A student wrote about an author who used a lot of "explanation marks." The explanation mark might be a valuable new piece of punctuation, but what would it look like and what would it do? Is there a way to communicate a shoulder shrug via punctuation?
In this era of emoticons, it ought to be possible to communicate just about anything through abstract marks. Isn't it about time we reconsidered punctuation? I need an irony mark, a punapology point, a slapper's-hand. The magic-mirror-mark could be used by students to indicate that everything that follows simply reflects a slightly warped version of something the professor said in class, but then students might appreciate it if professors adopted the elitomark to indicate that they're about to indulge in a particularly egregious example of intellectual elitism. One of my colleagues suggested the pointless mark, which would be used in place of a period to indicate that the words preceding it weren't really worth reading anyway, and another proposed the coma, which indicates the pause that keeps on pausing.
And what about the blog that keeps on blogging? We need a punctuation mark for compulsive bloggers, a mark that issues the desperate plea "stop me before I blog again!" I don't know what it would look like, but I know what to call it: the neverending blogstopper. I'll order 'em by the gross.
3 comments:
How about the BS mark - which would be put at the end of a sentence which is obviously a total bunch of bunk. It would be used often in annual reports, marketing plans and would be a mandatory study requirement in college Freshman Experience Seminar classes nationwide.
PS - I definitely need the everlasting blogstopper!
We certainly need a frustration mark. Especially on Mondays. I think that # works well. It even resembles teeth clutched in frustration.
I should now put frustration marks on every email that I send when I'm frustrated. I think it'll work well. I'll just need to get it added to my sig file.
I definitely need an exasperation point, which would be used on page 8 of a 10 page paper being written at 3 in the morning. The exasperation point would indicate that everything in the following sentence or paragraph constitutes a total tangent.
Or what about the sarcasmicon? Or the intrinsically-linked-but-vaguely-dissimilar-sentences-mark? The possibilities are endless!
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