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Bangs, Slashes, Smileys |
Below this very paragraph is a small collection of complaints about certain typings I see way too often in chat and texts and forums and e-mails and Facebook and Twitter posts and so on. I wrote this back in 1996 for a web site about a channel on IRC called #Friendliest, and things have only gotten worse. Oh, well.
(Note from the people who are responsible for this Dalfriends IRC Web site: The following paragraphs were written by someone who insisted we provide this space, but we do not in any way endorse any of it, nor have we even read more than the first couple sentences. Furthermore, we do not recommend that you read it either. You should probably return to the main parts of the #FRiendliest Web site right now.) In this diatribe I, an irregular regular on #FRiendliest, propose to tell you how to type in an IRC channel. It seems to me that because IRC -- this marvelous medium of real-time communication -- is so different from talking face-to-face or even on the phone, users should pay special attention to how their lines of text appear on others' screens. I am not referring to the content per se of what is typed but rather to how that content is communicated in black squiggles on a white screen. However, the real point is that the content you intend to communicate is affected by exactly how you type. Before I begin my full-steam rant and rave, let me admit that I'm probably the slowest and least accurate typist in all of IRC. You wouldn't think a typist who is slow would also be sloppy, but -- believe you me -- that's how I type. I type using literally about three of my many fingers, and even then, despite all the practice those three have gotten, they are all the time hitting the wrong keys. Because I refuse to take typing lessons again, and because I always have so many extremely incisive comments to make in the channel, I'm all the time sending virtually unintelligible garbage out for everyone to see and ponder over. "Gotta ya. Whap fro manker do. I;m fnin, and yopu>" <-- That's how I type pretty much all the time, but if I tried to slow down to be more accurate, then I would never get anything typed at all, because the conversation would have passed me by by a couple minutes. And if you're thinking, "And is that such a bad thing?" then here is another opportunity to return to the regular non-ranting, non-raving parts of the #FRiendliest Web site. Anyway, that's my excuse. It's not that I don't know better, it's that I can't do better. So, on to the main rant and rave. I'd like to rant about five specific topics. My rantings are just my own opinions, and you should certainly feel free to disagree, as long as you don't mind being wrong. Although I address only five topics, no doubt others could be added. Perhaps you have a sixth pet peeve, or perhaps you are guilty of several not listed here. If you've read this far, probably not. Ellipses At the moment my pettest peeve has to do with the pointless and confusing use of ellipses, which are those little dots . . . like this . . . that are so popular. In normal written works such as books and magazines, an ellipsis is used to denote that a thought or statement is unfinished, like this: "From across the hall he heard her say, 'Please don't drop that pig on my . . . ' and then he heard a loud thunk and a squeal." But in so many conversations on IRC, people use an ellipsis at the end of a line just out of habit, maybe because they've learned that if you hold down the period key, it will repeat. As I see it, to use ellipses so indiscriminately is to render their occasional appropriate use meaningless. What I mean is, if you use an ellipsis at the end of every line, then how are the others in the channel to know when you really mean it? They can't, which means you have voluntarily robbed yourself of a valuable means of communicating an idea, which in this case is that your thought or statement truly is unfinished. Another use for the ellipsis, a use that is special to IRC channels, is to signal that your thought or statement is temporarily unfinished and that you want the others in the channel to wait till you type another line. Using an ellipsis this way, at the end of each of several lines, is a good way to tell a story or joke without being interrupted. "If a man speaks in the woods and no woman is there to hear him . . . . . . is he still wrong?" But, of course, if you're all the time using ellipses at the end of a line you type when you do not really mean "Wait," then after a while you end up training people to ignore your ellipses altogether. There are three reasons people use an ellipsis. One, as I say, is out of habit, which means it's almost always used incorrectly. In addition to the drawbacks already mentioned, there's yet another drawback, which is that the people in the channel who respect the ellipsis as a signal to not interrupt will sit there like fools for way too long, waiting for the offender to finish the thought that never gets finished. "I know that . . ." Personal pronouns and verbs Ladies and gentlemen of IRC-land, I have an announcement: Personal
pronouns and verbs are free. Some of you know that, some of you don't.
Solidi, Virgules, Obliques, Separatrices, Slant marks, and Slashes Whatever name you give these marks, which look like this, /, they are used way too often to mean, "I don't know, so guess." In the same way that ellipses are sometimes used to imply, "You know what I mean, don't you?, so why don't you finish my clever thought for me in your own head and give me credit for it," so do slashes sometimes mean, "I can't decide which of these two things I mean, or I'm too lazy to do so, or I'm too lazy to type out what I mean, so I hope you'll take a good guess for me and give me credit for whichever guess is better." Of course there are legitimate uses for the slash, such as for rendering abbreviated dates (97/08/15) and to show the division of one number by another (4/5 = 80%). And in certain legal documents it is standard, if sometimes unnecessary, to use a phrase such as " . . . and I/we further promise to pay the sum of $1,000 in the event that he/she is struck by a falling anvil and/or calzone while on the insured premises." But what is unacceptable is for the slash to substitute for clear
thinking and clear explication thereof, as in "I will travel to
Worcestershire by train/plane." There are at least two distinct meanings for
such a statement: "I will travel by train or plane" and "I will travel by
train and plane." Bangs and Smileys A bang is an exclamation point, and a smiley is any of the hundreds
of typographical pictures that are to be viewed by tilting one's head 90 degrees counter-clockwise. The standard, original smiley is :) which is a
pair of eyes with a smiling mouth below them. Do you know what a temperature inversion is? It occurs over large cities
located in depressed geographical locations such as Mexico City, and what
happens is that a large mass of cool air gets trapped under a large mass of
warm air above. The cool air, being denser, obeys gravity by staying down
low. The warm air, being less dense, also obeys gravity by staying up where
it is, and the result, especially if it all takes place in a giant bowl, is
no wind. The city suffering under such a temperature inversion continues to
emit ozone and smog, of course, and all that air pollution builds up and
builds up and builds up because there are no air currents to carry it away. The result is a distinctly unhealthful atmosphere, one which we humans, even
Californians, have not been bred to breathe. As with any literary device, if you use it too much then you dilute the
power of each succeeding instance. You know how you often hear the advice
"Use it or lose it"? As your smileys become more frequent and more habitual, you run into a
problem I call "smiley inflation." If you end every sentence with a smiley,
then after a while you realize that if you really do mean to convey a sense
of jocularity, you have to type two smileys. So you get into the habit of
typing two smileys, and after a while you realize that now you're going to
have to start typing three. Then you decide to build an alias that types out
four. You keep promising yourself you can quit any time you want, but you
never do. At this point you've become a smiley junkie, always needing more. Pretty soon you find yourself running low on smileys, and you begin hacking
into other people's computers to steal them. You've got a major smiley
monkey on your back, and your only hope is to quit cold turkey. -- I am a masochist, and I want to go back to the TOP
of "How To Type Good." |
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