Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 17:18:12 -0500, Joe <wurdbendur@...> wrote:
> On 2/14/05 2:30 AM, "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:
>
> > P.S. I agree with Joe and Carl that Scientific Terminology would
> > remain better in Roman and Greek Letters. People don't use Scientific
> > terminoly interchangably with the regular word in any case.
> > H2O=water, O2=Oxygen O3=Ozone CO2 Carbon Dioxide
> > Although, as you see, they do make good abbreviations.
> > (i.e. C for Celsius, F for Fahrenheit, Periodic Table)
>
> Or K for Kelvin, g for grams, m for meters, etc...

Another point for that is that Roman is used for such things (chemical
elements, unit symbols/abbreviations, ...) even in languages with a
completely different alphabet, such as Japanese and Chinese. They're
kind of an international standard.

> Most people substitute English when reading Latin abbreviations,
> anyway, and sometimes the French ones, too. If the point of
> Shavian is to represent spoken English, then that's what should
> be written.

I agree with that, too -- I'd say that few people expand "e.g." to
"exempli gratia" or "i.e." to "id est"; most would probably either say
"for example" and "that is (to say)", respectively, or to "ee gee" and
"eye ee", and then those should be abbreviated IMO.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Hi Philip

I question whether English speaking people actually substitute
English when reading the Latin abbreviations discussed below.
They are simply writing conventions that most people swallow whole,
without any understanding of the intermediary step where the letters
actually do represent a word, albeit a word in a foreign language.
I strongly support the concensus view that such Latin abbreviations,
only be rendered in the Roman Alphabet or translated into English.
I'd rather see something like A.D. Ad Dominiem translated into the
I.Y.O.L. (In Year of Our Lord)
or C.E. (Common Era).
B.C.E. (Before Common Era)
_____________attached___________________________


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton
<philip.newton@g...> wrote:
I agree with Joe and Carl that Scientific Terminology would
remain better in Roman and Greek Letters. People don't use
Scientific
> > > terminology interchangably with the regular word in any case.
> > > H2O=water, O2=Oxygen O3=Ozone CO2Êrbon Dioxide
> > > Although, as you see, they do make good abbreviations.
> > > (i.e. C for Celsius, F for Fahrenheit, Periodic Table)
> >
> > Or K for Kelvin, g for grams, m for meters, etc...
>
> Another point for that is that Roman is used for such things
(chemical
> elements, unit symbols/abbreviations, ...) even in languages with a
> completely different alphabet, such as Japanese and Chinese.
These Roman Letter Abbreviations are
> kind of like an international standard.
>
> > Most people substitute English when reading Latin abbreviations,
> > anyway, and sometimes the French ones, too. If the point of
> > Shavian is to represent spoken English, then that's what should
> > be written.
>
> I agree with that, too -- I'd say that few people expand "e.g." to
> "exempli gratia" or "i.e." to "id est"; most would probably either
say
> "for example" and "that is (to say)", respectively, or to "ee gee"
and
> "eye ee", and then those should be abbreviated IMO.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@g...>

Mostly about abbreviations (>50% ref. abbrevs.):

After a job translating a German academic text into English by computer I
decided I hated abbreviations. This was because they all finished with a
period, making sentences stop in funny placces. (Charles I was executed in
1666. --> C. I. Was executed in 1,666 .)

While Shavian for me was simply an alternative alphabet for English,
slapped on top of a QWERTY keyboard and having a play script as its sole
style sheet, everything was plain sailing. Then along came Unicode and
relegated Shavian to a subordinate status. Instead of being cock of the
walk Shavian had to coexist with English in the same document, and lots of
conventions had to be redefined. (A sentence always begins with a capital
letter. Direct speech is enclosed in quotation marks. Personal names are
spelled as usage requires.)

Many conventions can be ported to Shavian. Abbreviations are already there
in the shape of digits. That's what I was indicating when I quoted
12 + 1 - 2 = 11 -- T W E L V E & O N E *is* E L E V E N & T W O.
U2 B4 T42 and suchlike have already completed a spelling revolution, so
it's too late to work for spelling reform. We've got rebus instead. There
is a group of letters with matching forms in Latin and Cyrillic. They are
used on bank notes and car number plates in Eastern Europe. ffrench and
ffoulkes are still sometimes seen for olde worlde family names. What about
Xmas? What about Psmith? What about Chicago? What about Ho Chi Minh? If
Mr. Ghoti (herr Ghoti, mr Ghoti, Messrs. Ghoti & Ghoti) ever gets a book
printed in Albanian his name will be transcribed to FISH, as Clarke is to
KLERK. The Welsh don't do that, although their elemental table has
Fflworin (F) and Ffosfforws (P).

