English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mazura

11:07 PM

So like, why can't we use ~~backticks~~ that grey-box-typeset-thingy?

tchrist

𝙱𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚠𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚝𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚊 𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚕𝚢‌ 𝚝𝚢𝚙𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚟𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚍𝚝𝚑 𝚏𝚘𝚗𝚝.

Mazura

But sometimes I need it to look different. We're asking italics to do way too much.

MetaEd

Two reasons. First, backticks do not just create a particular look, they mark the contents as code. Second, the particular look that they create, as tchrist pointed out, is generally not consistent with how we represent English on a page.

@Mazura Practical example? Because I agree there are situations which I think are analogous to code and do call for the backtick.

tchrist

@Mazura 𝙵𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚗𝚘𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚎𝚕𝚜𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚑𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚛‌𝚎𝚍 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚢𝚙𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝.

Mazura

How am I supposed to differentiate emphasis from what we now use italics for?

MetaEd

11:12 PM

@Mazura Italics are one form of emphasis. I guess I don't understand the question.

tchrist

@Mazura 𝔚𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔡𝔬𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔪𝔢𝔞𝔫?

Mazura

Lots of dictionaries use grey box, for like category headers and stuff

tchrist

Eh?

Mazura

Or rather, Google does ;)

tchrist

flips through the OED to check

@Mazura Google sucks donkey dongs when dictionarizing.

MetaEd

11:13 PM

Eew.

tchrist

My feelings exactly.

Scholarly works do not need screaming flashing blink tags.

Mazura

google.com/…

1

A: A function in computer games to send messages by selecting them from a preset list rather than typing

I am using that macro (or chat wheel command if you will), but it's not specific enough when you wanna let people know which hero is actually missing without having to waste time on typing. –dev.dota2.com I call these chat macros. So you want chat macros? –Reddit Be careful using it by it...

Without it, I can't faithfully reproduce that block quote.

tchrist

You are not doing anything to influence my position about Google

Mazura

It's not emphasis, it's ... um, a header?

MetaEd

Faithful reproduction when quoting a source does not require you to use a grey box where they do.

Actually I think what you did looks great.

Mazura

11:16 PM

...

MetaEd

Another alternative is bold.

tchrist

@MetaEd Bold has the wrong weight.

It screws up the page color.

Italic is matched with roman.

Rather, bold is good for headers.

But inline bold is forced blunderbussing out of poor neighborhoods.

Wait, wrong person.

MetaEd

@Mazura Actually, one of the few places I feel strongly justified in using the code markdown is for IPA and other pronunciation guides. So if it had been me I might have used markdown for: /ˈmakrō/

tchrist

Why?

𝚆𝚑𝚢 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸𝙿𝙰 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚎𝚟𝚎‌𝚛 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚍𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚢𝚙𝚎𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚎?

ℱℴ𝓇 ℐ 𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓁 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝓃ℴ𝓉.

MetaEd

In the past it has improved legibility, and I look at IPA as code so I don't feel unjustified in adding code semantics.

It's not so much about the constant width as it is setting the IPA aside as something special.

Mazura

11:20 PM

Why do you insist that people will use it for entire sentences? It's for special parts.

tchrist

/ˈɑːnsᵻbl/ or /ˈɑːnsᵻbl/

Mazura

I'll admit though, that should be italics.

tchrist

You’re going to make me pull out Bringhurst you know.

MetaEd

See the second one seems much easier for me to see. Bold would be another choice that would help. The colon and the tickmark virtually disappear in the default font.

Bringhurst it on.

/ˈɑːnsᵻbl/ or /ˈɑːnsᵻbl/

At least on my end, the tickmark is hardly visible even in boldface.

tchrist

𝙼𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚋𝚘𝚕𝚍.

MetaEd

11:22 PM

And the tickmark is important.

Mazura

Is it really because it "looks bad" or because y'all be programmers and when you see it you go, hey that's not code!

tchrist

It is offensive to a typesetter's aesthetic sense of page layout and color.

MetaEd

In my case, both.

tchrist

It has nothing to do with programming.

Mazura

@tchrist What's upsetting is the lack of underlining! ;p

MetaEd

11:23 PM

With the occasional exception for legibility. Because that's the point. You don't want to trip up the reader. And your markup should make reading smoother, not create a new thing for the reader to trip over.

@Mazura No, blink.

tchrist

The problem is that we're stuck using faces that do not support IPA.

Nothing more.

MetaEd

~~Anyway, underlining is there.~~

Just think down a few pixels. :-)

@tchrist Is there no good alternative?

tchrist

U̳n̳d̳e̳r̳l̳i̳n̳i̳n̳g̳ ̳r̳u̳l̳e̳s̳

MetaEd

Eew.

Mazura

@tchrist Nice title ;)

MetaEd

11:26 PM

On my end, the underlines are shifted about ½ glyph to the right.

Also, I see what you did there.

tchrist

You have to use a modern face that has had the extra sorts needed for IPA cut for it.

Verdana is not such.

MetaEd

Surely there's something now in the free typefaces.

tchrist

Neither is Georgia.

Robert Slimbach’s faces are all fine.

