Saturday, July 04, 2009

Open thread

What are you up to this weekend?

9 comments:

Helen Rickerby said...

Why, thank you for asking sir.

Obviously I'm mucking around on the net, but I've also been fixing up my Seraph Press website, which has been untouched for over a year after I sort of broke something. But, I've figured out what happened and am re-learning how to use Dreamweaver. This weekend will be a catching-up-on-the-many-publishingish-things-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing weekend. But I'm also going to spend some time catching up with friends. Speaking of which, see you later...

What are you up to?

hix said...

I'm working on a couple of blog posts that'll be published next month, writing up some reviews of(and watching) Buffy Season 3, and drawing up our family tree. I'm also recovering from a very broken night of sleep filled with vivid dreams.

Oh, and I've arranged what I imagine will be a very interesting brunch for tomorrow.

Helen Rickerby said...

Intriguing..

hix said...

It is, isn't it.

(Man, I have no idea how to punctuate that sentence to give it the arch tone I'm looking for.)

Off to check out the Seraph Press site.

debbie said...

Question mark at the end. Tag questions are usually arch in tone, aren't they?

Helen Rickerby said...

Hmm, while technically it _should_ have a question mark on the end, being a rhetorical question, I think in this instance that a question mark would take away from archness of the comment, and make it seem more hesitant. Perhaps we need an archness punctuation mark, in the same way as we have the (under-utilised) sarcasm and irony puncuation marks.

debbie said...

I have had a student claim that their misused apostrophe was a deliberately ironic punctuation mark and therefore not an error. All this time I figured it was an excuse but perhaps there is a need for punctuation marks for such things. Maybe we should make the semicolon a punctuation mark for archness, nobody seems to use it much for anything else anymore and it was a once much beloved punctuation mark.

hix said...

Helen's identified my issue with the question mark: hesistancy, as opposed to archness.

What are the sarcasm and irony punctuation marks? Are they different from the interrobang?

Helen Rickerby said...

An irony mark is like a back-to-front question mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark), while a sarcasm mark is an upside-down exclamation mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm_mark).

I'm a fan of the semi-colon; I think we should revive it.