but i did not shoot the superscript

www.therejectionist.com

a serif is a little tail added to the limbs of letters (example). knowing this explains why many fonts are referred to as "sans-serif" meaning, in latin, "without serifs."

font types with serifs are also commonly referred to as 'roman' fonts (e.g. times new roman) while sans-serif fonts are sometimes referred to as 'gothic' or 'grotesque' (e.g. century gothic or arial)

interesting tidbits - sans-serif fonts are typically used for headlines while serif fonts are used for body text because the serifs help guide eyes consistently across one line. however, the internet has made sans-serif body text much more common because serifs often rendered weirdly on low resolution or slow refresh rate screens.

semicolons can be confusing; here is a lesson ;)

the oatmeal, famous for lengthy animated rants of the surreal variety such as how to use an apostrophe, has created a new lesson on a less commonly used punctuation mark: the semicolon.

the comic uses non-sequiturs to break down the uses of the semicolon, with the main reasons being:

• conjoining two related sentences that could stand on their own (do not use a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but' with this use)
• adding more pause than a comma but less than a period.
• seperating items in a list when those items already have punction (e.g. i have lived in lakeville, mn; edina, mn; and minneapolis, mn.)

the comic neglects to mention some other uses for the symbol, such as ending a line of code in many computer programming languages or a line of a matrix in a mathematical matrix. also a winky face.

[image by theoatmeal]

intro to pronunciation

/lɪŋˈɡwɪstə.risɪs/
everytime i see a pronunciation guide i am amazed that anyone can decipher it

something is missing…

i knew that a set of three periods was called an ellipsis, but i always found it to be an odd name because it sounds to much like 'ellipse' (a synonym for oval.)

but ellipsis actually has three meanings:

[not my bad]

you may have encountered a quote with the word [sic] in square brackets and wondered what it was.

know/your/slashes

a)    ⁄            b)  /          c)  \

no one expects the gnaborretni

‽=?!
another underused punctuation mark, the interrobang is an exclamation point (sometimes referred to as a "bang") overlayed with a question mark (a.k.a. an interrogative point) and it is used in the exact way these two symbols act when they are together: excited inquisition or disbelief (symbolic portmanteauism?).

is that sarcasm؟

the symbol seen here, known as a percontation point, irony mark, snark, or zing, is also the symbol used in this blog's logo.

clearly a backwards question mark, this symbol first appeared in the late 1500s at then end of a rhetorical question, and was used to denote general irony at the end of the 19th century, but it has never been widely used.

my personal thought is that the world is finally ready for this symbol, and in fact we need it. this symbol could be a powerful tool for implying sarcasm (a form of verbal irony) in instant messaging, texting, and general textual forms of communication.

as a last note, because this symbol is represented by simply using an arabic question mark, it can really mess with your computer when you type it... it can make you type backwards and it is difficult to delete, so be warned؟