Monday, October 23, 2006

(untitled 113)

I'm sure Wikipedia is going to see through this almost immediately, so I'm going to save it to the blog. Enjoy, friends.


Acceleration point

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An acceleration point, uncommon in English typography, is used to indicate an increase in the speed at which the reader reads text. The typographical character derives from the tailed script m (Mercury sign) from the Wingdings font.

Usage

Although rarely used in standard English, the acceleration point appears commonly in the Valley girl dialect found in southern California. In addition to commonly heard variations of words (such as "like," "duh," and "totally), speech will occasionally speed up, apropos of nothing. While the acceleration point is most commonly found in the Valley girl dialect, it has uses in standard English, as well. Speakers who are nervous tend to speak at a faster pace than normal, requiring an acceleration point in written text. Other speakers, such as auctioneers, who are known for speaking quickly, sometimes also require acceleration points.

History

The acceleration point was first conceived of by linguist Benjamin H. Chatterton, working out of Brigham Young University. Supervising a team of undergraduates, he isolated the times in which the acceleration point appears in common speech and devised the appearance of the mark. While it has yet to be approved by any linguistic governing body, a paper on the subject is forthcoming.

edit: wikipedia seems to have bought it, for the time being. the permanent link can be found here. please, tell your friends. see if you can find more articles to link to this one. the more publicity we can get for the acceleration point, the better.

9 comments:

Ben said...

That was totally wicked. Our powers combined just did all kinds of awesome. Is there any way we can check to see how many people's minds we've abused (or attempted to abuse)?

Unknown said...

i love it. so very much. and i feel like i tell you this quite frequently...

Flops said...

I'm abused. And I will attempt to use the acceleration point at least twice daily in my verbal usage.

Yarjka said...

"Wikipedia seems to have bought it"

How much did they pay?

Melyngoch said...

Hey, you exchange some clug-currency for me, I'll chat up the acceleration point until I'm blue in the face. Or orange in the face. Or till I get distracted by something shiney.

Anonymous said...

That. Is. Awesome. --->^ (that's the best I can do to create an acceleration point in ascii)

LJ said...

Mad props on the use of "Benjamin H. Chatterton." I'm still laughing about that...yeesh...

zookeeper08 said...

Amazing. This is wonderfully fun!

K.

Anonymous said...

They seem to have removed the article by now. Too bad; I saw an "article" about that outside someone's office in the JSB and it made me smile.