THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON
PART III: FORM AND STRUCTURE
IN THIS SECTION
3.1: Form and Structure of Words and Writing
3.2: Speech, Pronunciation & Sound
3.3: The Marks of Punctuation
3.4: The Modes of Communication
3.5: Obscure Words for Communication
3.6: Literary Devices
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3.1: Form and Structure of Words and Writing
3.2: Speech, Pronunciation & Sound
3.3: The Marks of Punctuation
3.4: The Modes of Communication
3.5: Obscure Words for Communication
3.6: Literary Devices
THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON >> HOME >> INDEX
Download the Complete Lexicon
3.3 : The Marks of Punctuation
ACCLAMATION MARK
The French author who proposed Acclamation mark in 1966 described it as “the stylized representation of the two small flags that float at the top of the bus when a head of state visits.” Acclamation is a “demonstration of goodwill or welcome,” so you could use it to say “I’m glad you could make it” or “God bless America.”
APOSTROPHE [ ' ] or [ ’ ] Denotes ownership, missing letters, or alternative to speech marks. Slanted style is traditional and older.
ASTERISK(S) [ * ] or [ ** ] - Indicates that a related note appears later in text, which is also marked by an asterisk. Where the technique is soon repeated two asterisks are used, and so on, to avoid confusion. Asterisks are also used as replacement letters in offensive words by some publications.
ASTERISM
APOSTROPHE [ ' ] or [ ’ ] Denotes ownership, missing letters, or alternative to speech marks. Slanted style is traditional and older.
ASTERISK(S) [ * ] or [ ** ] - Indicates that a related note appears later in text, which is also marked by an asterisk. Where the technique is soon repeated two asterisks are used, and so on, to avoid confusion. Asterisks are also used as replacement letters in offensive words by some publications.
ASTERISM
It has an awesome name, looks cool but is just for indicating minor breaks in text. It can also mean "untitled.” This triangular pile of asterisks has been used to divide subchapters in books and to indicate minor breaks in long text. Most books these days just use three stars in a row for breaks within chapters (***) or simply skip an extra line. It is a group of three asterisks in a triangular or horizontal formation. The horizontal variety is called a dinkus. An asterisk alone indicates a footnote or, in informal texts, the presence of swear words. A writer can draw attention to an entire passage of text that follows the symbol. Asterisms, alternatively known as triple asterisks, are also used to divide chapters, verses, stories, or any other elements in a text. Asterisms are nearly obsolete.
BACKSLASH [ \ ] Far less common in typography and writing, but increasingly common in computerized communications, notably in file and directory separators.
BRACKETS ( ) [ ] - Surround and denote relevant or helpful supplementary or incidental information, which is usually not crucial to main point.
CARET [^ ] Also called a Wedge, an Up-Arrow, and a Hat, which is cute. The word caret is Latin for "it lacks," which is convenient, because the caret is primarily used to indicate something that's missing from the original text.
CERTITUDE POINT - A mom favorite, the certitude point conveys total conviction, as in, “We are not going to the zoo and that’s FINAL!”
BACKSLASH [ \ ] Far less common in typography and writing, but increasingly common in computerized communications, notably in file and directory separators.
BRACKETS ( ) [ ] - Surround and denote relevant or helpful supplementary or incidental information, which is usually not crucial to main point.
CARET [^ ] Also called a Wedge, an Up-Arrow, and a Hat, which is cute. The word caret is Latin for "it lacks," which is convenient, because the caret is primarily used to indicate something that's missing from the original text.
CERTITUDE POINT - A mom favorite, the certitude point conveys total conviction, as in, “We are not going to the zoo and that’s FINAL!”
The opposite of the certitude point, a zigzag adds skepticism: “You think you’re going to the zoo?”
COMMA [ , ] - Ends a phrase, slight pause, connects phrases or listed items.
COLON [ : ] Prefaces a list or example or quote or other referenced item, with a pause equating to a semi-colon.
