EmmettRedd said

BTW, I had a little trouble with your third entry. Would 8!+©# be a little clearer? (After all, you can see that I re-spelled your name because I think that looks better to me (the 9 looks to me like a non-descending, lower case g, while the 6 looks upper case)).

Emmett(I don't have 6£€ππ'$ alphabet)Redd

I think you are right about the G=6, g=9. Now you have be returning to my alphabet to make a distinction between upper- and lower-case letters!

Ron Draney said:

I can't pin it down even to within a few years, but in my lifetime they finally gave up on ending every sentence with an exclamation point (all dialogue was in caps back in those days, before someone decided that that meant yelling). I overlooked it most of the time, but every so often it would hit me that Clark Kent and friends were ridiculously excitable: I JUST HAD A HAM SANDWICH! TOO BAD THE GUY AT THE DELI WAS OUT OF MUSTARD! BUT HE GAVE ME AN EXTRA PICKLE TO MAKE UP FOR IT! NICE FELLOW!

 

Nearly all comics still use all caps.  Maybe not so many exclamation points but I really don't remember seeing an excess of those.

Ron, I get those wrong greetings all the time. That's been happening for awhile now, but I just put up with it. Logging in usually fixes that.

The only other time I experienced that thread locking, I believe Glenn fixed it. His profile lists him as "admin" so he's probably got the forum privileges needed to do that.

Glenn? Grant? Martha? Anybody?

Ron Draney said: You and I must be just about the same age. It was shortly after I started buying comics that the price went from ten to twelve cents too.

The year was probably 1958 ± 1. I was born in 1951. Fair disclosure: The photo for my avatar is about 10 years old. These days there's a bit more gray in my hair, and my forehead is slightly larger.  :)

I'd forgotten about how comics used to use all caps with an exclamation point after every sentence. Curious about just when mainstream cartoonists broke that pattern, but could find no info online about that. I say "mainstream" since there were always the outliers (like Zap comics) who pretty much did whatever they wanted to do. Didn't read many comics after I got outa high school, so I have no personal experience of the transition you noted.

The binoculars icon means some forum member has elected to "watch" that thread. That means every time someone adds a new post, the "watcher" gets an email notification that there's been new activity in the thread.

The other icons are all about social media. Rarely use them myself. Just hover your cursor over them for more info.

EDIT: The thread in question is now unlocked. Thanks to whoever fixed that. I've been waiting to add a post there.

EDIT: Been close to 24 hours now and that thread is still locked down. Maybe Grant's on vacation?  :)  What's weird is that, the way most forum software works, it takes an administrator or moderator to lock a thread. That doesn't just happen by itself.

Raffee said … "I'd already eaten lunch (there was no need to hesitate), so, I rushed out."…don't think that the two other options (ate, have) are correct at all. But I think I know why I don't;I've matched 'already' to an equivalent in Farsi, whose range of usage is not as wide; that is, is limited to present perfect.

----------------------------------
‘already’ says it’s done by that specific time: He’s already billionaire by age 25.
For that reason, ‘had already eaten’ sounds a little too long (because 'had' and 'already' basically say the same thing), and so perhaps dilutes the urgency of ‘rushed out.’  I like it better without ‘had' together with 'already’:

    (Lunch happened any time before ‘rushed out’)

Raffee said … "I already ate lunch, …." in the same situation as sentence 2? Does that imply 'there was no need to hesitate'?
----------------------------------

It surely does, pretty clearly too.

Raffee said …  RobertB's point on "perfect communication" in "I already have one". Why not, "I already had one"?
 -------------------------------------------------
‘I already had one’ is good because the past tense makes it Spock-logically correct.
But what if the coffee is still on the table? (The person is too eager to notice.)

In any case, the present tense ‘I already have one’  is just as good (even if coffee was finished in the past) because it doesn’t need to mean this very Spock-logical instant.  (Not so in Farsi perhaps?)

Besides , it's not so much about time as about the amount of coffee. Here're some where 'already' emphasizes things , not time:

1. When you're telling what you did: "I ate lunch, watched TV, went out, ... ."

2. When something has happened that requires you to go out immediately, and lunch is obligatory, and you're telling what you did: "I'd already eaten lunch (there was no need to hesitate), so, I rushed out."

And, in fact, I don't think that the two other options (ate, have) are correct at all. But I think I know why I don't;I've matched 'already' to an equivalent in Farsi, whose range of usage is not as wide; that is, is limited to present perfect.

Let me ask a question: 

Is it correct to say, "I already ate lunch, ...." in the same situation as sentence 2? Does that imply 'there was no need to hesitate'?

I would appreciate it if anyone explained different implications of different tenses used with 'already'! (I'd eaten already, I ate already, I eat already). I don't get RobertB's point on "perfect communication" in "I already have one". Why not, "I already had one"? I'm not questioning the way you speak, but just want to find out whether it's one of those cases that usage deviates the rule, just like the French example I mentioned earlier,or not.

