What's Next? The Eye-Roll Mark?

So Sarcasm Inc., apparently a company of some sort in Michigan, has invented a sarcasm punctuation mark. Take a gander, or a goose if you so choose:

For the amazingly low, low price of $1.99, this company will send you a bit of software that will allow you to reproduce this punctuation mark through that lovely CRTL+greater than key combination. It's not clear whether the little restricted trademark symbol will also be replicated.

This led me to wondering: When was the last punctuation mark-related breakthrough? What was the last bit of punctuation to be invented? Emoticons, probably, but I'm not going to count them because they're merely strings of existing punctuation marks. So, do we go with the colon? The semicolon? Which came first, the whole colon or the half? The "@" symbol? Can't be. That's been used for more than a century at least. Let's see what the Internet has to say.

Wikipedia tells us of the "question comma" and the "exclamation comma," patented in 1992. They provide no pictorials. I think it was a prank. Then there is the "double comma" designed by Russian Artemy Lebedev. He apparently thought the double comma would indicate more of a pause than does the current, fashionalbe, and stylish semi-colon. Leave it up to the Russians to try to develop a new punctuation mark to take over the job of an old one.

So maybe Sarcasm Inc. is on to something here. Or maybe not. After all, while the folks at MIT developed the Smoot as a new unit of measure, it hasn't caught on anywhere else outside of Cambridge. So maybe the sarcasm mark -- which looks like an unmentionable object circling in a flushed toilet -- will catch on, but for $1.99, you won't find one here. I, for one, believe punctuation should be free. Or at least phonetic, as Victor Borge demonstrates:

Odd thing is, however, they may have a point. I've learned from experience both in ordinary online forums and in more formal online forums, including class forums, that sometimes a sarcastic remark can't be read that way by others -- and that can cause trouble, from hurt feelings to a good old-fashioned flame war. Some have taken to posting things like "/sarcasm/" when they're being sarcastic, so Sarcasm Inc. is simply looking for a shorthand way to do that. If it catches on, their new punctuation mark could be a hit. but I'm not sure selling it for $1.99 will get it into the mainstream. It's interesting to see, however, how the spoken word is used far more often than the written word in such instances -- and it shows how unable some are to pick up on sarcasm if it's written, in the absence of aural and visual cues. Frank Smith, I think, would love this.

Labors of Love and Those Darn Poppies

About a year and a half ago, I read Frank Smith’s Understanding Reading, and ate it up. As Smith explained his theories on how we, as readers, use our past experiences and the information stored in our heads to try to interpret new ideas as we read them, I gained a better understanding of how as a writer I can help guide my readers to comprehending what they need to out of what I write. I’m not doing that very well with that last sentence, however. Basically, I learned that if as a writer I apply Smith’s theories of how we comprehend what we read, I can alter what I write to make comprehension easier by doing more of what the reader anticipates.

Clay Shirky does the same thing for writers and readers and communicators as we transition from print to the Web in his book Here Comes Everybody. I’m still reading the book – one of just a few I requested for Christmas – but it’s fascinating. A bit of it I’ve heard before, especially as he uses Flickr.com to discuss the idea of publishing and having conversations about published material outside the traditional realm of publishing – without the editors, agents, and printing presses. But he’s really getting into some interesting insights in how our current technological tools are a great boon in making publishing and distribution as cheap as possible, while opening the floodgates for masses of material, some good, most of it hopelessly bad. Like this blog.

The Internet is helping many more people enter arenas where they can actively participate in labors of love:

People now have access to myriad tools that let them share writing, images, video – any form of expressive content, in fact – and use that sharing as an anchor for community and cooperation. The twentieth century, with the spread of radio and television, was the broadcast century. The normal pattern for media was that they were created by a small group of professionals and then delivered to a large group of consumers. But media, in the word’s literal sense as the middle layer between people, have always been a three-part affair. People like to consume media, of course, but they also like to produce it (“Look what I made”) and they like to share it (“Look what I found!”). Because we now have media that support both making and sharing, as well as consuming, those capabilities are reappearing, after a century mainly given over to consumption. We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love.

We are either on the cusp of a very liberating era, in which artists and writers and photographers and videographers and others come from the rank and file, not from the trained professions. This could be the Age of the Amateur, the age of Leonardos in Every City. Or we could be on the cusp of an era which could lead to a denigration of society as we concentrate in our own cliques and marginalize, poke fun at, or dismiss entirely other groups that don’t fit our labors of love, or the labors of love in which we express interest. We could be heading into 1984 or, more likely, Snow Crash.

We see both extremes on the Internet today. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of all of this. Probably a little from Column A and a little from Column B.

