Saturday, July 05, 2008

How Do You Pronounce a Symbol? (or, a star is not a word or a letter)

I'm in Hawai'i on vacation (eat your heart out), thanks to my Army-man brother, and reading The Honolulu Advertiser.

Today in the arts & leisure section, there's a mini review for the movie The Rape of Europa.

I read the last sentence six times before I could figure this out. (OK, OK, I was reading at the breakfast table, so I wasn't really concentrating hard.)

Film critic Roger Ebert gave it ***.



(I can't do the solid black stars on here.)

OH! Roger Ebert gave it three stars!

Use English, please!




All right, I sort of like the idea of using symbols as though they were words, for fun--but not in a straight news story.

What symbol have you been tempted to drop into written work?

3 comments:

JD (The Engine Room) said...

You've reminded me of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman's character draws a square in the air with her fingers instead of saying the word 'square'.

TootsNYC said...

I edited something today in which a product was was said to "make hair 10x stronger."

I asked for "times," but it's a promotional piece for an advertiser, and this is something the advertiser feels strongly about--so, well, whatever.

Editrix said...

I find myself wanting to use the at symbol (@) to mean, "I'm directing this comment toward you, so-and-so," the way people use it in blogs' comment threads. I like how punchy it looks. It reminds me of that time Marcia didn't want Jan to invade her part of the bedroom (or something like that) and put up a sign that said, "Don't touch. This means you, Jan." OK, I'm beginning to suspect I might be making up that "Brady Bunch" episode, but you get the idea.