Glenn said

I enjoyed the question on the number of grawlix characters and their relationship to the number of letters in the word being bleeped. While I recognize there are few rules, I would certainly consider it sloppy not to have the character count match. This suggests to me a one-to-one relationship. Which brings me to the new phrase I learned in the discussion link: leet speak. While I recognize that grawlix is typically a random string of characters, I personally like take it one step further to make them appear like the words they substitute for, and these makes it a form of leet speak (I'm not sure if all of these symbols will display correctly):
@$$
$#!+
6!+©#
≠∩¢≤
‽Я!¢≤
¢☺©≤

You get the point. I have an entire alphabet with several choices for some of the letters: ¢©. Surprisingly, some look better in some contexts than in others. For example, the same letter does not have to be the same symbol when it is not consecutive, but double letters just don't look right to me unless I use the same character for both.

Is that wrong? Do you think less of me that I actually have such an alphabet and have put this much thought into it?

9£€ππ

6£€ππ,

As someone who tried to fill up the alphabet with roll playing games, why would I think less of you?

BTW, I had a little trouble with your third entry. Would 8!+©# be a little clearer? (After all, you can see that I re-spelled your name because I think that looks better to me (the 9 looks to me like a non-descending, lower case g, while the 6 looks upper case)).

Emmett(I don't have 6£€ππ'$ alphabet)Redd

You get the point. I have an entire alphabet with several choices for some of the letters: ¢©. Surprisingly, some look better in some contexts than in others. For example, the same letter does not have to be the same symbol when it is not consecutive, but double letters just don't look right to me unless I use the same character for both.

Is that wrong? Do you think less of me that I actually have such an alphabet and have put this much thought into it?

9£€ππ

I can't pin it down even to within a few years, but in my lifetime they finally gave up on ending every sentence with an exclamation point (all dialogue was in caps back in those days, before someone decided that that meant yelling). I overlooked it most of the time, but every so often it would hit me that Clark Kent and friends were ridiculously excitable: I JUST HAD A HAM SANDWICH! TOO BAD THE GUY AT THE DELI WAS OUT OF MUSTARD! BUT HE GAVE ME AN EXTRA PICKLE TO MAKE UP FOR IT! NICE FELLOW!

The reason for my post: Check out this interesting essay about how words and panels get arranged in comics. I had not heard of the "Z-path" concept, and found that fascinating. Likewise the reversal of order in some eastern languages (which I can't read).

The use of (any) language in a comic strip seems to have a totally different set of rules compared to normal written language. Seems like more artistic license is permitted, and creative use of symbols along with words is encouraged. This was an interesting thread on "grawlix" I encountered while researching more online.

No real question being asked here, but I thought other forum members might find those concepts interesting, so I wanted to share those links. My take is that authoring a comic strip is more about art and less about language. Even the shape of a "word balloon" conveys meaning. And grammar goes out the window.

---------------------------------

The ‘tense’ serves functions other than what’s said in the grammar book-  more than just sequencing events over time.  Look at this (most ordinary) construction:  

‘Almost three months had passed since she had come to the camp, and all during that time she had been drilled from morning until night.’

By strict logic, you can substitute the simple past ‘came to the camp’ without the meaning being changed, not by a scintilla.  But will you?  ‘had come’  seems needed for emphasis-  how long it had been since the event.

Similarly, in the example below, ‘had’ seems to say ‘a long time ago’;  you wouldn’t want to omit it, even though logic says you can: 

‘On the morning of Jon’s fifth birthday, four months after his father had died, Jon awoke vomiting’

In Raffee’s example (reproduced below) ‘had’ looks more like an emphatic device than anything else, so that it is virtually the same as did  in the 2nd statement :

I had eaten lunch before I watched TV
I did eat lunch before I watched TV

Otherwise, the ‘tense’ chosen will also affect cadence,  mood, qualities that appeal to the inner ears.

Etymology: < classical Latin affectusmental or emotional state or reaction (especially a temporary one), physical state or condition (especially a pathological one), influence or impression, permanent mental or moral disposition, eagerness, zeal, devotion, love, intention, purpose, in post-classical Latin also evil desire (Vulgate) < afficere affect v.2 + -tus , suffix forming verbal nouns. Compare Old French affect (12th cent.), affet (c1265) desire, passion, Middle French affect state, disposition (16th cent.). Compare affect v.1, affect v.2, and also affection n.1
In sense 5 after German Affekt (18th cent. in Kant in sense 5a; 1874 or earlier in sense 5b; 16th cent. in senses ‘strong emotion’, ‘desire, inclination’; < Latin).

With the forms effect , effecte compare discussion at effect n.

The Great Recession affected most sectors of the U.S. economy and most professions.

For the legal profession, it had a profound affect. Steven J. Harper's book The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis lays out just how profound the effects have been in his analysis of the problems facing law schools, big law firms and lawyers.

Affect is rarely used as noun and in most situations writers make a college level mistake (should be effect (noun)) instead. I wonder if affect is

used as noun, however rare it may be, it has a very different meaning, not similar to effect or some archaic usage? Thank you, Jun Miyamoto

"between 1100 and 1500 more than ten thousand French words passed into English" [Stojičić V.(2004) Sociolinguistic Stimuli to Development of the English Lexicon - Language Contact and Social Need, p. 31, http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=ru&as_sdt=0,5&q=V.+Stojicic+sociolinguistic+factors+in+the+creations].

It is common knowledge that English borrowed words from many world dead and living languages, but French borrowings seem to be great in number. Why so?