interrobang is good though, and I do my part by using it at least once a year on the blog…
posted by monocultured at 8:09 AM on October 11, 2012


A love point? I thought we already had one ...

We do. Alt-3 = ♥
posted by mrgrimm at 8:12 AM on October 11, 2012


And man that was LIGHT reading.
posted by mrgrimm at 8:12 AM on October 11, 2012


THE NEOPUNCTUALIST REVOLUTION HAS EVOLVED TO A NEW BOLD REALITY STOP SURELY THE FASCIOPUNCTUATIST REACTIONARIES WILL LISTEN TO US NOW STOP IF ONLY WE COULD DRAW THEIR ATTENTION IN AN EVEN MORE OBVIOUS WAY STOP I MEAN WHO HAVE WE GOTTA SLEEP WITH TO GET A GODDAMN BLINK TAG AROUND HERE STOP
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:16 AM on October 11, 2012 [4 favorites]


I had a creative writing professor who abhorred the interrobang. She thought that it was lazy (that one should use the language or situation to indicate heightened tension), and I don't think she realized that it came out of comic books or how effective it could be. Of course, by that logic, question marks themselves are "lazy" and a writer ought to be to imply the questioning tone with words and description.
posted by jb at 8:19 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


What's [the tilde] for, apart from my home directory?

It's sometimes used as shorthand for "approximately".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:20 AM on October 11, 2012


53. The Tilda
54. The Swinton
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:22 AM on October 11, 2012 [8 favorites]


mrgrimm: "Alt-3 = ♥"
Darn. Alt-3 gives me ³.
posted by brokkr at 8:22 AM on October 11, 2012


The SarcMark (short for “sarcasm mark”) was invented, copyrighted and trademarked by Paul Sak, and while it hasn’t seen widespread use
Gee, I wonder why.~
posted by roystgnr at 8:23 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


¿Wouldn't that make it easier to tell which sentences are questions, right from the start?

Don't you usually find that the first or second word tells you it's a question?
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 8:40 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Don't you go around thinking that method's foolproof.
posted by Mapes at 8:53 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


Do emoticons and emoji count as punctuation marks? They serve the same purpose of some of these, to impart some sort of emotional context.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:59 AM on October 11, 2012


This thread is fantastic.

{/}
posted by LordSludge at 9:19 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


using two existing marks in combination to express a new meaning.

\?

.~


I like the idea of new punctuation, but not so much the idea of concatenating two or more existing punctuation marks to represent them. Makes me think I'm reading perl code instead of English.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:20 AM on October 11, 2012


Anything to get off that goddam emoticon schtick.

Oh, they left out the "I think you may be incorrect" punctuation, which resembles a raised hand, with all the fingers tightly flexed except the second phalange, which is extended. Quote marks can be used for emphasis.
posted by mule98J at 9:23 AM on October 11, 2012


I like the idea of new punctuation, but not so much the idea of concatenating two or more existing punctuation marks to represent them. Makes me think I'm reading perl code instead of English.

Agreed! We need to make new punctuation marks whole and of themselves, that we can incorporate into a new rev of ASCII - with the two dozen extra special characters available, we can have entire image editing application suites written as a one-liner.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:25 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


I hate this kind of shit I've got too many keys on keyboard as is and options punctuation is for amateurs
posted by philip-random at 9:31 AM on October 11, 2012


I'm curious about the granted patents for the question and exclamation commas.

It had never occurred to me before to invent punctuation and patent it.

At this point, in order to get widespread adoption of an entirely new punctuation, there are so many things that need to fall into place. You have to get font companies to start including your symbol in their font set, and you need a simple input method for users to include it, which will be implemented by the software.

