We need a new kind of quote mark - and other neo-punctuations

[SimonDoom]

No new fangled short cut for "Your Mom"???

 

[ronde]

It would only work if everyone understood what your special quotes meant, and that's going to take a generation of widespread usage. In the example you gave, they're not needed, because you make the meaning clear with the following sentence. If you left the line exactly as is but replaced the arrows with normal quotation marks, no shade of meaning would be lost.

I'm not sure we want to complicate the English language more than it already is. The syntax of English, "rules" of verb conjugation, indication of plurals, and all the exceptions to those "rules" are confusing enough for most readers for whom English is not the primary language. It got that way in large part because early typesetters used spelling and punctuation that was easier, faster, phonetic, or advantageous for some other reason lost in the time since the invention of the printing press. It happened in other languages as well, but because English is a stew of so many languages, it's worse.

There's an old adage that "just because you can change something doesn't mean that you should". We already see that happening in slang words that appear on social media and seemingly within an hour become accepted common usage. There's also "chat speak" brought about by the advent of texting with "words" like, "u", "ur", "4", and "2" substituting for common language words. I understand that it's faster to type "4" instead of "for", but to me it's lazy writing.

We also see that happening in professional journalism where perfectly functional words are abbreviated as in, "spox", I suppose because "spox" requires 7 fewer keystrokes than "spokeperson". Reading should be an enjoyable escape from reality, not an activity interrupted by multiple side-tracks to some internet reference in order to figure out what the writer is attempting to convey.

 

[jaF0]

^^ Those are all places where I would use the single quotes instead of the double. Or maybe even italics.

Aside from that, it isn't just people who learn English later. I grew up with it and have no idea where, or if to dangle my participles.


English is like a Tax Code, excessively and unnecessarily complicated.

 

[AlexBailey]

So this is a quote in a quote in a quote within a quote?

How about a quote within a quote within a quote: George said, “I heard Tom shout, ‘Mary said, “Alice, find Alice, she did it!”’ before he fell off the balcony.” Standard quotation marks to single and back to standard. This back-and-forth can go on indefinitely, though beyond three gets too confusing to ever use. That’s what I was taught, anyway. My point is that if standard English punctuation can figure how to handle that, who needs anything new?

 

[12oclocktales]

So this is a quote in a quote in a quote within a quote?

Quite a quota of quotes.

 

[AlexBailey]

Quite a quota of quotes.

Oh look! You quoted my quote of your quote in a quote in a quote within a quote!

 

[12oclocktales]

Oh look! You quoted my quote of your quote in a quote in a quote within a quote!

I’ll quit with the quirky quotes, having reached my quotient. Just don’t quote me on it.

 

[Britva415]

So this is a quote in a quote in a quote within a quote?

Quoteception

Give’im the kick!