today i'm thinking about the human tendency to learn two facts, and assume a third fact based on them. often people pick this up and then tell other people the two facts next to each other, leading more people to draw out an implication that isn't there. i know this has a proper fallacy name and stuff but consider:
1) The Roman calendar used to have 10 months, hence why the prefixes in September, October, November, and December are off by two.
2) July and August were later named after Julius and Augustus
Mistaken implication: July and August were the two months that pushed the latter months out of alignment
This is such a commonly mistaken implication that there's a famous tumblr post referencing it
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Here's another one:
1) As our sun runs out of hydrogen, it will expand to a red giant and destroy life on Earth
2) Our sun will die in 5 billion years
Mistaken implication: our sun will expand to a red giant and destroy life on Earth in 5 billion years
Alas we don't have quite that long (still a long time! no need to pack your bags). The sun will start to expand, making life on Earth impossible, in 1–1.5 billion years, which is longer than there has been life on Earth.
Not to get political on main, and i won't today, but i do notice this sort of thing in political campaigns. our brains are very good implication machines. even that previous sentence was an implication (though i hope a good one) from 'implications are a sort of pattern recognition' and 'our brains are good at pattern recognition'. but yeah. my point is keep an eye out for these sorts of sets of statements, and be wary of what your brain tells you is a fact based on the facts you've read
nerdy stuff under the cut
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.
With the third false premises, it is easy to see that the argument fails. okay see ya! Let me know if you think of any others; there was one that i only realised the other day but i've forgotten it now
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The final season introduces the concept of large scale police reform, affecting the entire NYPD rather than individual positions. This takes the shape of Amy Santiago being tasked with writing up a reform proposal in the wake of episode 3s Blue Flu, revealing that a decrease of officers did not negatively affect crime, but positively affected incidents between police and civilians.
Amy's proposal remains a through line on the sidelines of the actual plot in most upcoming episodes, usually when the group has to prevent bad actors from sabotaging or overshadowing it.
However, the actual contents or specific policies of this proposal are never revealed to the audience beyond a single line in episode 6, in which Amy states its aim is to "reduce instances in which armed cops are needlessly interacting with civilians". No further details are ever provided. The lack of explicit suggestions limits the show's impact on real life perceptions (i feel like i would need a source for this but currently its my own claim)
Additionally, Amy is only ever shown working on this proposal by herself. While she does receive moral support from other characters, she never reaches out to any of them for their input, experiences, or suggestions. I find this to be a missed opportunity on the writers' part, as most central characters could offer unique perspectives on the matter and highlight current issues in both the fictional and real NYPD.
Rosa Diaz started the season off by leaving the police force in direct response to the systemic violence she had been witnessing and perpetuating. She since moved on to running her own PI business, where she investigates cases of police brutality, often pro bono. Letting her contribute to the proposal could have allowed the series to address violent policing and the ways it typically goes unpunished, similar to the season's first episode. Then Rosa could put forth some potential solutions, like a change in police training and a pivot to community policing, or even forcing officers to re-apply for their current jobs, similar to the Camden County police department. The increased realism of this conversation could have been disarmed with a joke about New Jersey.
Lieutenant Terry Jeffords has been on the receiving end of racial profiling in the season 4 episode "Moo moo", an earlier attempt of the show to depict problems with policing. The incident also draws from the personal experience of the character's actor, Terry Crews. The show could have given him space to center this again, alongside the lack of accountability for the offending officer and the force as a whole. Suggestions could include some anti-racism stuff, but especially measures to hold bad policing accountable, an issue already depicted in the very first episode of the season.
I am trailing off mid writing now because I'm wondering if this is getting off topic. I don't think my research question was "rewrite the show". Maybe instead I should contrast this more against what other shows did at the time, but the unspecified one woman proposal is bothering me so much.
It falls back into the "one good person in the system can fix everything" pitfall that Michael Schur puts pretty much everywhere. And I mean it's a nice thought. I would like to believe that. And maybe that's true for a Parks Department or magical Afterlife, but it certainly does not apply to the NYPD, where police officers who attempt to challenge the status quo or hold a colleague accountable are ousted by their peers and directly or indirectly forced to quit their job. (gonna need a source here to prove that) This doesn't happen to Amy, although it could've been more interesting than "O'Sullivan is up to no good again!!", but it did happen to Terry in "Moo moo", where he is denied a promotion after filing a complaint.
Naturally, the true extent of this hostile work environment couldn't be shown in this series anyway, as our cast is made up of "good ones" who would never do such a thing.