DITTO MARK [ " or - " - ] Appears in columns and lists signifying ditto, i.e., 'same as above'.
EXCLAMATION MARK [ ! ] Adds emphasis at the end of a phrase. Denotes loud speech or surprise or indignation.
FIST (Manicule) The manicule (☞)--or, if you prefer, the hand, hand director, pointing hand, pointing finger, pointer, digit, index, or indicator--was a favorite of Renaissance scholars, inked into the margin as a bookmark or aide-mémoire. Gradually, though, the manicule was appropriated by authors and advertisers, and today its pointing finger is more likely to be seen on A-boards than in book margins.
FULL-STOP/PERIOD [ . ] - Ends a sentence, a significant pause before resuming next sentence.
GUILLEMETS/ANGLE QUOTES/FRENCH QUOTES [ « » ] - Surround and denote speech or quote in some non-English foreign languages, as alternative speech marks. Named after french printer Guillaume Le Bé (1525-98). Guillemets - means "Little Williams," which is interesting but not helpful. Their primary role is in non-English languages that use them as quotation marks. Mainly used for Boolean functions and propositional calculus. Truth tables. Stuff like that.
HEDERA
COMMA [ , ] - Ends a phrase, slight pause, connects phrases or listed items.
COLON [ : ] Prefaces a list or example or quote or other referenced item, with a pause equating to a semi-colon.
DITTO MARK [ " or - " - ] Appears in columns and lists signifying ditto, i.e., 'same as above'.
EXCLAMATION MARK [ ! ] Adds emphasis at the end of a phrase. Denotes loud speech or surprise or indignation.
FIST (Manicule) The manicule (☞)--or, if you prefer, the hand, hand director, pointing hand, pointing finger, pointer, digit, index, or indicator--was a favorite of Renaissance scholars, inked into the margin as a bookmark or aide-mémoire. Gradually, though, the manicule was appropriated by authors and advertisers, and today its pointing finger is more likely to be seen on A-boards than in book margins.
FULL-STOP/PERIOD [ . ] - Ends a sentence, a significant pause before resuming next sentence.
GUILLEMETS/ANGLE QUOTES/FRENCH QUOTES [ « » ] - Surround and denote speech or quote in some non-English foreign languages, as alternative speech marks. Named after french printer Guillaume Le Bé (1525-98). Guillemets - means "Little Williams," which is interesting but not helpful. Their primary role is in non-English languages that use them as quotation marks. Mainly used for Boolean functions and propositional calculus. Truth tables. Stuff like that.
HEDERA
Hedera is Latin for ivy. Latin and Greek texts featured the attractive symbol as a paragraph divider. Though writers tend to use paragraph marks (pilcrows) now, the hedera was one of the first paragraph dividers. Though rare, you can still find it in some typefaces. You can also try searching for it by its other name, fleuron.
HYPHEN/DASH [ - ] or [ — ] Connects hyphenated words or prefixes or suffixes ; an alternative to brackets surrounding a phrase; an alternative to a comma or semicolon; and alternative to the word 'to' in dates and times, etc.
INTERROBANG - a non-standard punctuation mark [ ‽ ] indicating a question expressed in an exclamatory manner, as in what are you doing‽. The interrobang is the union of two existing punctuation marks - the exclamation point [ ! ] and the question mark [ ? ]. The question mark indicates incredulity, doubt, and wonder. The exclamation point indicates surprise, amazement, and intense emotion. It should be used to punctuate an excited or rhetorical question. Other suggested names were "emphaquest," "rhet," and "consternation mark" but interrobang stuck.
LOZENGE
HYPHEN/DASH [ - ] or [ — ] Connects hyphenated words or prefixes or suffixes ; an alternative to brackets surrounding a phrase; an alternative to a comma or semicolon; and alternative to the word 'to' in dates and times, etc.
