The evolution of languages, words, alphabets, and special characters helped shape the way we think about things, and since the 20th century, that hasn't changed that much.
These days, I use it to type stuff like (ﾟヮﾟ ) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and a black box symbol that HN won't let me type, but is eye catching for when you're scanning logs. Symbols like checkmark, ×, the thinking emoji, and the hourglass are useful when taking notes.
Lots can be found in the Windows 10 emoji finder (Win + Period), but AHK is more customizable. Also WinPeriod is juuuuust that much more friction and I find AHK fits into my flow better. This flow shapes the way I think.
⎄oo → °
⎄<- → ←
⎄(12) → ⑫
⎄25 → ⅖
Of course, you can change the compose key rules.
Instead of having separate AHK scripts, I have "one script to rule them all". When Windows launches, "my precious" loads all my scripts. Many of them I use in MS Word.
In all seriousness, I think standardizing letters and symbols has done a lot to promote basic literacy. And there are plenty of language innovations like slang, emojis, kaomoji, new words like email, the prevalence of alternate text treatments like bolds, italics, underlines, strikethroughs, etc etc.
Like in India we have a very common expression "I'm writing to intimate you.." which my American boss got really angry to read. For us it just means i'm writing to tell you, but many people esp from older gen use this a lot here to sound cool.
> No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry
Native speakers definitely struggle with this as well. There is a diffucult balance between being too succinct (curt, impolite) and excessively wordy (feels forced or contrived, muddles the message).
Personally, when I communicate st work, I tend to phrase things as questions- either as a standalone comment or as a preamble to my argument. That way, I am (hopefully) clear that I am trying to be inclusive, rather than divisive, and I think it makes people less likely to project emotion from their own assumptions into what I write.
This is a documented Indian English usage: "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intimate" (see the verb section).
Indian English has retained some strong markers from the British colonial period. There's no clear guide for how prestige and emulation will affect usage, but "to intimate" in either verbal form is a literary archaism in North American English.
While the second (intransitive) version from that wiktionary page is Indian, the first use is most certainly not an archaism in North American English. In fact, it was listed as a normal definition in the first dictionary that Google returned with a definition.[0] The pronunciation does shift with which definition we intend, which nicely keeps "intimate details" from sounding too much like "mating". :-)
I understand your point and applaud your literacy. However, it's not a verb in common usage, and if our friend is using the verb to intimate in North American business English in any sense, I would advise him that the term is an archaism.
We can discuss at further leisure whether any given literary usage has at least one foot in the crypt of liberal education. ^_^
OED shows that the Indian English usage that we are discussing definitely comes from prior British English acceptations.
> which nicely keeps "intimate details" from sounding too much like "mating". :-)
OED also offers "one who intimates" to be an "intimater". (o;
It's a bit literary, yes, and would be out of place if used verbally or in a business communication, but it is not archaic.
Or Swedish :- ) Semicolon works in the same way, in Swedish. I think I didn't know much about the semicolon, though, until I had read a few books (in Swedish) about writing books (in Swedish).
Maybe most Latin languages? Oh not Greek. Hmm interesting how it works in Arabic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon
It’s not that they’re a danger or anything. It’s that you write in a certain way to convey a certain tone and short, period punctuated, sentences is just how you convey anger. You can try to fight the river on this one but it’ll be tough.
"It looks like you forgot to do X. That's needed to do Y."
I would actually prefer the second one here. It's neutral and to the point.
I guess the problem with the first one is that the reader might interpret the semicolon exactly in the way that you intended it, as an attempt on your behalf to "control the tone". Depending on the personal disposition of the receiver he or she may or may not like it.
Or chat channels. Unless you really know the person well.
For generations that grew up as text as the primary form of communication we had to figure out how to convey tone and writing style and emojis is what we had. Tone and the expression of tone are disconnected even when speaking in person and have grammar like rules.
I will forever refuse this idea. I use a period to end my sentences because that’s how a sentence ends, not to communicate a tone.
I use semi-colons as a sort of conjunction, not unlike the example you gave, in part to give me a way to lengthen sentences that would otherwise seem much too short.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/05/909969004/before-texting-your...
The context for your advice is that writing long sentences is/was popular poor style. Especially for young and new readers of English.
Now, I can write that way in English -up to some limit to do with those ambiguities-, but when I do, I find it irritates certain readers.
A rewrite of the preceding sentence:
I can write that way in English, up to some
limit to do with those ambiguities. When I
do, I find it irritates certain readers.
Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences.
This is interesting to me, because I do the exact opposite. I write my clauses more or less independently, then try to string the related clauses together with linking words punctuation in a way that flows naturally.
I can't imagine composing long, complex sentences on the fly, and the only people I've seen that manage to do this in conversation are unusually erudite.