Also I am losing my mind trying to avoid passive voice. I love passive voice. Why is bad in academic writing??? my sentences are already windy enough, let me streamline!!
I need to look up so much formality stuff. Like using the first person in academic texts feels weird as fuck. I have a sheet somewhere with fringe questions on this. Will have to look for it.
Just finished reading "Copaganda and post-Floyd TVPD: broadcast television’s response to policing in 2020"
And it's very much the exact type of paper I was looking for.
For one, it has a definition of copaganda ("stories [that] promote supportive images of police and undermine efforts at systemic reform") but it also analyzes ten cop shows in their 2020-21 season. Notably B99 isn't one of them, which gives me an exquisite little research gap.
At the same time I can draw comparisons to the noted themes and approaches in those shows, like the super individualized responsibility.
B99 might also be the only show to have a central character quit the police force (although she stays in the show as a PI), would need to double-check that claim tho.
Some other shows do get more explicit about their ideas of reform, like The Rookie (generally among the more progressive cop shows, although the nature of cop shows is inherently conservative) suggesting the "Camden experiment" where all officers would have to re-apply for their positions and undergo security checks like screening social media. I'll have to look up what conclusions the show reached here because the paper points out that whenever shows do suggest reforms, its done only to be dismissed or criticized as doing more harm than good.
In contrast, B99 simply doesn't clarify their reform proposal, which I lamented previously.
Sidenote on the Camden thing: it's a reference to the Camden City/County Police Department which is SUCH an interesting case study.
Basically in 2011 Camden City realized their police department was ass and balls, the city had one of the highest rates of homicides nationwide, officers were cashing in high wages for little work.
Camden City was also broke as fuck, so they couldn't afford that and fired about half their police force before shutting down the City Department and reforming it into the Camden County Police Department.
Officers in the new department were initially not unionized (which is how the city could pay them less and does sound kinda dubious, but police unions are fundamentally different to other workers unions. Rant for another day. Anyway the new force unionized in 2013) and the officers from the old department could reapply for a job. Some refused, which is fair considering the lower wages, but most did reapply and all that did were re-hired.
BUT!! What makes Camden so much more interesting is that they're a model of working police reform. The wikipedia timeline is a bit muddled and Im probably not putting this in my thesis so I'm not looking too deep, but after the police force was cut in half, homicide rates seemingly went down. (source for this is paywalled)
The County PD was built on a huge overhaul of policing, similar to community policing "in nordic countries" and with the intention of reforming officers from "Warriors" (look up police warrior training, its horrifying) to "Guardians". They stopped evaluating success by arrest/ticket numbers (hugely flawed and incentivizing overpolicing as well as wrongful arrests. Also writing expensive tickets in a super poor city is bound to kill people) and instead focused on how safe the community felt. New recruits personally introduce themselves to their community and ask where they see room for improvement. (something something Holt's time as a beat cop bonding with his community, remind me to rewatch that episode). The department also goes into frequent dialogue with community leaders.
They reworked their use-of-force policy in cooperation with the ACLU and authorized police to take injured civilians to a hospital if they could do so faster than an ambulance. Officers are trained and reinforced in deescalation. The department holds regular community events. They also supposedly hired more people of color but theres no concrete number on that.
And you know what happened? You wanna know what happened??
Complaints about excessive force went down 95% within five years (2014 to 2019). Within seven years, violent crime was almost halved (42% decrease from 2013-2020). By 2019, homicide rates were down 63%.
In 2020, the city's BLM protests remained peaceful (if you recall, that was a huge feat.) and the chief of police marched with them.
(sidenote about the many many copaganda tactics surrounding BLM protests that worked exactly like this. iirc there was a story about an office taking a picture of himself kneeling with protesters, then turning off the camera and brutalizing them. take that with a grain of salt.)
The new force was cheaper, larger and a whole lot more effective than the previous one.
Police reform is possible, we had already proven it by 2020. We've proven it time and time again.
Makes it even more of a bummer that B99 refuses to name any specific suggestions. Hell, they couldve literally brought up Camden. Then someone could've replied "Dont bring New Jersey into this" because this is a comedy show set in New York.
