
A collection of non-standard punctuation marks - leichtgewicht
http://progressivepunctuation.com/
======
metaphor
On a congruent note, California flops on compulsory English[1], the expressive
void of the interwebs yawns at over a thousand emoji code points[2], and
people actually think it's a great idea to champion patented punctuation
marks[3] in everyday grammar. Can this guy[4] even spell his name yet?

[1] [https://outline.com/Gea52v](https://outline.com/Gea52v)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji)

[3]
[https://www.google.com/patents/USD608820](https://www.google.com/patents/USD608820)

[4] [https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-can-text-you-a-pile-
of...](https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-can-text-you-a-pile-of-poo-but-i-
cant-write-my-name)

~~~
CalChris
Just to be clear, that patent is a Design Patent, 15 years. It’s the first
time I have ever seen a Design Patent mentioned in the wild. So the only
remaining item on my IP punch list is a plant patent. As much as I admire
Luther Burbank, asexually reproduced plants didn't need their own category.

~~~
severine
So there's nothing patented under 35 U.S.C. 161 (Plant Patents)?

[https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-
basics/...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types-
patent-applications/general-information-about-35-usc-161)

~~~
InitialLastName
I think gp is looking for the patent to be mentioned elsewhere, not simply a
patent as registered.

It's actually a version of bingo!

------
CalChris
In chess, !? is _interesting_ and ?! is _dubious_. So I suppose the
interrobang, ‽, is _WTF_.

------
Freak_NL
Proposals for an irony punctuation sign have been around since late nineteenth
century. Stylistically, I prefer this relatively recent Dutch proposal¹.

But, as noted in the wikipedia articles, some feel that explicitly indicating
when text is meant ironically defeats its purpose; irony is supposed to make
you think.

1: The 'Het ironieteken van de CPNB' one the right:
[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironieteken](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironieteken)

~~~
lordfoom
"But, as noted in the wikipedia articles, some feel that explicitly indicating
when text is meant ironically defeats its purpose"

Is that, in itself, irony?

------
asperous
I've seen these "non-standard" ones in practice:

?! - Shock and confusion "Apple did what?!"

/s - Sarcasm "wow, I'm happy /s"

(?) - Doubt "I think Mark said we was done (?)"

~~~
pasquinelli
sort of related: it drives me crazy when people use a question mark to show
doubt, (sometimes sarcastically), instead of to ask a question. i've never
seen (?) before, but i see "i think mark said he was done?", a lot.

even though it drives me crazy, it shows that special punctuation is
unnecessary. people can just keep doing that awful thing, and there's no real
ambiguity.

~~~
nonsince
Many people raise the pitch of their voice as if asking a question when saying
something doubtfully, so the question mark reads similarly to how one would
say it out loud.

If you have access to formatting, a similar way of achieving the same thing
would be to italicise "think"

------
paxys
I occasionally use interrobang (?! - not sure if there is a unicode
character), but the rest seem quite useless.

Also, this site doesn't let you copy text...WTF developers?

~~~
yarg
I'd use a question comma, there are often times where I'll phrase a question
and then expound on some deeper specifics - generally things that I would
consider implied, but that many people would miss, leading to the
misinterpretation of the question.

Essentially everything (for me, at least) after the question comma is
generally parenthetic in nature.

~~~
paxys
All the examples of question comma on the site can easily be written as two
sentences though.

~~~
yarg
And most sentences with a semi-colon could also; it's often a matter of
personal preference without well-defined fixed rules.

~~~
dragonwriter
> And most sentences with a semi-colon could also

Well, yeah, since the difference between a comma and a semi-colon is the
latter joins independent clauses, it is necessarily the case that any semi-
colon use for joining (as opposed to its use in, e.g., lists) can be replaced
by a period, you just lose the indication that the two independent clauses are
tightly associated.

------
nicklaf
Try covering up the names of these while guessing what each is supposed to
symbolize. Personally, I found some of these to be rather unintuitive and
sometimes arbitrary.

~~~
justhackedme
They're not real. It's a joke.

~~~
leichtgewicht
Real or not the Sarcmarc would help sooo much.

~~~
Spivak
Don't people already use /s for this?

~~~
leichtgewicht
They do and I think its an argument for the sarcmark.

~~~
majewsky
On the other hand, I can type "/s" with my keyboard _right now_ and it's not
copyrighted.

~~~
darklajid
Still people type the ‽ all over this thread (can't handle Windows without the
awesome WinCompose)…

------
c54
Cool ideas, would love to see more... but this site itself seems unfortunately
over-designed to me.