This is grounded on a base assumption, however, that is friable. The labors of love that Shirky describes in his text are borne of people who have the drive, the intuition, the energy, and the money to support their labors of love while also supporting themselves, families, et cetera. In other words, those who are most likely to succeed at their labors of love are likely those who would have succeeded whether the Internet were there to help them along or not. Yes, the Internet has a long tail, as Shirky describes. But those whose labors of love truthfully extend beyond the “Internet fame will have their fifteen people” cliché won’t be the masses. Does that mean the masses labors of love aren’t important to those small audiences? No. But as the world measures success today, a mere audience of fifteen won’t cut it. So there’s the promise of the Emerald City, but one has to cross that poppy field first.

Fortunately, there are lots of Pollyannas in that poppy field. That’s where I’m at, chatting away with this blog while I work on other Labors of Love with the Big L. And maybe I’m under the influence of those poppies. Twain said it’s a dangerous thing for a writer to see his name in print regularly, as it lulls him away from accomplishing something more difficult – a novel, say. The Internet is dangerous in that way. My brother-in-law, for example, has given up blogging, at least until an undetermined time in 2010, so he can finish his doctoral dissertation. He enjoys blogging as a labor of love. But he admitted blogging, which he enjoyed much more than working on the dissertation, was a distraction that was keeping him from completing that important paper. So he’s given up that labor of love. Which I understand. I applaud him for his bravery, while I cower here with the Hermit of Iapetus, while a novel I started seven years ago languishes.

I’m off now. On to that other labor of love.

Guilty Guiltiness, Part II

Frank Herbert is an interesting writer. God Emperor of Dune, like his other Dune books, is a set of conversations. Very static situations, interspersed very conservatively with action sequences that are over in the matter of a few pages. He treats action with kid gloves, while giving conversation full focus. So why am I caught up in this book? Admittedly, it's a simpler read than Dune. But might that be due to the fact I'm now familiar with Herbert's architecture, so that reading this book is easier than when I was a Dune acolyte? I found the same with Tolkein's The Silmarillion. Tried to read that as a youngster and just couln't get through it. No Bilbo whatsoever. But in the meantime, I've read LOTR over and over again. Michelle got The Silmarillion for me a few Christmases ago, and I was able to sit and read it, and actually enjoy it. The difference was I'd filled up on Tolkein before coming back to this book. Frank Smith is right in Understanding Reading that it's easier to read if you can rely on your prior knowledge.

Reminds me of Phil Connors' line from Groundhog Day: "Maybe that's how God got to be God. He's just been around for so long, he knows everything." I know that's not a direct quote; it's a paraphrase. But it's close enough to the original I'm not bothered.

On to other news: THe raids on the FLDS compound in El Dorado, Texas. Glad they did it. Utah and Arizona should have gotten more involved in breaking this mess up when the group was still in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. Don't know why they didn't. But then there's a lot of sentiment in that area that this is a question of religious tolerance, elthough it's hard to see why when we, tolerant of religion, wouldn't want to see our own children forced into ploygamous relationships. There's a big disconnect here. You didn't see people saying Elizabeth Smart's kidnappers, who put her into a polygamous relationship, should have been allowed to do so. But, they argue, that was a kidnapping. Not voluntary. I counter: What's gone on in El Dorado, marrying off children to grown adults, didn't sound all that voluntary either. Shame on them.

Twenty-Seven Below Zero

It's cold outside, folks. When I left for work this morning, it was 27 below zero (That's 32 below, for you people on the Celcius scale). Fortunately, the truck started, though it asked "You're kidding, right," when I first cranked. The sun shines through the window, but it's one of those suns that says, "Truly, I am 93 million miles away today, where it's warmer."

It's cold all over. From Montana to Maine, it's below zero. Add to that the butt-puckering panic over worldwide stock market losses, and you've got a lot of people wandering around, whimpering like the radiation victims in "The Day After." Of course, these are paper losses. No one has come to anyone's house to pull money from piggy banks because the stock markets said whaa. It's not fun, mind you. Getting those end of the year statements showing losses in what paltry stocks my wife and I own was not entertaining. And it's likely to be worse come April. But we still have food. A woodpile to feed the basement fireplace. Gas for the furnace. To quote Gloria Gaynor, "We will survive."

I've been reading a lot about reading this week, mainly in this Frank Smith text for my, uh, which class is it now? Reading Theory and Document Design. A general mish-mash of a title if I've ever heard one. A nugget from this weeks' reading: "Written language (like speech) is transparent -- we look through the actual words for the meaning beyond, and unless there are noticable anomalies of meaning, or unless we have trouble comprehending, we are not aware of the words themselves." Pretty tricky thinking. We like to think we're aware of words, especialy those of us in the trade of wordsmithing. But perhaps, keeping in mind that people use words to get to the meaning behind them, I can become a better technical writer, if not a better blogger.

