Ovejita, niño mío, vámonos a la orilla del mar

okay so by "implications", what i really mean are conclusions of arguments. when people are just stating these statements, they don't necessarily mean for them to be premises in a deductive argument, but if we don't think through it slowly, we can jump to a conclusion based on the premises, even when it's not deductively valid.

of course, this is a very helpful skill! Consider:

1) the lion hid behind the bush

2) when things go behind a bush, they're usually still there

Therefore the lion is still behind the bush

Being able to very quickly make inductive arguments like this is very useful to one's survival. the arguments from the two premises in the months case and the sun case aren't inductive, unless you add "when people say two related facts next to each other, they're usually connected". But the snap judgement is the same

An important thing to do in philosophy, when analysing deductive arguments, is to check that they're valid. If they're not, is there a hidden premise that would make it valid? If there's not, the argument's invalid. If there is, the argument as written is still invalid, but there's more information for you to figure out whether you should accept the conclusion.

Going back to the months and sun cases, consider these as third premises:

3) July and August were newly added months

This turns out to be false. January and February were the last two months added. Before that, Winter was simply an intercalary period. July and August were later renamings of the months Quintilis and Sextilis.

3) The sun will die when it runs out of hydrogen

well yes, it will, but first it will compress a bit, and fuse heavier elements all the way up to iron. Altogether, this is a process that will take our sun a few billion years.

¹the furniture one might seem a bit weirder because it's a set of countables but suppose two houses. You enter the first house and go "ooh, i like this furniture". You enter the second house and go "hmm, actually i might prefer this furniture to that furniture". Later on, someone asks you "which of those furnitures did you prefer?" Now you're not sure which, and you hesitate, so the person reframes their question: "come on, if you had to pick a furniture, which would you choose" et voilà, "a furniture" is grammatical.

.

Nice and simple, does exactly what it intends to do, and everyone understands it as such. The non-standard usage of it as creating. An. Angry. Staccato. Between. Words. is also effective. I'm ambivalent about its usage in acronyms, and moderately happy with the way it's formatted in sentences with a space (or two if you're like that) after and none before, but I think the latter's just due to familiarity.

That's meant to be a space, but it is handily invisible. Goodbye old latin hello spacing between words my belovèd. Does its job amiably, no notes.

“” (alternatively "" „“ „” «» ——)

There are a lot of variations for quotation marks, especially between languages. This review is mainly of English usage but i included some others for funsies. First of all "" is the worst. It's the one i use most on here because it's the easiest to get on a mobile keyboard, but it has no pizzaz, and can be confusing when there are multiple quotations side by side. on the whole i prefer quotations that use unique quotation marks, rather than relying on multi-purpose parenthetical marks. Also very much in favour of using quotation marks when referring to a word rather than using it. Please do not just put a word in quotation marks when you're using it rather than referring to it, even as a value judgement. Value judgements in quotation marks tend to come across as sarcastic these days (but are also very nice as sarcasm markers. Feel free to use them for sarcasm) (oh also if you're using the word but pointing to the fact you're sourcing It from somewhere else. very nice use if quotation marks).

(small shoutout to single quotes btw ‘’ '' ‚‘ ‚’ etc. same review of the straight ones being worse, but also single quotes are only cool when inside a larger set of double quotes. maybe i'll let you off otherwise for putting one word inside single quotes, but it's just a bit too minimalist, generally speaking)

()

Brackets! Look, I have good reason for not calling them parentheses. Brackets can be used as parentheses (like this) (can you tell I overuse them?), but you can also use them elsewise, like in mathematical or logical notation, which very much are not parenthesising, and you can use other punctuation as parenthesis. i'm a big fan of overusing brackets. i have no qualms about brackets within brackets (like that (this)), except that it is ever so slightly ugly. i used to do it a lot but now i seem to instead put two sets of single brackets (like that) (this), which i'll also probably find ugly in a few years but i think it's funny rn so going to keep using it in informal situations.