Anything to do with language is going to involve a lot of muddled thinking.
The categories we use are not clearly defined (word? sentence? phoneme?
grapheme?). Please forgive my own muddles when I ask a few questions about
usage. I'm putting Shavian on the computer and being a translator I can't
help thinking that it should be possible to translate back.
What is the alphabetical order of the Shavian letters for sorting, searches
and indexes?
Which is the raised dot/bullet marker code and is it identical with the
punto caduc (IIRC) in Catalán, the one used to separate ll into two
letters? Or is it the Greek semi-colon?
Are there any formatting codes that can be entered at the keyboard for
*bold*, /italic/, _underlines_, subscripts, etc?
Is punctuation, apart from raised dot, restricted to 7-bit ASCII range
(square brackets are not easily accessible on some keyboards)?
What about hard spaces, soft hyphens? Hyphenation in general is
unnecessary in Shavian formatting, included in Androcles to match the
lines, but could be used to spell out Roman abbreviations.
My computer would really like to know the answers.

Abbreviations are not the greatest of my worries, but what about using
ack-ack, pip emma, Three Nuns, Alfa, Lima, Zebra, Roger? It was a solution
before.
Dzohn Barouz (transcribing back from Cyrillic)
----------
>I question whether English speaking people actually substitute
>English when reading the Latin abbreviations discussed below.
>They are simply writing conventions that most people swallow whole,
>without any understanding of the intermediary step where the letters
>actually do represent a word, albeit a word in a foreign language.
>I strongly support the concensus view that such Latin abbreviations,
>only be rendered in the Roman Alphabet or translated into English.

> I agree with Joe and Carl that Scientific Terminology would
> remain better in Roman and Greek Letters. People don't use
>Scientific terminology interchangably with the regular word.
>
> Another point for that is that Roman is used for such things
>(chemical elements, unit symbols/abbreviations, ...) even in languages with a
>> completely different alphabet, such as Japanese and Chinese.
> These Roman Letter Abbreviations are like an international standard.

>> > Most people substitute English when reading Latin abbreviations,
>> > anyway, and sometimes the French ones, too. If the point of
>> > Shavian is to represent spoken English, then that's what should
>> > be written.

Hi Jean

Wow, You have a lot of questions.
I will try and answer a few.
Please disregard personal opinions. (Filter out)
I don't like abbreviations, either, but they are a necessary
evil. At least in Shavian the 4 most common abbreviations are
spelled out as part of the Spelling conventions.
I think abbreviations require seperate spelling conventions and
should be marked as such to indicate the normal phonetic spelling
conventions
don't apply. Much as we mark a Proper Noun, or Name with a Namer Dot.

The Shaw Situation reminds me of Hebrew, where there are seperate
spelling/pronunciation/interpretation rules,
depending on whether the letters make up.
1. Common noun
2. Pronoun or Particle
3. Verb
4. Hebrew Name
5. Foreign Cognate (i.e. Radio) tranliterated or loaned into Hebrew
6. Number
The rules are all surprisingly consistent, but you have to know which
set of rules to apply on the string of Hebrew letters, otherwise GIGO.
All this in order to minimize the number of vowel letters.
But I digress.

Indeed, We are trying to unmuddle the usage of Shavian, more by
limiting and spelling out
what is applicable to Shavian text, in terms of punctuation and
special symbols and abbreviations, than by developing any new
conventions.

In Shavian, Direct Speech is enclosed in quotes.
Commas are used to delimit a list and to indicate a phrase break
within a sentence.
Periods, Question and Exclamation Marks as sentence markers are used
as before.
Periods after an abbreviation letter, as in U.S.A. is still up for
discussion. It isn't used all that consistently in T.O., for that
matter.