Just this week we've had a debate here at work on two procedures that I and another tech writer are working. We've spent a good two days tinkering with one step in both procedures, trying to get the wording just right. I tinkered with it a bit yesterday, and thought I had it worked out. Then I took it to our criticality safety guy, whose job it is to ensure that we writers retain the meaning in the words. I struck out. He explained the meaning, and I went back to work. Second time around, the wording got across the meaning intended -- which is good, because it's a pretty important safety requirement we have to meet. What I'ev enjoyed the most about this process the last few days is how collaborative it's been. We've had two people from crit safety, two tech writers and a safety analyst poking and prodding these steps. With each of us taking the meaning we had in our heads, tinkering with words, we were able to come to an agreement on what words to use to get the meaning across. And then I got hit on the head and forgot where I was going.

Must. . .save. . .the brain!

First, there's the old Internet circular (B-65):

I cdnuold blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg!

The phaonmeal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig, huh? Yaeh I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

The contrarian in me disputes the author's assertation that spelling doesn't matter, because it certainly does to anal retentives such as I. But because this circular is readable by fluent readers confirms much of what Frank Smith writes in his book, "Understanding Reading," which I'm reading (and understanding) for my class in reading theory and document design. He writes on page 51: "Reading involves looking for meaning, not specific words." This assertion meshes wonderfully with Smith's idea of the "theory of the world in our heads." As he writes on page 55: "Our theory of the world seems ready even to make sense of almost everything we are likely to experience in spoken and written language -- a powerful theory indeed." Our theory, as Smith writes, is our "shield against bewilderment." As readers (and as human beings) we take risks, we predict. We experience bewilderment only when our efficient theory of the world fails us -- then we're surprised, we ask, "Why did that happen to me?"

Recalling the last time I felt acute bewilderment helps me understand more of what Smith is writing about (although, as he asserts, my recollections are likely to be tainted by the recent reading I've done in his book). Two years ago, I became a technical writer, leaving behind the more general writing found in journalism for the specific, attenuated world of radioactive waste disposal. My first few weeks on the job were bewildering and confusing. I understood the process of writing and editing, of attending meetings, reading e-mail and making phone calls, but up until that time, my theory of the world had not included a flood of acronyms, convoluted environmental requirements and the tribal knowledge that makes up the 50-year history of radioactivity in Idaho. My theory, though not wrong, obviously needed some augmentation. So two things came into play as I began "getting into" this job:

• Time passed. "Time and change are an essential part of the way we perceive the world," Smith writes. After a few weeks of swimming (and copious note-taking, reading and talking with peers to figure out what the hell was going on) that theory of the world in my head started collecting more information.
• I adapted my skills. "Our skills are the part of our theory of the world that enables us to interact with the world, to take the initiative in our transactions with our environment," Smith writes. No way was I going back to the worlds of journalism or telemarketing. That good ol' theory, adaptable to the end, started helping me make sense of this new world.

Am I a genius now? Not at all. But reading Smith's book helped me understand the inner workings of that adaptability. My theory of the world is now tainted by the world of radioactivity.

Reading Smtih also brought out a few random thoughts:

• Theelepeltje. I did not know what the word meant. But i recognized it as a word. I'm half Dutch, through my father's family. My eyes immediately latched onto the "tje," a common Ducth word ending. I also knew the Dutch word for tea is "thee." Teaspoon, right. What fun.
• Memory. As Smith writes about our long-term memory -- especially recall -- working on interconnections, it came to me how many childhood memories, many times the most vivid memories I have, involve eyeglasses. I started wearing eyeglasses in the 2nd grade, and recall instances of lost glasses, broken classes, stolen glasses, dirty glasses. There are also strings of memory that involve dogs, toys, avoiding Tuesday after-school Primary classes, fire (not that I burned things down as a kid; I just have a lot of fire-related memories). It's weird.
• Cultural sharing of theories of the world. Sometimes we ask ourselves, how can people act/think that way? I've read a lot about the Holocaust (my father was a civilian during World War II, and brought those war memories with him to our family), and the big questions are How could the Germans behave so badly and how could the Jews allow themselves to be slaughtered. The answers that always come back in the books I've read is that it has to do with inborn culture. Maybe this theory of the world in our heads helps me understand what that means just a little bit better.

I've babbled long enough. Suffice it to say this book really set me to thinking about what we think, what we do and what we think we do.