Very in tandem with the other shows tho. None make real actionable suggestions, let alone implement them. It's all about the "good ones" outweighing the "bad ones" (fun fact: the "good" characters violate police procedure more often than "bad" characters in cop shows)
Episode 6 "The Set Up" is both the most ambitious in its unpacking of copaganda and the one with the most shortcomings as a consequence. The episode sees Peralta lose a case to the FBI, but continuing to work it based on a gut feeling. In the process, he approaches a man near what he believes to be the intended scene of the crime. The man flees, leading to Peralta arresting him. However, the man is innocent, and the case had already been solved, but his arrest and several hours in holding led to him losing his job. As he justifiably sues the precinct for wrongful arrest (which I cannot find any statistics on and its driving me wild. wrongful convictions only), Peralta faces his personal guilt and the threat of suspension. The severity of consequences for Peralta stands in contrast with the first episode, in which imposing any sort of consequence on two uniformed officers is shown to be impossible. The only difference would appear to be the persons involved, both Captain Holt as an upstanding police captain with an actual sense of justice, and Peralta as a reasonable detective troubled by his wrongdoing and willing to accept a punishment. Although Peralta may be subject to different regulations as a detective rather than a patrolman, it seems unlikely anything would come from that either, were they not "the good ones" This line is further blurred when O'Sullivan inserts himself into the situation to get Peralta off the hook. His presence is contrived and only serves to further portray him as the sole villain emblematic of everything wrong with the NYPD, rather than a deep-rooted systemic problem. Peralta also sees his involvement as contrived, theorizing the whole thing to be a setup to blackmail Santiago to drop her reform proposal. This idea immediately lets him shake the responsibility of performing a wrongful arrest, partially motivating his eagerness. Against Holt's explicit orders, Peralta stalks the man he arrested to prove his connection to O'Sullivan. Just as he's informed that there truly is no connection, and he makes a mistake, the man discovers him, getting Peralta into even hotter water.
In Holt's office, Peralta explains he believed this was a setup because he "never imagined [himself] making a mistake like that". Together with his earlier reaction, this implies that Peralta has seemingly never made a wrongful arrest before, which seems statistically unlikely, but again I cannot find statistics on this. Naturally, this implication is copaganda. O'Sullivan enters again, revealing he regularly bribes the City Attorney in charge of torts. In doing so, he solidifies the idea that he is the true problem in the NYPD, rather than the systemic hurdles mentioned in the first episode. After listing some common talking points about the supposed dangers of persecuting law enforcement, Holt gives a passionate speech about the consequences of not holding law enforcement accountable. Holt points out that not punishing wrongful actions by police and the subsequent lack of accountability results in a worse perception by the public and mistrust of the community they are meant to serve. While inspiring and heartfelt for a TV show, this speech falls flat against its real world backdrop, where the lack of police accountability frequently leads to violence perpetrated against innocent civilians, especially with a minority background. With no real consequences, officers have no incentive to change their behavior, while their job culture (needs a source about police training indoctrination) directly encourages violence. This does also lead to a lack of public trust, but massively overshadows this issue. By drawing attention to public reaction rather than perpetuation of harmful behavior, the show encourages viewers to address their own biases against police in the charged climate of the 2021 BLM protests, framing their justified distrust as a larger issue than their brutalization, which goes unmentioned. This is a substantial instance of copaganda in this final season, played as a triumphant moment against the true evil of O'Sullivan. It disappoints and upsets me.
In response, Jake finally admits his mistake, taking accountability for the wrongful arrest, harassment, and witness intimidation, and expresses he's sorry. The City Attorney, despite being bribed, can no longer attempt to sweep this under the rug and calls for Peralta's suspension, which Holt immediately follows through on and suspends him for 5 months (with pay? without?). After the attorney and O'Sullivan leave, Peralta expresses relief, stating "We beat [O'Sullivan]" and attempts to lift the mood by claiming he learned a valuable lesson, so some good came from this. Holt counters that in a better world, a man wouldn't have had to lose his job in order for Peralta to learn a lesson. Rather than sitting in this discomfort, encouraging both Peralta and the audience to truly grapple with the severity of his actions, the episode then ends with a joke. Earlier episodes like "Moo moo" and the first episode of the season "The Good Ones" made very effective use of a somber ending to underline their message, yet this crucial one, which sees actual bad policing by a main character and its consequences, refuses to give that space for genuine reflection.
This episode also features the only mention of the reforms contents, as Santiago states it intends to "reduce instances in which armed cops are needlessly interacting with civilians." This is not only vague, but also immediately undercut with the reaction of O'Sullivan claiming it to be "discrimination", ending the scene before any details can be revealed or processed. After this, the proposal is only mentioned. Other than serving as a MacGuffin in a future episode, it is usually brought up to underline its supposed importance and Santiago's hard work. While it would be unrealistic to ask a group of comedy writers to produce an actual reform proposal for systemic injustice in policing, it is notable that nearly no information is given on what a reformed justice system could look like. Including a mention of actual accountability for bad actions, either in this episode or later, would not only underscore this episode's point, but also solidify the idea for viewers. Instead, the audience is left with a nebulous idea of a reform they know nothing about, other than it being good and fair because it was produced by a main character. This derives the viewers of the chance to consider actual reform policies and evaluate options for themselves, while conveniently avoiding pointing the finger at any specific issue.