As for what is the alphabetical order of the Shavian letters for
sorting, searches and indexes?
There have been two proposals.
1. According to the Shaw Spelling Diagram starting with Pop.
This puts all the consonants before the vowels which is useful.
2. In more or less the Roman letter order with the new additional
letters at the end of the list.
This has some organizational benefits, in that that helps newcomers
to match up the Shaw words to the T.O. a little easier. I prefer this
option.
No dictionaries with Shaw words has been produced to this point.
Hyper text dictionaries could be ordered in both ways.

As for names of the Letters, that is also an area of dispute amongst
the group. Many prefer to assign the Sample words to be the names of
the different Shaw Letters. I believe we should come up with some new
names comparable to but different from the names of the letters in
the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets.

If you are interested I can give you my proposed list. It has the
addition benefit of eliminating the need for a Phonetic word Alphabet,
(i.e. Alpha Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, ...)

Regards, Paul V.
_____________________attached_____________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, John Burrows <burrows@t...>
wrote:
> Mostly about abbreviations (>50% ref. abbrevs.):
>
> After a job translating a German academic text into English by
computer I
> decided I hated abbreviations. This was because they all finished
with a
> period, making sentences stop in funny placces. (Charles I was
executed in
> 1666. --> C. I. Was executed in 1,666 .)
>
> While Shavian for me was simply an alternative alphabet for English,
> slapped on top of a QWERTY keyboard and having a play script as its
sole
> style sheet, everything was plain sailing. Then along came Unicode
and
> relegated Shavian to a subordinate status. Instead of being cock
of the
> walk Shavian had to coexist with English in the same document, and
lots of
> conventions had to be redefined. (A sentence always begins with a
capital
> letter. Direct speech is enclosed in quotation marks. Personal
names are
> spelled as usage requires.)
>
> Many conventions can be ported to Shavian. Abbreviations are
already there
> in the shape of digits. That's what I was indicating when I quoted
> 12 + 1 - 2 = 11 -- T W E L V E & O N E *is* E L E V E N & T W O.
> U2 B4 T42 and suchlike have already completed a spelling
revolution, so
> it's too late to work for spelling reform. We've got rebus
instead. There
> is a group of letters with matching forms in Latin and Cyrillic.
They are
> used on bank notes and car number plates in Eastern Europe.
ffrench and
> ffoulkes are still sometimes seen for olde worlde family names.
What about
> Xmas? What about Psmith? What about Chicago? What about Ho Chi
Minh? If
> Mr. Ghoti (herr Ghoti, mr Ghoti, Messrs. Ghoti & Ghoti) ever gets a
book
> printed in Albanian his name will be transcribed to FISH, as Clarke
is to
> KLERK. The Welsh don't do that, although their elemental table has
> Fflworin (F) and Ffosfforws (P).
>
> Anything to do with language is going to involve a lot of muddled
thinking.
> The categories we use are not clearly defined (word? sentence?
phoneme?
> grapheme?). Please forgive my own muddles when I ask a few
questions about
> usage. I'm putting Shavian on the computer and being a translator
I can't
> help thinking that it should be possible to translate back.
> What is the alphabetical order of the Shavian letters for sorting,
searches
> and indexes?
> Which is the raised dot/bullet marker code and is it identical with
the
> punto caduc (IIRC) in Catal?, the one used to separate ll into two
> letters? Or is it the Greek semi-colon?
> Are there any formatting codes that can be entered at the keyboard
for
> *bold*, /italic/, _underlines_, subscripts, etc?
> Is punctuation, apart from raised dot, restricted to 7-bit ASCII
range
> (square brackets are not easily accessible on some keyboards)?
> What about hard spaces, soft hyphens? Hyphenation in general is
> unnecessary in Shavian formatting, included in Androcles to match
the
> lines, but could be used to spell out Roman abbreviations.
> My computer would really like to know the answers.
>
> Abbreviations are not the greatest of my worries, but what about
using
> ack-ack, pip emma, Three Nuns, Alfa, Lima, Zebra, Roger? It was a
solution
> before.
> Dzohn Barouz (transcribing back from Cyrillic)
> ----------
> >I question whether English speaking people actually substitute
> >English when reading the Latin abbreviations discussed below.
> >They are simply writing conventions that most people swallow whole,
> >without any understanding of the intermediary step where the
letters
> >actually do represent a word, albeit a word in a foreign language.
> >I strongly support the concensus view that such Latin
abbreviations,
> >only be rendered in the Roman Alphabet or translated into English.
>
> > I agree with Joe and Carl that Scientific Terminology would
> > remain better in Roman and Greek Letters. People don't use
> >Scientific terminology interchangably with the regular word.
> >
> > Another point for that is that Roman is used for such things
> >(chemical elements, unit symbols/abbreviations, ...) even in
languages with a
> >> completely different alphabet, such as Japanese and Chinese.
> > These Roman Letter Abbreviations are like an international
standard.
>
> >> > Most people substitute English when reading Latin
abbreviations,
> >> > anyway, and sometimes the French ones, too. If the point of
> >> > Shavian is to represent spoken English, then that's what should
> >> > be written.