Stuff like smileys took off because they worked without any special accommodation. So if people were to start using ,? widely for the question comma, only then would the software and fonts start converting that into its own unique symbol.
posted by RobotHero at 9:38 AM on October 11, 2012


oulipian: "What we need, I think / is a way to do line breaks in tweets / perhaps like so, or / bring back the pilcrow ¶"

BURMASHAVE
posted by radwolf76 at 10:03 AM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


55. The Instigation Point
56. The Vampyrsand
57. Quarter, Three-quarters, and Five-quarters Colon
58. The Parallel Comma
59. The Haberdash
60. The Rusty Pipe
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:28 AM on October 11, 2012 [6 favorites]


Well I'm off to (a) invent a new punctuation mark that, I hope, will become amazingly popular and used by everyone; and (b) patent it so that no one can use it. Bye!
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:31 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


These are awesome! I'm going to begin using all of them immediately!!! [HAMBURGER]
posted by slogger at 10:33 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've always thought the sarcasm mark is assumed in nearly everything I write or say. I may need to get my sarcasm sequencer adjusted, less I end up like Tom Servo.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:38 AM on October 11, 2012


My main concern with the SarcMark is that it would start to make Metafilter's awesomely stark design look a little heavy on comment threads.

Actually, it could become the whole site's logo, and so would only appear once at the top of each page plus maybe in the favicon.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:42 AM on October 11, 2012


This is the best thing I've read all day.~
posted by scelerat at 10:43 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


!? denotes mere surprise while ?! denotes shock or incredulity. With ?! there's no uncertainty on the part of the speaker about the facts at hand. You can't really replace both with a single mark, and simply replacing the first one might confuse and erode the distinction.

Don't agree about the sarcasm thing either. Most good sarcasm cannot be detected by its target but is intended for some third party's enjoyment. If you really want to insult the person you're speaking to, go with ;-) or the dreaded partial ellipsis..
posted by einexile at 11:36 AM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


I am shocked that this has not yet broken 100 comments. What's the shocked punctuation?

Also, where's the table flip? I love that guy.
posted by BeeDo at 11:54 AM on October 11, 2012


(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

(now BeeDo's day is made twice over.)
posted by Navelgazer at 12:20 PM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ ۞

The table had a Setters of Catan board on it which has miraculously refused to disassemble itself in midair as would be expected
posted by oulipian at 12:21 PM on October 11, 2012 [11 favorites]


EVERYBODY CALM DOWN

┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
posted by speicus at 12:22 PM on October 11, 2012 [8 favorites]


Is this where we talk about ᔥ and ↬ from the Curator's Code?
posted by ikahime at 12:38 PM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


I propose the simple arrow to indicate my new favorite grammatical construction-- "because" used thusly:

Men's shirts button on the left BECAUSE Mammoths
Women's shirts button on the right BECAUSE boobies.


Examples of the simple arrow:

Men carry books at the end of their arms ===> spears
Women carry books on their hips ===> babies.

posted by ohshenandoah at 12:47 PM on October 11, 2012


┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ====> (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by griphus at 12:53 PM on October 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


It had never occurred to me before to invent punctuation and patent it.

I live a life of ease because of the family fortune left behind by Great-Grandpa Ampersand. Perhaps you know his work?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:16 PM on October 11, 2012 [3 favorites]


For when you make a statement that is senseless and you damn well know it, such as:

" I don't understand why Cortex deleted my comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "
posted by HuronBob at 1:25 PM on October 11, 2012 [2 favorites]


The future is a punctuation guy flipping over and righting a table, forever.
posted by JHarris at 4:07 PM on October 11, 2012


61. |:+:| The Ark of the Covenant
62. )( The Philosophers Bracket
63. (⁎) The Vaginal Corona.
posted by sarastro at 4:12 PM on October 11, 2012 [3 favorites]


turingdots for indicating machine (or other) generated text that cannot otherwise be distinguished from that of humans

anthropomorphs for indicating human text which cannot be distinguished from that of machine (or other) generated text

homollipsis for indicating an elision of text which is much the same as the text included

heterollipsis for indicating an elision of text which is different from the text included

jocundgrave for indicating joking-only-serious comments

...
posted by wobh at 5:21 PM on October 11, 2012


These are not air quotes, this is me "scratching your eyes out."

The semipilcrownian guillemetted hedera-bang--I want this. I don't know what it looks like, but I want it.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:03 PM on October 11, 2012


The semipilcrownian guillemetted hedera-bang--I want this. I don't know what it looks like, but I want it.

Just imagine a diacritic roundel with a funky sort of subfusc plethora on top, and you're halfway there.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:10 AM on October 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


I like the asterism's space connotations, which raise the possibility that our entire solar system is just one part of an alien civilisation's sky punctuation.
posted by gnimmel at 5:44 AM on October 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


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