Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/30/8-weird-punctuation-marks-that-faded-from-the-english-language.html
…
9 Likes
Oh this hasn’t faded from use in modern legal writing. One of the first things I learned in law school was the keyboard shortcut for this symbol. Option-6 on a mac. I actually don’t know what it is on a PC.
44 Likes
It’s still used here in Germany to denote specific articles of a law, e.g., you would use “§53 UrhG” to refer to article 53 of the copyright code (Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte, or Urheberrechtsgesetz to its friends).
Accordingly “§” has its officially rightful place on the German standard keyboard, as Shift-3 (elsewhere occupied by the hash mark, which Germans don’t tend to need unless they’re programmers).
28 Likes
Is this today’s AI offering, again clothed in a brand-new author’s name? For the previous two see here:
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/5-incredible-facts-about-monks-who-poison-themselves-for-1-000-days-to-become-mummies/275600/13?u=anothernewbbaccount
ETA I had a message from admin that the post above has been hidden because it was flagged. Can’t really understand why.
17 Likes
Such a punctuation mark would absolutely ruin the irony, which is, in itself, ironic. I love it!
11 Likes
Yeah, that’s the same usage as here. We just don’t have it on the keyboard.
6 Likes
I use the caret all the time in Word’s ‘search and replace’ for things like Tabs, Paragraph Breaks, and other specialized characters.
13 Likes
ISTR that it used to be common practice to use the dagger and double dagger for the 2nd and 3rd footnotes on a page. These days of course it’s usually multiple asterisks.
13 Likes
I’d take the irony mark or the snark over the less elegant but necessary “/s” .
12 Likes
Shift-Right Alt-S on the US International keyboard: §
5 Likes
Same here. As you probably know, it’s also used in some (many?) programming languages for the exponent operator, e.g. 2^4 = 16.
12 Likes
Sounds like a Fun Fact!
1 Like
§ is a first class citizen in both Swedish and Italian layouts, right left of ‘1’, and unshifted in the former, in the latter it’s shift-ù, on ASDF row, right next to Enter.
I just use it every now and then to refer to specific paragraphs or clauses in a standard - but that’s just for kicks on forums*, TBH.
*fora, foropodes.
5 Likes
As far as “snark” or “irony” indications, we have the large set of internet inspired “tone indicators” to forget about /s
| /j | joking |
|---|---|
| /hj | half joking |
| /js | just saying |
| /s or /sarc | sarcastic / sarcasm |
| /srs | serious |
| /nsrs | not serious |
| /lh | light hearted |
| /hlh | half light hearted |
| … and so on |
(hat-tip unto @gracchus above)
11 Likes
Also ^regular expressions$
14 Likes
Yeah, seeing both the section item and the caret on here are really odd, since both are still widely used.
I suppose, if one never interacts with anything legal or literature based, perhaps you wouldn’t see them?
7 Likes
Binary XOR operator in C, Rust (and others)
a = b ^ c; // This line is correct in both C and Rust, including the comment
Pointers in Pascal
var ptoi: ^integer;
8 Likes
I work for a UP and we still use the daggers that way sometimes, but only when it’s unavoidable for some reason. Of course, we prefer to have all notes be endnotes at the end of the text, but a few authors are still allowed their occasional footnotes.
Some of these of course did not ‘fade’ from usage but were never widely adopted in the first place.
4 Likes
Number 4 will shock you!
Seriously, what’s been happening the last few days? Did Buzzfeed die and bequeath their headline generator to Boing Boing?
16 Likes
“these days”? Was there a time when BB had good headlines?
3 Likes
