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by pjungwir 2556 days ago
> Out of curiosity, was the use of `&` in "type & read" intentional to try to demonstrate your point?

Ha ha, no! :-) I think I often type "&" as a micro-tie and "and" as a macro-tie. In other words "&" connects two words (or "a, b, & c"---and btw always with an Oxford comma, which should be obviously correct to any self-respecting programmer :-) but "and" connects clauses. This comment is probably the longest I've ever thought about it, but I do believe it is a persistent habit in my typing. Maybe to be consistent I should start using "|" too. :-)

I've never thought about tall/short for Ruby conjunctions, but it seems like a plausible motivation. Lots of typographers say people read by seeing ascenders|descenders (okay that one was on purpose :-) and can even recognize words where the letters are removed and you just draw an outline around them.

EDIT: I think I've been working too hard this week. Bikeshedding style it not normally how I'd spend my Friday morning, but it's pretty fun. :-)
2 comments
TomMckenny 2556 days ago
A symbol for "or" would be so extremely sensible in this pattern.

And there was one.

Just as "&" abbreviated "et", a-sort-of-i-thingy abbreviated "vel"(= "or"). I have no idea why only "&" thrived and the "or" one faded. Now it's long forgotten, hiding at Unicode point U+026B

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pjungwir 2556 days ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing that! I once spent a summer helping a library write one-sentence summaries for medieval Latin books, and all the abbreviations and ligatures made the paleography really tough! But actually we do have a common symbol for "or". I used it once in that comment, but then I switched to "|" for fun: "/".
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saghm 2556 days ago
Those are all really interesting points! The division between clauses and lists is a really great insight; I think for me, I actually have the opposite preference ("&" for clauses and "and" for lists), although in practice I don't find myself using "&" in English very much.

> people read by seeing ascenders|descenders (okay that one was on purpose :-)

I actually totally missed that you had done that until you pointed it out :)

> and btw always with an Oxford comma

Now we've definitely found some common ground!

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