On 2/16/05 7:59 AM, "John Burrows" <burrows@...> wrote:

> Mostly about abbreviations (>50% ref. abbrevs.):
>
> After a job translating a German academic text into English by computer I
> decided I hated abbreviations. This was because they all finished with a
> period, making sentences stop in funny placces. (Charles I was executed in
> 1666. --> C. I. Was executed in 1,666 .)

A good reason not to use periods to mark abbreviations, I think. I¹m also
annoyed by this because my e-mail client, Entourage, is a Microsoft product
and thus insists on capitalizing the first letter after every period,
regardless of its position in a sentence. Periods are also more important
in Shavian without capitals to mark the beginnings of sentences.

> While Shavian for me was simply an alternative alphabet for English,
> slapped on top of a QWERTY keyboard and having a play script as its sole
> style sheet, everything was plain sailing. Then along came Unicode and
> relegated Shavian to a subordinate status. Instead of being cock of the
> walk Shavian had to coexist with English in the same document, and lots of
> conventions had to be redefined. (A sentence always begins with a capital
> letter. Direct speech is enclosed in quotation marks. Personal names are
> spelled as usage requires.)
>
> Many conventions can be ported to Shavian. Abbreviations are already there
> in the shape of digits. That's what I was indicating when I quoted
> 12 + 1 - 2 = 11 -- T W E L V E & O N E *is* E L E V E N & T W O.
> U2 B4 T42 and suchlike have already completed a spelling revolution, so
> it's too late to work for spelling reform. We've got rebus instead.

None of these are proper English, of course. If Shavian were more common,
people would come up with Shavian rebus. And these are typically only used
to shorten messages. The reader and writer both still recognize these
expressions as they're spoken, so we have no problem spelling them that way.

>There
> is a group of letters with matching forms in Latin and Cyrillic. They are
> used on bank notes and car number plates in Eastern Europe. ffrench and
> ffoulkes are still sometimes seen for olde worlde family names.

And?

>What about Xmas?

Despite what one may think, "X-mas" is not simply an abbreviation like the
others. The "X" here is actually from the Greek letter Chi, which was the
first letter of "Christos" (XPICTOC), meaning "Christ". That X or Chi might
as well hang around a little longer. But again, this is not the proper
spelling. Shavian would record the pronunciation, whether you intend it to
be "krismas" or "X-mas". In this case, I would allow the X to stay because
it¹s so widely recognized.

>What about Psmith? What about Chicago? What about Ho Chi Minh? If
> Mr. Ghoti (herr Ghoti, mr Ghoti, Messrs. Ghoti & Ghoti) ever gets a book
> printed in Albanian his name will be transcribed to FISH, as Clarke is to
> KLERK. The Welsh don't do that, although their elemental table has
> Fflworin (F) and Ffosfforws (P).
>
> Anything to do with language is going to involve a lot of muddled thinking.
> The categories we use are not clearly defined (word? sentence? phoneme?
> grapheme?). Please forgive my own muddles when I ask a few questions about
> usage. I'm putting Shavian on the computer and being a translator I can't
> help thinking that it should be possible to translate back.

That would be nice, but it usually doesn't work. Automated translations, at
least, will rarely match the original.

> What is the alphabetical order of the Shavian letters for sorting, searches
> and indexes?

Some have used the order given on the reading key in Androcles, going
straight down the rows. I believe this is the order in which they're
encoded in Unicode. I prefer the order stated more specifically in the
ShawScript newsletter, which alternates between rows. Thus, the order goes
Pip, Bib, Tot, Dead, etc. (Pee, Bay, Tee, Day using the SS names).

