I love figuring out how we figure things out. That’s the joy of having a five-year-old… you get to see everything through a pair of unjaded eyes. But every so often, you get a chance to revisit something with a wiser brain than you had before.
The example that comes to mind is the syntax we use in written communication to emphasize a point. We have bold and italics and underlines. In a past age, we had ALL CAPS. AND WE HAVE NET-ETIQUETTE THAT FROWNS ON SUCH. The latter example aside, we code those words as <strong>bold</strong> and <em>italics</em> and <u>underlines</u>. Or we have advanced editors do the coding for us.
What has set us back is the proliferation of instant messages, SMS on the cell, and blog comments where you are limited in your coding. How do you go about specifying your emphasis in plain text?
Ask Travis Bickle: t1.mp3
Anyway, the emphasis is important, even if it gets lost in written communication. That’s why – in my humble opinion – so many of us have improvised with our own syntax for expression. But how do we code the informal information so it can be understood without a key?
How DO you go about specifying your emphasis in plain text?
How DO *YOU* go about specifying your emphasis in PLAIN text?
Two very different questions. The first is a question of the process. The second is an entreaty to ask how a particular individual can work without html tags. And the second also has a hidden help – a clue for unraveling the code. It has a wrapper.
The DO YOU in caps hints at an equality, but the *’s around YOU elevates it to a yet-higher level. I’m willing to bet that most of you didn’t need an explanation – it just never occurred to you that any encoding/decoding was going on. It has become second nature to many who have traded the convenience and speed of text messaging for the uncertainty that plain text communicates. Not only did most of us do the decoding without conscious thought – we also recognized the need for the encoding without a prompt. It’s the kind of thing you can take for granted – but makes teaching a five-year-old that much easier.
(Maybe I can get Tim to weigh in on this…)
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s Razr, language, syntax, Taxi Driver, html, sms, text messaging, codes[/tags]
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Your – How DO *YOU* – works for me. Using bolds, underlines etc is certainly useful for creating emphasis particularly when we are writing online. However, the great writers of the past didn’t rely on these techniques. Context and good punctuation helped create the emphasis they wanted to achieve. Read any great novel to be reminded! I am not sure that instant messaging, SMS etc represent a set-back so much as a challenge. Writing briefly is almost always more difficult than writing at length. We need the mind of a haiku master combined with syntext creativity!