'

Apostrophe. Or apostrophe, depending on how you pronounce it. this is probably the punctuation mark i have the most opinions on. Back in the day when this first crossed over into English, there was no standards on when you could contract things with it, or how many you could use in a word (think Shakespeare era. they were having way too much fun). By the 1800s things settled down a bit and they made some formal rules on when it should be used. It should be used for existing contractions (can't get away with making new ones up willy-nilly now that you have this), and for possession, the latter of which being the stupidest set of grammar rules to ever grace this earth. obviously these rules are all artificial and there's things to be said from a prescriptivist vs descriptivist perspective, but punctuation is a bit more interesting then other features of language. Because whereas features of spoken language should obviously be analysed descriptively, punctuation is a little bit more of an art. yes, follow the usage, but the invention of all punctuation is more artificial than the natural evolution of language, and so i think the best standard to measure punctuation by is how well it helps the reader understand how the writer is attempting to convey their message as a speaker, without unnecessarily bogging down the writing. And the apostrophe is useless. Everyone knew what "dont" meant before they added an apostrophe to make it "don't". You get more context out of "parent's" vs "parents'" vs "parents" written down than in speech, suggesting that context clues in the sentence rendered the differentiation unnecessary. The possessive rules are so unnecessary and I don't think they'll survive the next few hundred years. Also, these possession rules, when they were added, were not added to pronouns, leaving us with the travesty of "its" and "it's" which has unnecessarily confounded school children for the past couple of centuries. And the reasoning for adding apostrophes to possession in the first place is false. it's not a contracting an "e" that existed in old English. the "e" wasn't in every declension and was long gone by the time the apostrophe arrived. this is not to say i dislike clarity, but that apostrophes should, for the most part, remain optional.

[] {}

Other brackets! Not many opinions about their usage in typical English sentences. Can be useful when there are a lot of brackets in play, I suppose? Also :] is a fun little guy. Also [REDACTED]

!

I think usage of the exclamation mark has become more conservative over time, as exclamatory expressions have increased. this is based on no evidence except vibes. exclamation marks these days seem to be more "woah!" "amazing!" "That's horrifying!" etc, whereas i get an older vibe from more toned-down usage like "it is quite a nice day, after all!", which might be more likely to just have a . these days.

‽

Yes i'm reviewing the interrobang. I've never liked it since I was little, because I didn't think it did it's job very well. "!?" really conveys the shock it's meant to. Compare "what!?" and "what‽". The latter just doesn't hit. However, in light of my musings on the older, less dramatic use of exclamation, I think the interrobang is actually quite well-suited. Compare "why are you out and about at this hour‽" when you bump into an old friend on an early morning run, with "why are you out and about at this hour!?" when your family is frantically calling you and you should be back for dinner. So fine, 1 (one) valid use of the interrobang

!!

I didn't used to like double exclamation mark. "Go for one or go for three! What does two even do?" I asked myself on a KS2 bitesize quiz question where a little alien gave various options of how many exclamation marks one should choose. these days, !! is all over the internet and i have to come to love it. A cutesy little punctuation mark, it has the urgency to use a non-standard grammatical form, whilst holding back from being a full triple exclamation.

!!!

One thing i love about both this and the double exclamation is that they're "non-grammatical", as in, you wouldn't see them in a formal text. But as I alluded to with the double, it is precisely this formally incorrect nature of them that makes them so effective. To be so incensed as to feel you have to break out of permissible grammatical structure to get the intensity of the message across. That's the art of punctuation, baby!

Making this a proper, formally recognised piece of grammar would destroy its fundamental nature, which is why i'll leave it out here in the dark with all-caps.

!!!!

Okay nvm what are you doing. Any more than three and you might as well spam tonnes of them. What advantage does four have? It's just wanting to go to five but toning it down a little bit for a cutesy vibe like two. It's not more dramatic than three, and in my opinion should not be used.

!!!!!

Okay fine. You can go to five. If you have to. Increased exclamation marks become meaningless after this point.

^

I appreciate this in handwritten pieces to add in letters or words you forgot. i forget a lot.

?

i love the question mark. it's so unique, and fun, but also well-established. It usefully denotes something present in speech (although i'd be interested to know of any languages that don't inflect or anything for questions. do you still use a mark in writing to express it?).

!?

