Fuck it: Language Evolution
July 15, 2009
I was originally writing a very long, in-depth post about how language evolves and specific words tend to become de-contextualized over time. But bah. Whatever. Someone who uses/overuses awesome so liberally has no right to complain.
So instead, I'll just briefly (yes, this is brief compared to what I had going before) mention that sexy (when applied to software, cars, mp3 players, etc) really bothers me. I think it's because it's original connotation is so readily apparent. It seems as though the awe in awesome can get somewhat lost. And brilliant hasn't been used to describe light in what now, a few hundred years*? (Not to mention the fact that its French base is obscured by the fact that... it's French.) But the sex in sexy is right there, taking up 3/4 of the entire word. It's unavoidable and hard to overlook. And I've never found a car or mp3 player to be sexually attractive or arousing. Software, on the other hand, could be arousing (see Strip Poker video games), but these are not the pieces of software to which sexy is commonly applied. Grrrrrr.
While I'm complaining like an old man, let me also say that I. HATE. THE. USE. OF. FULL-STOPS. AS. DELIMITERS. FOR. DRAMATIC. EFFECT. Seriously, what's wrong with ellipses?
* I kid. But still...
Posts
July 16, 2009 at 6:53 AM
Technically ellipses aren't the right thing to use either, since you haven't elided anything. Punctuation can be flexible: besides marking the end of the sentence, a period also, pronunciation-wise, marks a full pause. You could use commas, which also function (in this same context) as pauses, but I think periods look much nicer.
I, HATE, PERIODS, USED, etc.
does not have the same effect as
I. HATE. JOE'S. HAIRCUT.
right?
Seriously, though: love that haircut.
July 16, 2009 at 11:46 AM
As much as I hate to quote Wikipedia as fact, I've read this in serious style guides too (I just can't remember any web references as quickly as wikipedia right now) [emphasis mine]:
"Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from the Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, "omission") is a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (aposiopesis)."
July 16, 2009 at 11:53 AM
ALSO, I'm from the syntactical school of punctuation, so commas and periods are not used to denote timing of a reading, but to denote structure of sentence. Any timing changes they bring about are solely a byproduct of their sentence structure mark up.