INTERROBANG - a non-standard punctuation mark [ ‽ ] indicating a question expressed in an exclamatory manner, as in what are you doing‽. The interrobang is the union of two existing punctuation marks - the exclamation point [ ! ] and the question mark [ ? ]. The question mark indicates incredulity, doubt, and wonder. The exclamation point indicates surprise, amazement, and intense emotion. It should be used to punctuate an excited or rhetorical question. Other suggested names were "emphaquest," "rhet," and "consternation mark" but interrobang stuck.
LOZENGE
Lozenges, soothing throat drops, were originally diamond-shaped. The lozenge, if used in a text, usually serves as a bullet point. Recently, it has evolved into a more versatile symbol. It represents a thin rhombus in mathematics or a lane restriction symbol on street signs.
LOVE POINT
The equivalent of punctuating your prose with an emoji heart, the love point is two canoodling question marks sharing a period.
OBELISK
LOVE POINT
The equivalent of punctuating your prose with an emoji heart, the love point is two canoodling question marks sharing a period.
OBELISK
An obelisk, or obelus † is a typographical symbol that usually indicates a footnote if an asterisk has already been used. It is one of the modern descendants of the obelus, a mark used historically by scholars as a critical or highlighting indicator in manuscripts. (The term obelisk derives from the Greek: ὀβελίσκος (obeliskos), which means "little obelus"; from ὀβελός (obelos) meaning 'roasting spit). This bad boy and its two-headed friend the Double Dagger or Diesis, represents a javelin, which is cutting out extraneous stuff from your text. Its primary use through the ages has been to mark out superfluous repetitions in translation, though nowadays it mostly just stands in as a kind of footnote.
PARAGRAPH - line-break and indent. Not a punctuation symbol, but still punctuation, for breaking separate passages, a longer pause than a period. The first line of the new paragraph is usually indented.
PERCONTATION MARK
PARAGRAPH - line-break and indent. Not a punctuation symbol, but still punctuation, for breaking separate passages, a longer pause than a period. The first line of the new paragraph is usually indented.
PERCONTATION MARK
When punctuation was first invented by Aristophanes, librarian at Alexandria in the 4th century BC, he suggested that readers could use middle (·), low (.), and high points (˙) to punctuate writing according to the rules of rhetoric. Despite this, it took another two millennia before the eponymous rhetorical question got its own mark of punctuation. Worried that his readers would not catch such a subtle figure of speech, in the late sixteenth century the English printer Henry Denham created the percontation mark--a reversed question mark--to address the problem.
The only problem with Denham's plan was that typefaces did not generally include reversed question marks. Though his own books boasted custom-made percontation marks, other printers resorted to blackletter or italic question marks instead. (Some modern reprints have used semicolons, rotated through 180 degrees, while others employ regular question marks.) Faced with a wave of apathy, use of the percontation mark had petered out within fifty years of its birth.
PILCROW - [ ¶ ] the paragraph mark is an abandoned punctuation mark. Created in Greece in the fourth century BC as the PARAGRAPHOS, it was an horizontal line drawn in the margin of a papyrus scroll to indicate that something to note was in the corresponding line. The reader was left to determine precisely what that something was. It evolved over time into the reverse-P shape, and came to be used to break text into meaningful chunks like paragraphs and sentences. Though it is still available in word processors, the pilcrow of today is a reminder of the ancient past.
QUESTION MARK [ ? ] Prompts or demands an answer or consideration at the end of a phrase.
REFERENCE MARK - the all-encompassing term for the various symbols that indicate additional information in a footnote, endnote, bibliography, etc. You have probably seen asterisks serve in this capacity, but you can use the dagger (†) and double dagger (‡).
SARCMARK
The only problem with Denham's plan was that typefaces did not generally include reversed question marks. Though his own books boasted custom-made percontation marks, other printers resorted to blackletter or italic question marks instead. (Some modern reprints have used semicolons, rotated through 180 degrees, while others employ regular question marks.) Faced with a wave of apathy, use of the percontation mark had petered out within fifty years of its birth.