As described in the interrobang section, !? is brilliant, no notes, inspires the exact reaction it's meant to, and is more exclamatory than ! itself without resorting to !!!

—

the em dash seems to be the people's favourite piece of punctuation. anyway, my opinion is controversial. in most cases, i severely dislike it.

It's a multi-purpose punctuation (which I already said I don't often like in the quotation marks section). Em dashes can be used as parentheses, as quotations, in place of colons, in place of commas, in place of semi-colons etc. they're an unspecific break, which lets them be used sloppily and not artistically :(

i'm a big fan of purposeful punctuation, and i think there are maybe 2 instances of good, purposeful, em dashes. the first is in poetry. Emily Dickinson used loads of em dashes, but i like them because they are purposeful. They express rhythm, meter, and the thought process of the imagined speaker of the poems. The other use, is as a less bold colon.

:

The colon is fine. it does what it's meant to do, and everyone understands it. the only problem is that it's very... bold. Very... emphatic. Sometimes you want to use a colon but less emphatically, and so i begrudgingly use an em dash. most of the time i'll probably still opt for a colon. there seems no way to make a satisfyingly less-emphatic colon equivalent, as any newly-invented punctuation will, by it's nature, be more noticeable than a colon. Sad.

;

my belovèd semi-colon. i tend to use them egregiously when texting, which can be a little embarrassing sometimes but i just think they're the optimum piece of punctuation to use over text. it's a medium where separate messages act as punctuation to separate main ideas anyway (hence the lack of full stops in all-but long messages, except for people who are far more used to non-texting written communication). Semicolons are perfect for the sort of break in text messages that don't warrant a separate message. i once wanted to find out if anyone agreed with me on this, so i googled something like "semi-colons best for texting" and came across an Observer article calling it "the perfect punctuation for the digital age" so i've been vindicated actually and will take no criticism 😌😌/j

-

good ol' hyphen. Please do not use it when you mean an em or en dash. in american english, it's common for words to drop the hyphen and just smoosh the words together when they become common, but this is far less common in british english (hence my usage of semi-colon over semicolon), so i only tend to do so when making a specific attempt to normalise a term (e.g. nonbinary). the fact that you can purposefully omit them is the most interesting thing about hyphens. i tend to overuse them by connecting certain adverbs to adjectives, such as "less-emphatic" a couple of paragraphs up.

–

Look, does anyone know how to use an en dash correctly? turns out i've spent a lot of time accidentally using hyphens or em dashes. i can tell a hyphen looks wrong in 5-10 as opposed to 5–10, but i'd be more hard-pressed to notice that "the red-green variation" was wrong as opposed to "the red–green variation". in fact, since there are situations where adjectives do need hyphenating, i think this latter use of en dashes is redundant. forget what i said in the previous paragraph; i'm fine with you using a hyphen here.

⸺

i'm pretty sure the 2 em dash is only used to show that part or all of a word is missing or redacted. i mean it does it's job i guess but do you really need that and the one below this

⸻

the 3 em dash is only for indenting multiple citations by an already-referenced author, and only in certain reference styles. can't this just be replaced by a tab?

speaking of which, here it is. it's invisible again. i like tabbing the start of a paragraph in. does it improve legibility? maybe. is it pretty much just a style thing? yes. does it bare any resemblance to something the speaker is trying to convey? only if you count it as part of the paragraph change. Also i personally don't tab in the first paragraph after a heading. just a stylistic choice. and i don't tab in when i'm typing on a phone because it's so hard to get a tab.

¶

am tired of invisible characters, so i'm putting in a pilcrow for a paragraph break. anyway, you know what a paragraph is. Makes writing more legible in divisions that occur along conceptual rather than purely grammatical boundaries. useful, but quite pedestrian so there's not much else i have to say about them.

??

Double question mark!! it's giving bemused and informal. i like it.

???

Another non-standard repeated punctuation, with two uses. one as a more exclamatory question, which is fine. i think it's acceptable in informal writing to use these in place of !? and it still carries the intended meaning. The second is at a unit of speech in its own right, such as "i went to ??? to see ???, which was okay i guess (???)". i love this. it doesn't sound like anything and yet it does? a very fun use of punctuation.