It's a slideshow-style listicle (These 10 Punctuation Marks Will Blow Your
Mind!), forces you to click to the next one, and makes you scroll to see an
example usage for each punctuation mark.

~~~
JoshMnem
The idea is very interesting, but the animation is too much. I had to close
it.

------
Robotbeat
Why won't this scroll? Page doesn't work really on my iPhone 6se.

~~~
krock
and makes my screen look really dirty.

~~~
wybiral
Yeah, I views on a laptop and thought something smudged my screen...

It's this: [http://progressivepunctuation.com/assets/img/concrete-
wall-h...](http://progressivepunctuation.com/assets/img/concrete-wall-
home.png)

------
xefer
Some years ago I made the case for an interrocolon, the purpose of which I do
not see addressed in that list: "when the direct object of an interrogative
statement references an example, a URL or another statement in a follow-on
block of text". I encounter uses for this all the time especially when
texting.

[https://xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon](https://xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon)

------
geowwy
What can this do that emojis can't?

~~~
3131s
I can't think of a corresponding emoji for many of these, like sarcasm,
certitude, snark (maybe the one with its tongue sticking out?), doubt, irony,
etc.

~~~
blt
We are lacking emoji for many important emotions, but IMO we should fix that
by adding emoji. I think emoji are much more aligned with natural modes of
human expression than punctuation marks are.

~~~
leichtgewicht
Is it a problem to have more than one way to express things?

------
DonHopkins
The Artist Formerly And Then Again Known As Prince had his own single-
character font just for rendering His Symbol, and his PR company send around
copies of a floppy disk with Windows and Mac versions of the font, along with
these instructions for writing about him:

[https://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/bruce_font.html](https://www.milk.com/wall-
o-shame/bruce_font.html)

[http://anildash.com/2014/06/my-favorite-floppy-of-all-
time.h...](http://anildash.com/2014/06/my-favorite-floppy-of-all-time.html)

[https://parkerhiggins.net/2013/01/writing-the-prince-
symbol-...](https://parkerhiggins.net/2013/01/writing-the-prince-symbol-in-
unicode/)

------
lucideer
How many of these are part of Unicode?

The download link just a font that uses the Unicode Private Use Area to
display each of these glyphs, which is particularly disappointing for
interrobang which I know has an entry at U+203D, but I'm not sure about the
rest of them?

------
_nalply
It seems people want a way to express emotion in something like a side-
channel. Interpunction is fine for that, however we can't pronounce
interpunction by itself and second interpunction can be placed only at
specific points in the sentence (usually at the end). Emoji can be placed
everywhere, however emojis can't be spoken out loud.

Lojban, a constructed language, has a very interesting feature: attitudinals:
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Attitudinals](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Attitudinals)

An example from Wikipedia:

mlatu .ui (a cat! yay!)

English has also attitudinals however they belong to informal speech.

------
tempestn
Like it or not, the "friendly period" punctuation already exists :)

~~~
Zamicol
And it was organically and democratically determined.

------
jhanschoo
Much punctuation evolved organically from scribal shorthand. On the internet,
I can see a contraction of /s into a symbol being one of the likeliest
candidates for turning into punctuation.

~~~
justhackedme
And that's as formal as someone being labelled a 'troll'.

None of the internet's fads or memes deserve to be preserved in punctuation
rules. This is a joke.

------
cassowary
How can someone seriously propose I put a copyrighted symbol in my text to let
them know it's sarcastic? [rhetorical question device] I'll bet the world will
be a better place if they profit off every sarcastic sentence someone writes.
[sarcastic sentence device] If you're too dumb to work out what's sarcastic,
why should you benefit from my help? [friendly period]

(nb. There's a missing "sarcastic sentence device", but I don't know where to
put it, when it applies to a piece of punctuation.)

------
true_religion
This site design is beautiful---in static form. The animations are utterly
unnecessary though and detract from the presentation as well as get repetitive
when scrolling from item to item.

------
Doctor_Fegg
Please don't show this page to Larry Wall.

------
DonHopkins
Years ago I wrote a perfectly reasonable comment like /* WTF??!?!!?!???? */
and the old C compiler complained about "invalid trigraph". A syntax error in
the middle of a comment!

Took me a while to figure out that "trigraph" was referring to some part of
"??!?!!?!????" and not "WTF".

------
boondaburrah
A couple of these reminded me of musical symbols I'd see on staffs and so they
were already associated with something in my mind and couldn't be re-
associated with whatever the authors wanted.

Aw hell, I'll just mark up my text with a bunch of musical punctuation. Throw
pianos and fortes all over everything.

------
dragonwriter
The interrobang is in notable use; of the rest, the question/exclamation
commas would be useful and so clear in intent that I'd adopt them immediately
if they were widely supported (fonts and keyboards.)

------
Zigurd
Percontation is vastly underrated.

