53 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
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AN UNPRINTABLE VERB PIECE
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By Thos. O'Brien
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M.L. Verb sent me an article for inclusion in this week's issue of The
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National Satirist which you won't get to read because it's unprintable. It
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happens that I am not the guilty censor in this matter; rather, it is the
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computer protocol regarding certain symbols which must take the blame. For you
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see, the word processing routine we use in order to sensibly publish via
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CompuServe will not accept use of ampersands.
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(You probably know an ampersand is also known as the "and" symbol. It's a
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cute squiggly thing that I personally use often--except in here.)
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So I'm going to plagiarize and otherwise mess around with the good Mr. Verb's
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commentary here in order to loan you the gist of his thinking.
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Verb noted that a friend has long espoused eliminating use of all double
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letters in written E}inglish. This friend has apparently felt that double leters
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are unecesary and wasteful. This friend has thoughT 1o simplify the language by
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foreshortening certain words which contain double letters--both vowels and
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consonants.
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But Verb came to the rescue, noting that it is dificult to retain proper and
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necesary sensibility when striking out double leters.
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Instead, Verb suggested that we use some of the keys on our typewriters which
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don't get much use. For instance, the "at" symbol: @.
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Words with "at" in them would be spelled, for example: C@. (Meaning: Cat.)
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A sentence: "The c@ in the h@ is f@.
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In the above sentence, pronounciation doesn't change even though a net savings
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of three letters was realized. Think of the time saved in writing it!
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Other symbols can be applied to this system. To wit:
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The minus symbol (-) could be put to use for shortening the name of a famous
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Italian soup: -trone.
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The ampersand has lots of uses for anything with "and" in it, but I can't give
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you examples because of what I mentioned above about computer protocols.
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There are quite a few others, for instance: Plus (+) could be substituted in
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words like Army sur+ sale; the equal (=) sign for George Lucas' Star Wars
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series of s=s (sequels); half of the parentheses (()), called, I believe, a
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"paren," for denoting mom and dad--your (ts.)
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Get the idea?
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A dash (--) is useful: "I've got to ^%#=#!e store," or "The --board of my
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car is black."
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Some are ambiguous or have double meanings. That minus (-) sign is often also
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a hyphen (-). So when you talk to someone in Hollywood, that land of
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Writer-Director hyphenates, er, -ates, they might not mistake your meaning to be
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minusates, whatever they are.
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Other symbols just plain don't have usable or standard names. For instance,
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some call the stroke a slash and vice versa. So how would you go for this:
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"He died of a heat/."
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Did he die from a heatstroke or a heatslash?
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And this one: (). Is that a backwards stroke? A backwards slash? An
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"accent graves"?
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Come to think of it, I really could have printed Verb's piece. It would have
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been just as unreadable as this one is.
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