PILCROW - [ ¶ ] the paragraph mark is an abandoned punctuation mark. Created in Greece in the fourth century BC as the PARAGRAPHOS, it was an horizontal line drawn in the margin of a papyrus scroll to indicate that something to note was in the corresponding line. The reader was left to determine precisely what that something was. It evolved over time into the reverse-P shape, and came to be used to break text into meaningful chunks like paragraphs and sentences. Though it is still available in word processors, the pilcrow of today is a reminder of the ancient past.
QUESTION MARK [ ? ] Prompts or demands an answer or consideration at the end of a phrase.
REFERENCE MARK - the all-encompassing term for the various symbols that indicate additional information in a footnote, endnote, bibliography, etc. You have probably seen asterisks serve in this capacity, but you can use the dagger (†) and double dagger (‡).
SARCMARK
The SarcMark (short for “sarcasm mark”) is actually the trademarked creation of a man named Douglas Sak, who markets it as “the official, easy-to-use punctuation mark to emphasize a sarcastic phrase, sentence, or message.”
SECTION SIGN [ § ] is a mark for referencing individually numbered sections of a document; it is frequently used when citing sections of a legal code.
SEMICOLON [ ; ] Ends a phrase, a longer pause than a comma, shorter than a period.
SERIAL (OXFORD) COMMA - a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’ (e.g. an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect ).
SHEFFER STROKE [ ↑ or | ] denotes a logical operation that is equivalent to the negation of the conjunction operation, expressed in ordinary language as "not both". It is named after Henry M. Sheffer and written as ↑ or as | (but not as ||, often used to represent disjunction). In Bocheński notation it can be written as Dpq.
SLASH [ / ] - Alternative for 'or'; alternative for 'and' (in a combined sense); denotes abbreviation of a two-letter term (e.g., w/e for weekend or week ending); internet address file/directory separator; indicator of line-break in typographical mark-up instruction/notes; signifies 'divided by' in mathematics; and various others. Also called solidus, stroke, forward slash and more - it's a very useful and powerful symbol.
SNARK - also called a percontation mark. Irony is a figure of speech used to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. The need to punctuate irony runs deep in writers and typophiles. The irony mark, first printed in the mid-1800s, precedes a sentence to indicate its tone before it is read (much like some Spanish punctuation marks). The intent: Beware of crafty double meanings and arched eyebrows to follow. Writers have been proposing irony symbols since the 1600s. At one point it was proposed that the use of a percontation point, also called the rhetorical question mark or backward question mark, be used. Later, building on earlier efforts to rebrand the tilde (~) as a sarcasm mark, an American typographer named Choz Cunningham added a period to the [~ ] and [ .~ ] and the Snark was rebranded.
SOLIDUS [ / ] not to be confused with a slash! The Solidus is also called a Shilling Mark (presumably by old British dudes in top hats) and it is at a much steeper angle than a boring old backslash. Back before decimalization was a thing, the Solidus was used to set apart different values of currency from each other.
SPEECH/QUOTATION MARKS [ " " ] or [ “” ] Surround and denote speech or quote or extracted content. Slanted style is older traditional design, sometimes called 66 99, the designs are respectively called 'open quotes' and 'close quotes'.
TIE
SECTION SIGN [ § ] is a mark for referencing individually numbered sections of a document; it is frequently used when citing sections of a legal code.
SEMICOLON [ ; ] Ends a phrase, a longer pause than a comma, shorter than a period.
SERIAL (OXFORD) COMMA - a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’ (e.g. an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect ).
SHEFFER STROKE [ ↑ or | ] denotes a logical operation that is equivalent to the negation of the conjunction operation, expressed in ordinary language as "not both". It is named after Henry M. Sheffer and written as ↑ or as | (but not as ||, often used to represent disjunction). In Bocheński notation it can be written as Dpq.