> Which is the raised dot/bullet marker code and is it identical with the
> punto caduc (IIRC) in Catalán, the one used to separate ll into two
> letters? Or is it the Greek semi-colon?

Unicode Shavian uses the middot (·), which I believe is the "punto caduc"
you refer to.

> Are there any formatting codes that can be entered at the keyboard for
> *bold*, /italic/, _underlines_, subscripts, etc?

These codes are fairly new to me, and I never really use them. For those
that do, why not just use the same ones?

> Is punctuation, apart from raised dot, restricted to 7-bit ASCII range
> (square brackets are not easily accessible on some keyboards)?
> What about hard spaces, soft hyphens? Hyphenation in general is
> unnecessary in Shavian formatting, included in Androcles to match the
> lines, but could be used to spell out Roman abbreviations.
> My computer would really like to know the answers.

Punctuation is the same as T.O. except for the namer dot. But why is
hyphenation not necessary in Shavian? Do you mean it should be left out of
compound words? They may not be necessary, though they can help to break up
words. I would prefer to keep them, myself.

> Abbreviations are not the greatest of my worries, but what about using
> ack-ack, pip emma, Three Nuns, Alfa, Lima, Zebra, Roger? It was a solution
> before.
> Dzohn Barouz (transcribing back from Cyrillic)

Whatever names we use for the Shavian letters, they're all words anyway.
Some of us appear to have invented our own names, though. I guess it all
works as long as we know what we¹re talking about, but we really do need to
agree on one set of names.

Regards,
Joe
/JO

Paul,

What is wrong with adding logograms to a phonemic writing system?
You have numbers which are logograms so there are a few there already.

Steve
Adding Logographs to Shavian?
Not really.

Hi Steve
Quite correct.
Numbers are indeed Logograms (Symbols that represent a word, which be
better written out phonetically.)
But Arabic Numbers, are a consistent well known system of symbols,
known across most Modern Languages.
And none of these Symbols (Numeric Digits) is confusable with a
Shavian Letter. They are 2 discrete mutually exclusive well
understood systems.
By the way, in T.O. the "O" is easily confused with a zero.
And the "l" with the number one.

The primary intention behind creating the Shaw Alphabet was to create
a better Alphabet, a better match to the English sounds, easier to
learn and to use and less confusing.
Keeping this aim in mind, we can not clutter up Shavian with a lot of
Abbreviations/Logograms that confuse the simplicity of message.
The medium is the message with the Shaw Alphabet.
A separate auxillary system of Logograms is possible, but needs to be
well thought out.

Regards, Paul V.
___________________attaxched
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Paul,
>
> What is wrong with adding logograms to a phonemic writing system?
> You have numbers which are logograms so there are a few there
already.
>
> Steve
> Adding Logographs to Shavian?
> Not really.

While I did answer your question about Logograms, I didn't really
distinguish them from abbreviations properly.
Logograms and Abbreviations are both shortcuts that let you represent
a high frequency or High Profile word more succinctly.
They can represent the same thing. For instance the Logogram & has
the same meaning as the Shavian "n" abbreviation.
So let me clarify.

Abbreviations, even more than Logograms can confuse the simplicity of
message. Abbreviations use the same letters as normal words, and as
Shavian does not have Capital letters, there is no way to mark a
string of Disjoint letters as an Abbreviation.
In T.O., they would all be capitalized.

An auxillary system of abbreviations is possible, an expansion of the
officially defined 4 abbreviations, but needs to be well thought out,
and completely defined. We can not just tack on the hodgepodge of Ad-
Hoc T.O. abbreviations onto Shavian Spelling.
The more abstruse T.O. abbreviations would only be understood by
someone intimately familar with the the intricacies of T.O. spelling.

The whole benefit and purpose of Shavian, is to provide easier,
unfettered access to written English.
Ideally, even to someone, a foreigner or illiterate person who is not
literate in the Traditional English spelling.

Regards, Paul V.

