They’ve been using the clickbaity Buzzfeed style of “x weird/strange/odd y…” every day this week. It’s been multiple author/editors, too. I probably just didn’t get the memo. Because I don’t get memos.
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Or the illustrious very human writer “Sam Barton” invented the listicle and we should be happy to have them. /s
Most of these have faded from use because they don’t exist on a standard PC keyboard (except ^). Fun fact: the C language uses every darn key on an ASCII keyboard. C++ had to concatenate symbols to add more operators.
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And did Buzzfeed also bequeath their AI writing tool to BB? Three posts like this in the past couple of days. New authors (Sam Barton, Ellsworth Toohey, and B.R. O’Deal) and all presented in the list/sub-head/section format, with similar list type headlines.
(I’ve already had one comment hidden for saying as much.)
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That is a fun fact!
(exclamation point ,not “not”)
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I can grok their usage if there’s one or two footnotes; I’ve seen that plenty of times in charts, of all things, for footnotes to that particular cell / row / column to add additional context to the data being presented. (I’ve also seen an entire column dedicated for “notes” when half the damn table has footnotes…)
Then there’s emacs, which will cheerfully use the Space Cadet Keyboard with their SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, HYPER, and META keys for ALL the characters. /silly
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Fun fact! Author’s name is actually BRODE AI.
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What‽ Why‽ Is this a post about obscure and underused punctuation‽
Team ‽ all the way!
There are some secret subreddits, and at-least one has a bot that searches for people that use the ‽ and send invites to those that use the under appreciated punctuation mark, or it did before the limitations on APIs and bots.
There are few objects I want, but a manual typewriter with an interrobang slug is one of them. At least I have keyboard auto-replacement charters for ‽ and a few other often used Unicode symbols.
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isn’t it standard keyboard use to type ?! as a modern interrobang?
that’s how i use it and when i type ?! i mean to use it as that.
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International English keyboard has § and (shift) ± to the left of numerals, I had no idea the US had a different keyboard layout.
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I remember when <g> was trendy. It feels now like its moment was so brief.
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The New York Times bestseller list uses the dagger to indicate books that appear on the list because of group or bulk purchases, indicating that some entity is trying to game the results.
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posted on boing boing a while back, too.
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Besides daggers for footnotes, I have seen them used like little tombstones to mark deaths or extinct groups, although some have questioned the Christian bias in that notation.
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I also use it frequently and didn’t know that, thanks! I did set up a keyboard shortcut so every time I type ss it converts to §.
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That sounds annoying.
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Especially if some of your common writing includes certain classic models of Chevrolet.
I’d like to also chime in that section sign is alive and well. I probably just read too many government regulations.
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Quite a number of keyboards have a specialized § key
macintosh Norwegian keyboard.
perhaps it’s more common in Norwegian texts. Maybe Norwegian lawyers are especially happy.
and then there’s the optional character sets on a mac keyboard
Those are more awkward to type-- so best reserved for special purposes, if at all.
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Yeah, I just went through the past ten pages of the front page at BoingBoing, and those three really stood out.
- New authors
- Listical formats
- Not actually about anything current – not news, not even internet meme-y news, but articles that could have equally been written 5 or 10 years ago and no one would have known the difference.
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I use it far more than I accidentally trigger it. It requires a space after, so it doesn’t trigger for letter combos within words. I work in a highly regulated industry and have to look up CFR references constantly, even when I’ve read them hundreds of times. Using § makes lookup much more accurate.
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