SLASH [ / ] - Alternative for 'or'; alternative for 'and' (in a combined sense); denotes abbreviation of a two-letter term (e.g., w/e for weekend or week ending); internet address file/directory separator; indicator of line-break in typographical mark-up instruction/notes; signifies 'divided by' in mathematics; and various others. Also called solidus, stroke, forward slash and more - it's a very useful and powerful symbol.
SNARK - also called a percontation mark. Irony is a figure of speech used to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. The need to punctuate irony runs deep in writers and typophiles. The irony mark, first printed in the mid-1800s, precedes a sentence to indicate its tone before it is read (much like some Spanish punctuation marks). The intent: Beware of crafty double meanings and arched eyebrows to follow. Writers have been proposing irony symbols since the 1600s. At one point it was proposed that the use of a percontation point, also called the rhetorical question mark or backward question mark, be used. Later, building on earlier efforts to rebrand the tilde (~) as a sarcasm mark, an American typographer named Choz Cunningham added a period to the [~ ] and [ .~ ] and the Snark was rebranded.
SOLIDUS [ / ] not to be confused with a slash! The Solidus is also called a Shilling Mark (presumably by old British dudes in top hats) and it is at a much steeper angle than a boring old backslash. Back before decimalization was a thing, the Solidus was used to set apart different values of currency from each other.
SPEECH/QUOTATION MARKS [ " " ] or [ “” ] Surround and denote speech or quote or extracted content. Slanted style is older traditional design, sometimes called 66 99, the designs are respectively called 'open quotes' and 'close quotes'.
TIE
The tie and its variations, double breve, papyrological hyphen, ligature tie, and undertie, are used to represent the Greek alphabet, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. Z notation is a language used for computing systems. It might be useful to know how ties affect pronunciation in a phonetic alphabet, but the average person will not have many opportunities to use this typographical symbol in English.
TIRONIAN ET
TIRONIAN ET
To abbreviate the word "and” we use the ampersand [ & ]. But it hasn’t always been this way. The 7-shaped "Tironian et" was the brainchild of Tiro, secretary to the first century BC orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. Part of a system of Latin shorthand created at Cicero's request, Tiro's mark survived into the middle ages as an abbreviation for the word et, or "and." Due to an uncomfortable resemblance to pagan runes, Tiro's system was pushed into disuse. It exists in Irish Gaelic, but the rest of the world uses the ampersand.
UNDERSCORE [ _ ] or [ ___ ] - Adds emphasis to underlined passage. Single underscore symbol is used as alternative to hyphen to make continuous unbroken filenames and other electronic data.
VIRGULE - from Latin meaning twig. This symbol may refer to the alas [ / ] or the vertical bar [ | ]. Virgule is also the French name for the comma [ , ].
UNDERSCORE [ _ ] or [ ___ ] - Adds emphasis to underlined passage. Single underscore symbol is used as alternative to hyphen to make continuous unbroken filenames and other electronic data.
VIRGULE - from Latin meaning twig. This symbol may refer to the alas [ / ] or the vertical bar [ | ]. Virgule is also the French name for the comma [ , ].
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SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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A Beautiful Word: Web | Download (beautiful words)
The Logophile Lexicon: Web | Book (words about words)
Defining New Ideas: Web | Book (creativity & design)
Defining the Brain: Web | Downloads (terms of the mind)
INTRODUCTION | TOPIC INDEX | DOWNLOAD
www.logophilelexicon.com
SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
A collection of Vocabulary Words & Terms By Kai of www.bykairos.com
The Collection Includes:
A Beautiful Word: Web | Download (beautiful words)
The Logophile Lexicon: Web | Book (words about words)
Defining New Ideas: Web | Book (creativity & design)
Defining the Brain: Web | Downloads (terms of the mind)
INTRODUCTION | TOPIC INDEX | DOWNLOAD
www.logophilelexicon.com