????

mayyyybe as an equivalent of the second meaning of ??? but to represent a longer word? idk. feels like erosion of the question mark. not really a fan.

!??, !!?, !?!, ??!, ?!!, ?!?, ?!

i'm not going to go into the reeds of all these except to say that i think it looks better if you have all your exclamation marks before your question marks. ?! is a minor exception but i just think !? works better in most cases. and do not switch from exclamations to questions and back again or vice versa unless you're using a bajillion of them like "WHAT!!?!?!?!!?!?!??!!????", which becomes more comedic than seriously trying to use all the punctuation meaningfully. if you're trying to use a bajillion of them in a meaningfully outraged way, don't try. it just looks humourous.

…

make sure to use … rather than ... as ellipsis. actually nvm who cares, it literally is just three full stops/periods and has been since before it was made its own character. they don't always look the same, though they do to me here on tumblr, and word processors will often automatically correct them. use three periods if you like. i'm not a cop

..

no. not even if you end a sentence on an abbreviation which naturally includes its own. just looks a little goofy.

& +@

should i include shorthand forms in this? the ampersand isn't anything that interesting. The @ is more interesting in the ways it's become used online to tag people, but i still don't think it's that interesting from a punctuation perspective, if it can even be classed as punctuation. i appreciate the rare usage of + instead of &. it's not all that common and it's stylistically messy, but as a shorthand for "plus", it's kind of quaint.

italics , bold, underline

couldn't figure out a way to underline in tumblr </3. but anyway, surely "punctuation mark" implies the existence of punctuation that isn't a mark... Anyway, although these three are kinda vague and do the same thing, i think they very much add to how something is intended to be read, so it counts. i generally prefer italics for emphasis, with bold and underline reserved for noteworthiness. that said, if you want to be excessively emphatic, don't combine the effects. it doesn't look as good as you want it to. Use multiple underlines instead, to make it feel as breaking out of the rules as triple exclamation mark does. However, with multiple underlines, i don't think there's any specific meaning behind two like there is with exclamations. just don't do more than three. and don't vary line thickness.

(underscore side note: the underscore was originally used on typewriters to underline stuff ____. so the only opinions i can give as underscores (as punctuation) is this. apparently it's recently gained usage in some slavic languages to express gender neutral suffixes. not sure about this one. it feels kinda like "latinx" as opposed to "latine" which is absolutely fine if people want to use it, but i feel like there must be a more eloquent solution)

,

lmao i nearly forgot commas???

[at this point, i returned to editing the post a day later to find to my dismay that the rest of this post had not been saved]

i said something about not using commas carelessly but so long as you use them at natural breaks, i don't really have any further opinions. Go forth and write ultra-long sentences with a zillion commas. I believe in you.

/

Two uses. One to suggest/imply that either of two words are suitable. basically a shorthand "or". Not that interesting. The other is to represent a caesura in poetry. not that interesting by itself, except when used within a line to give a slightly disoriented vibe. like an em dash but more staccato. very cool in that case.

`

Originally used for accents graves on typewriters, it (similarly to underscore to underline) is no longer used for that in the digital age. anyway, all i have to say about the backtick is pleeeeease don't use it as an apostrophe 🙏 it is not an apostrophe.

Emotions :) & emoji 🙀

i am from the tumblr school of "emoticons generally look stylistically nicer than emoji" but really i don't have many opinions. i do however enjoy using emoji at the end of a sentence instead of a full stop/period, exclamation mark/point, or question mark (hey americans why do you say exclamation point but not question point?). of course, unlike regular punctuation, emoji look better when used this way with a space before as well as after them.

irony marks (e.g. percontation point ⸮)

until a few years ago, i would've said there were no good irony marks and to please lump them in with the interrobang as failed punctuation. but i've changed my mind a bit. not about the percontation mark, or the irony mark (in any of its many variations), but "/s", "/j" etc fulfil the same function in non-standard usage without requiring any new, peculiar symbols. of course, in formal writing, making the tone clear should be the work of the writing, not lazily fixable with some punctuation, but in short form writing, especially in conversation, tonal indicators are brilliant.