Our Pro{c|gr}ess

Work in Process

Linguistic Div][sub}version(ing)

The word-stemming employed throughout the podcast's texts utilizes characters that have a different purpose in GitHub's Markdown language. When processed, these special characters produce a particular styling within the interface. In order to escape these characters' intended styles we are using GitHub's quoting code feature 🔗 to retain the literal characters. Linguistically morphed words will appear grayed out in this wiki and in any markdown files opened within GitHub's interface.

{ - left curly brace

indicates the branching from a word-group's set of shared characters to each particular word's unique characters (e.g. ba{t][g because bat and bag both share ba).

} - right curly brace

indicates the branching from each particular words' unique characters to the shared characters of all the words in the word-group (e.g. c|b}at because cat and bat both share at).

| - pipe

separates character sets and whole words indicating any of the listed words could be used/spoken to strengthen a shared idea/image. While our use of the pipe could be associated with the use of / in traditional writing, the decision was made to use the | instead. The / character is used at too high of a frequency by a variety of other computational processes, languages, and programming; therefore, it could be problematic in conversions of plain text documents via command line or within certain software. It seemed worthwhile to choose a character that wouldn't mistakenly set off unexpected or unintentional computational side-effects. To better understand this separator, let's imagine we are writing a Halloween couplet and want to poetically play with the idea that there are two Halloween-themed animals (cats and bats) with a variety of similarities linguistically and contextually (as spooky, Halloween-associated animals). In the following example notice how the "piped" words aid in the unified focus of the black cat's and the black bat's Halloween-esque spookiness so that either bat or cat could have expressed the vibe and stacked together each word in the word-group builds upon the other expressing a more cohesive image:
(L1:)Pointy ears and beady eyesight—
(L2:)You've just been cursed with the black c|b}at's plight!

][ back-to-back square brackets

separate character sets and whole words that together strengthen a shared idea yet indicate a subtle difference between each unique word that should cause further perusal by the reader. A particular emphasis is placed on each word pending on the particular sequence the group of words are written/spoken.

() parentheses

offer optional characters/words to correct sentence syntax due to the varying tense and plurality of stemmed word-groups (e.g. an extra helping verb if a word in a preceding word-group is pluralized while other word(s) are not). The second purpose is to include characters/words that will be disregarded when spoken but add a juxtaposing or provocative viewpoint with their textual/written inclusion. While the first purpose is similar to the more conventional ways we expect parentheses to be used in writing, the second purpose intends to poetically play with this idea that words, and therefore thoughts, hold jarring or conflicting space in our minds that are (understandably) left unsaid.

《》 guillemets 🔗

adopt a function we might otherwise associate with parentheses in traditional modes of writing— providing authorial clarifications or elaborations. With that being said and as you can see from the above declaration of parentheses' functions, it was decided a different character was necessary to allow an author space to provide additional information (e.g. authorial and editorial annotations) because we had already assigned the parentheses two other functions. Guillemets are primarily used in French equivalent to English quotation marks and are occasionally used in English to indicate that some text was translated from another language into English for the reader's benefit. These two traditional uses of guillemets appeal a great deal to the annotation-like purpose intended here.