Disappointing, honestly. Even more disappointing if you consider that this is the other Very Special Episode, and everything following it is fan service fluff. (Not that I mind, I greatly enjoyed the fan service fluff. But it sure as fuck isn't gonna dismantle copaganda)
In episode 4 (its always season 8 unless otherwise specified), Terry mentions that he might not have a nemesis because he "solves all his crimes".
While used as a funny zinger, this is absolute bullshit.
Putting aside the fact that there are the occasional unsolved cases mentioned in the show, the notion that police solve every crime is a grossly misleading part of copaganda.
I will dissect this further at some other point, but suffice to say that "clearance rates" aren't tracked very reliably. Please enjoy the following paper, where I will also be sourcing some numbers for the rest of this post.
In recent years, the national conversation in criminal justice has centered on police. Are police using excessive force? Should they be moni
We know that Terry is a high ranking officer, so he likely receives a lot of serious cases. By the shows metrics, almost exclusively murders, the occasional robbery, and some drug deals depending on the storyline. (This, too, is unrealistic but I digress)
According to the paper above, 2018 saw murder investigations lead to arrests ~81% of the time. This is already quite far from "all my crimes", but those arrests do not automatically close the case (although many shows, including this one, would like you to believe that they don't do wrongful arrests).
"Clearance", which requires handing the case and suspect over to the prosecution (or some rather dubious circumstances), is likely the point at which our characters would consider a crime "solved", so this would be the rate Terry makes reference to.
For murder, the reported clearance rate is ~62%.
Murder is also an outlier in these statistics. Aggravated assault is the only one close to it, with a clearance rate of 52.5% The next highest is at ~33% and it's all downhill from there.
Averaging all crime, the overall clearance rate is ~22%.
We should note here that this paper does not address any drug related crime, as it compares two specific reporting measures, and one, filled out by victims, does not track drug crimes. (It also cannot track murders reported by victims, so that number is assumed to be identical with the official police count)
Even if we assume Terry almost exclusively works murder cases, and is an above average detective with high clearance rates, it is entirely unrealistic for him to "solve all his crimes". We can attribute some of it as exaggeration for his witty line, but it paints a deceptive image for viewers, who are led to believe this is reasonably achievable and normal for police.
This line is given no further attention, which leads me to believe it slipped into the script without the writers realizing they were doing a copaganda here.
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I'll start this with questions "In any sense, how does the time plays through your eyes? Does it hug you in its loving dance or does it hung a lure that hooks your lungs?"
I was 13 when I laughed at untied lace of my running shoes, until I blinked and realised that I'm out of breath as 23. I thought maybe time is not something worth running against to, but who am I kidding? Time is something so unbeatable, while this 23 star-crossed soul who's quite limping keeps bargaining for a balanced pace--he is trying, putting a trust on his running shoes.
Silly don't you think? To persist here, in one circle, with the unbeatable concept, always thinking that I can pace up with it. Does it ever haunts you? When memories, future, dreams, and goals are all linked by time and you don't have know idea how it will unravel in front of you.
As someone who does not really enjoy a warning sign, time does frighten me. For years until now, every time I can't sleep at night I will check on my loved ones, analyzing their breathing pace at their sleep because I'm full of worries: what if Time took them away from me and decide that it's okay for them to lose while I'm still running with Time? Cruel. What if Time is unmerciful and crushed all my well-planned dream that I've built these past years? What if Time was already there putting a yellow ribbon to mark my finishing line while I'm still 5.000 steps away from everything I'm longing for? Crazy.
Time is the ultimate enemy. How do you beat it?
At least that's what I think for now, it might hug me on the dance floor, later, sooner, only time will tell.
I wrote this while Candour and If I Get High pierce my confusion.
okay here is my complete review of punctuation. for no reason except that i have opinions on punctuation.
(Disclaimer: i am not a punctuation expert. anything that i mention as fact is old and half-remembered)
.
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
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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.
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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.
okay, i can't think of anything else i'm missing, save for shorthands like = > £ ~ § ✓ and very much unused punctuation like exclamation comma (just use an exclamation mark and then continue in lower case if you have to) or love mark  (i will be impressed if that glyph actually shows up). small shout out to ¿ and ¡ being very handy and other languages should use them. if there's any i missed, please give me your opinions. also tell me if i'm wrong about any of them. i often am