_____________attached___________________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
Numbers are indeed Logograms (Symbols that represent a word, which be
better written out phonetically.)
> But Arabic Numbers, are a consistent well known system of symbols,
> known across most Modern Languages.
> And none of these Symbols (Numeric Digits) is confusable with a
> Shavian Letter. They are 2 discrete mutually exclusive well
> understood systems.
> By the way, in T.O. the "O" is easily confused with a zero.
> And the "l" with the number one.
>
> The primary intention behind creating the Shaw Alphabet was to
create a better Alphabet, a better match to the English sounds,
easier to learn and to use and less confusing.
Keeping this aim in mind, we can not clutter up Shavian with a lot of
Abbreviations/Logograms that confuse the simplicity of message.
> The medium is the message with the Shaw Alphabet.
> A separate auxillary system of Logograms is possible, but needs to
be well thought out.

>as
>Shavian does not have Capital letters, there is no way to mark a
>string of Disjoint letters as an Abbreviation.
-----------
The three lines above are marked. Not as Abbreviations (sic) but all t h r
e e are *marked*. Well, they are, aren't they? I can't exactly spell it
out for you in Shavian, but I could syll-a-bize or even syll-a-bi-fy it.
And what I tell you three times is true. (Snark)

BTW here are some lines from a CD blurb:
... THEY TRAVEL THE WORLD
IMPRESSING NATIVES AND EX-
PATRIOTS ALIKE WITH THEIR
MUSIC ...
Hyphens are just as likely to cause misunderstandings as prevent them.

I'm still not sure what Shavian is all about, but turning it into
electronic text does raise interesting questions about emphasis, format and
punctuation.
Another problem comes with the use of Unicode. From other groups I am
liable to get messages like this Belorussian signature text:
«ýÍýÊË ’ ÏÓ·ËθÌËÍ ÏÂÎӔ˜ ÓÚ ¦Â•’Ó“Ó ÏÛÁšÍýθÌÓ“Ó!
¡ÂÎý•ÛÒ¸, -ÓÒÒ˝, "Í•ýËÌý - ÒÏÓÚ•ËÚ ÍýÚýÎÓ“ ÏÂÎÓ”ËÈ Ìý
I'll have to write myself a few Unicode messages before I try posting the
group in Shavian.
jb

Hi Jean

It took me a few minute, but I think I see what you are getting
at.
In the middle of this essentially existential question about
abbreviations in Shavian,
you are asserting that if you can say an Abbreviation, you can write
it down in Shavian. You can either write it as people say it, or you
syll-a-bi-fy it, with one syllable for each letter with or without
hyphens.

{pause for extraneous literary aside}
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away---
For the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see.
{pause for applause, and return to main argument)

There are only 2 problems for which I don't see a solution.
First, not all abbreviations are necessarily pronounced.
Some are just literary conveniences and would be unrecognizable if
vocalized.
Secondly, there is a problem with the Shavian in that the names of
the letters do not really exist as names. Initially they were just a
nice set of sample words, which were somehow promoted above their
station. And they are unruly and hard to remember in a crowd.

Now If only the Shaw Alphabet had a better class of names with a
little distinction, then there would be no problem. We could then
clearly write it out as syllables.

It would be nice to have distinctive names for all the letters.
I'd like to call the first letter Al-af for tradition sake.
I'd do anything for A-laf.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Originally, Shavian was designed using some of the components
and principles of a Shorthand system. The Shorthand's generally
incorporated their own abbreviations for long words, rather than
using T.O. abbreviations or their equivalent in the new script.
Shavian was considered an ideal method of handwriting, that could
also be printed and used for books.
Shavian Electronic Text should work as long as we all remember we are
starting with the bare bones.
______________________attached__________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, John Burrows <burrows@t...>
wrote:
> The three lines above are marked. Not as Abbreviations (sic) but
all t h r e e are *marked*. Well, they are, aren't they? I can't
exactly spell it out for you in Shavian, but I could syll-a-bize or
even syll-a-bi-fy it.
> And what I tell you three times is true. (Snark)
>
> BTW here are some lines from a CD blurb:
> ... THEY TRAVEL THE WORLD
> IMPRESSING NATIVES AND EX-
> PATRIOTS ALIKE WITH THEIR
> MUSIC ...
> Hyphens are just as likely to cause misunderstandings as prevent
them.
>
> I'm still not sure what Shavian is all about, but turning it into
> electronic text does raise interesting questions about emphasis,
format and
> punctuation.