So, actually, is Times New Roman.

MetaEd

EB Garamond?

Mazura

Is there a part of the FAQ or a meta that says don't use backticks?

tchrist

11:30 PM

Yes.

Doesn't matter.

People can't read here.

Every site fights this.

Code markup is not for language.

Mazura

'cause why?

tchrist

Because it is typographically abhorrent.

It is not typeset.

MetaEd

Because language has its own formatting conventions.

tchrist

It is anti-typeset.

It is like a kindergartener's block capitals, and has no place in an adult world of books.

Mazura

But if it improves readability, why not use it?

tchrist

11:33 PM

It doesn't.

It is abhorrent.

Ransom note material.

Some sort of six-year-old's cut-and-paste project with scissors and glue.

Mazura

If it gray-boxed, but kept the font, would you still be against it?

tchrist

If I have to personally edit it out of every single post that attempts to use it, I will.

MetaEd

@Mazura See this is what we need blink for.

tchrist

I don't know what grayboxers are, but when you show it to me not on a strip-club bulletin board but in a scholarly linguistics journal, then we can talk.

MetaEd

You can't very well make blinking text with scissors and glue, so it is much superior.

Mazura

11:37 PM

It'd be nice to have in-line block quotes, don't you think? Why's it got to be this giant thing that spans 3 lines on a page?

tchrist

Superior is an absolute superlative that does not admit modifiers of degree.

MetaEd

Incidentally, is WEB still being maintained?

Word End Back

Knuth's WEB.

Oh.

11:38 PM

Looks like it. ctan.org/pkg/web

tchrist

@Mazura ?

MetaEd

@Mazura Inline block is a contradiction.

tchrist

Oh I don't know. I have enough trouble getting people to use pod.

MetaEd

There's highlighting, such as highlighting in gray, and outlining or boxing, but a block quote is specifically a quote that is typeset as a separate paragraph, generally indented.

Mazura

"highlighting in gray" that's what I want it for.

MetaEd

11:40 PM

And often italicized, backgrounded, or otherwise set apart so it's clear something unusual is going on.

We have the capability to highlight in gray but only when you mark something as code, and what you get with that generally is bad. You get the console type font, plus a lot of your markdown characters suddenly turn into literals. Because it has code semantics.

Mazura

What if I need to emphasis a word right before something I need to italicize?

That would be a mess.

MetaEd

Example? What do you need to italicize?

tchrist

And just what do you ɴᴇᴇᴅ to italicize?

jinx

Mazura

Titles, because we can't underline

tchrist

Small capitals are the preferred solution.

Because they have the correct weighting.

MetaEd

11:43 PM

Names of what? People?

Ah, titles.

sky-light

Hi, which of these is better concerning formal writing:

The mentioned works gave us a good background understanding
in the area of pipe design ...

A good background understanding in the area of pipe design has been gained from the works mentioned above ...

tchrist

@Mazura I have never seen any book publisher fret about that.

Mazura

We're asking too much from italics.

tchrist

No.

MetaEd

@Mazura So what you mean by emphasis is you want to shout or even shout or SHOUT REAL LOUD in the text.

tchrist

11:44 PM

People are just asking for too much gaud.

An I don't think we need any of that.

@sky-light "has been gained" is not so good.

Mazura

@sky-light Use garnered

tchrist

Neither ALL CAPS nor bold looks as good as a ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟ here and there.

Basically, everybody thinks they should be yelling at you all the time, and this is rude.

MetaEd

@Mazura You probably won't like my answer about emphasis.

Mazura

@tchrist How do you do 'lil caps?

tchrist

It's rude because it has no place in civil discourse.

@Mazura Special hardware interrupt driver for my clock.

MetaEd

11:47 PM

@Mazura Good writing does not require it.

tchrist

Exactly.

Mazura

@MetaEd But you're the one who said they liked what I did.

MetaEd

If I get to the point in writing a sentence where I feel the reader will not understand it without emphasis, I've written the sentence wrong. I go back and write it again.

Mazura

Did you mean my original, or T's edit?

sky-light

@Mazura Thanks

tchrist

11:49 PM

7

A: What is the difference between small caps and capitals?

Typically a font’s small caps are designed to rise up to somewhere around the font’s x-height (or a little higher). Regular capitals rise to the full cap-height. For example, in Adobe Caslon: Sometimes the small capitals are just scaled down versions of the capital glyphs, but on a well-consid...

But yes. One should be able to make one's point without flashing red neon.

MetaEd

@Mazura I thought you did a good job of reproducing the quoted dictionary entry. But what I'm addressing now is your point that you might need rhetorical emphasis near a Title and don't want to create confusion.

tchrist

Just like a funny joke needs no laugh track.

Mazura

@MetaEd I try to write how I talk, and w/o it, it won't come across right.

MetaEd

And my answer is simply that when you have written the sentence well enough, it does not need rhetorical emphasis. Your rhetoric stands on its own.

Mazura

Some of us aren't that good ;p

tchrist

11:51 PM

Ad astra per aspera.

MetaEd