this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

¿

When reading out loud it's helpful to know right away that the sentence you're starting is a question.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 weeks ago

I really like that in a longer sentence, you can tell exactly where the question part starts.

That would be a good feature to have, ¿ wouldn't it?

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 5 points 2 weeks ago

Not even spaniards use them in nonformal written format my dude.

[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 36 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I would love a combination of "?" and ",". This would allow me to mark a specific part of a sentence as a question.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

A sentence which embeds a question is a run-on sentence.

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We speak in run-on sentences.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 weeks ago

As someone with ADHD you have no idea how correct you are.

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 weeks ago

I've done this before. Example

I was going somewhere yesterday, the bank?, when I saw....

It's also fun to interject bangs into sentences too

I was so convinced that I was going to die!, but I ended up just fine.

Ultimately, I feel that if language is descriptive and not ambiguous it is legitimate English.

[–] ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 7 points 2 weeks ago

If I understand @xmunk@sh.itjust.works's comment elsewhere in this thread properly, I think that's what a pause interrogative may be. I also agree with them that it (and the interrogative start) does better fit some ways of speaking.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Either the whole thing is a question or you need to break it up.

I'm curious if you can convince me otherwise though!

[–] psoul@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

“Maybe we can meetup tomorrow? And I’d love to know what you want to do.”

Can be split up into two sentences but sometimes, when spoken, is said as a continuous sentence.

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[–] pipe01@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago

Spanish has ¿ and ?, not sure if that's what you mean

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[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Pause interrogatives and interrogative starting marks - aka ,? and ¿

Interrogative starting marks are extremely useful for clarity and pause interrogatives better align with natural speech.

Eh buddy, me and Bob were thinking of heading down to Timmes. ¿Do you want to come,? there's a sale on the chili.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] OfCourseNot@fedia.io 6 points 2 weeks ago

Here, ¡¡¡¡, you can have some of mine. I barely use them these days anymore.

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[–] stinerman@midwest.social 25 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Punctuation to mark sarcasm would be rather helpful in text.

[–] captainjaneway@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago

sure it would

[–] LuxSpark@lemmy.cafe 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's a fabulous idea ⇅

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Reddit had /s.

I like yours better but can't figure out how to input it.

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[–] PiJiNWiNg@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago

A sarcastimark, if you will

[–] dpflug@kbin.earth 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, no one's come up with one⸮ Even if they did, it probably wouldn't make it into Unicode. 🙄

😁

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

To express a range of numbers, Korean (and likely other Asian languages) will use a tilde instead of a dash or hyphen. To me, that better expresses that we're talking about an indeterminate value or a range. Especially when we use ~ for "about", as in ~$20 for something that costs $17.99 before tax, for example.

Dining out costs like 20~40 dollars per person!

Whereas "20-40" looks too similar to a subtraction equation or a hyphenated word to me.

[–] 404@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

In properly formatted text, you use en dash for ranges.

En dash: 20–40

Hyphen: 20-40

Some (most?) modern text editors will substitute two hyphens with an en dash, so you can easily generate them by typing --.

(I get your point though! Just wanted to point out that there are much nicer and more appropriate glyphs than the hyphen.)

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

En dash is very useful for

Dates (3–20–25)
Subtraction (although I think math script uses its own unique dash?) (7 – 1 = 6)
Value ranges ($20–40)

Then of course there's the beautiful—and slightly different—em dash!

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

USA English also uses ~ before a number to signify "about" in informal contexts. "It costs ~$20".

Chemistry has a weird one for this: "ca. 20 mL" means "about 20 mL" and I never found out why.

[–] ajoebyanyothername@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] Skua@kbin.earth 3 points 2 weeks ago

It is circa, but I like to think it's "chemist's approximately"

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[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

≈ is what my math classes use

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[–] doleo@lemmy.one 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

English would benefit from using tilde and other inflection marks, especially to help non natives predict syllable stress.

Having words from multiple languages integrated into English means it’s difficult to predict how words will be pronounced.

Yeah, English using accents to mark stress would be very useful

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[–] Barney@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I feel like the interrobang ‽ is highly underutilised.

[–] Viskio_Neta_Kafo@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Wow I wonder if I can even find it on the keyboard‽

took quite a while lol.

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago

I wish it was on basic keyboards. I love ?! but I am in love with ‽ .

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I’ve always liked § and ¶. I also don’t see people using ≈ and ~ in context enough. They’re fun to write.

Edit: Almost forgot this guy, too: ‽

[–] Badabinski@kbin.earth 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The noble interrobang will one day shine like the star it is.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Are you kidding‽ I use it all the time! It's even on my phone keyboard.

Did you know that there's even an inverted interrobang? ⸘ I don't know why, but it exists.

[–] OfCourseNot@fedia.io 5 points 2 weeks ago

Spanish has opening question and exclamation marks, you would put this inverted interrobang at the beginning of your questclanation as in '⸘Por qué no los dos‽'.

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[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

I want uppercase numbers

[–] MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

A parentheses-like mark to group parts of a sentence when it's not clear which part a word belongs to. An example I saw lately that may not translate very well: "You are required to arrive an hour early so there's time to do x, do y and do z". Are you required to do y and z or do you just need the extra time to do them? You can usually tell from context but this type of mixup does happen sometimes.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I wish we had either a single grammatical notation or some kind of special encapsulation to denote sarcasm, because I just hate how "/s" looks. Especially in a hand written paper. It is 100% an internetism and it shows. Most people probably don't even know why there is a forward slash in it. Lemmings probably do, but most of us are internet gremlins so of course we'd know.

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[–] sxan@midwest.social 5 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I wish English had a word like the German "doch," to answer questions like "you're not afraid?"

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not punctuation, but sartalics. It's italics format but slanted the other direction. Somebody invented it then made it a funny you have to pay for like a jackass instead of working to make it a formating option to there with bold, underline, and italics.

It's intended to be used for sarcasm, as the name implies.

Barring that, a punctuation mark for sarcasm works be nice.

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[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

/s is an interesting addition and could use a glyph

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