Songs of Love & Grammar (& %*# - :@; etc.)*

From James Harbeck's book Songs of Love & Grammar:

Dim innuendos

A sweet musician in a bar said, "Boy, I think you're #."
I said, "Girl, you're a ♮, but I don't want to harp."
She said, "Well, here's the key so you can get into my ♭."
The rest of it I can't repeat, so I'll conclude at that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharp, natural, flat. I didn't think it would be wise to try to include a repeat typographically - it doesn't really work without the rest of the bar lines.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harbeck's book is filled with over 100 pages of delightful poetry that turn grammar and punctuation lessons into fun, little love ditties.

My only complaint is that the title is a bit misleading; there seem to be almost as many songs about symbols (see Dim innuendos above), signs, and abbreviations as there are about grammar, so I added to the title of this post * & symbols, signs, and abbreviations.

Either way, it is a highly entertaining book and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys having fun with language.

You can read more excerpts from the book at Harbeck's blog Sesquiotica, (which, by the way, happens to be one of my favorite blogs).

Also, make sure to check out Harbeck's Word Tasting Notes. These notes cover the visual aspect of words, how words feel in the mouth, the semantics and etymologies of words, and more. 

In a Symbol

Futility Closet is one of my regular reads and I especially enjoy the "In a Word" posts. Last week one of the featured words was pilcrow and it was accompanied by an image of the named symbol (¶) along with the definition.

pilcrow
n. the paragraph sign

I couldn't resist playing with the name of the post, the word, and the image.
Thus, In a Symbol, literally.

The Semiotics of Logos II - More Lookalikes

I happened to have seen these two logos within an hour or so of each other yesterday and I was struck by the similarity between them. While I had seen them both before and am familiar with them, I had never noticed how alike they are.

It reminded me of the similarities between the Obama and Pepsi logos which I previously wrote about in The Semiotics of Logos - Obama and Pepsi are Lookalikes.

Has anyone else ever noticed the resemblance?

It is interesting that for how alike they are, what they represent are quite different endeavors.

Though, I suppose if you get right down to it, they are both about exercising (albeit different parts of the body).

You can read more about semiotics here.

Pedestrian Semiotics

To walk, or not to walk: the answer doesn't always look the same.

Here is a link to 23 additional images of pedestrian signals from around the world.

Via Neatorama

###

Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. A sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

Word Up Weekly - ♥s and ♠s

If ♥ is pronounced "heart", and defined as a transitive verb meaning "to love" (as mentioned in a previous post), then I guess it makes sense that ♠ would be pronounced "spade" and defined as ."to dig".




Image from 22 Words

Word Up Weekly - ♥

♥ According to a recent post on Johnson, The Economist's language blog, the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a new "sense" under the definition for the word "heart". ♥: pronounced "heart", and defined as a transitive verb meaning "to love". Hmmm...

Semiotics and Stale Bread

This falls under the following categories:

Where have I been all of my life?

And

You learn something new every day.

My son came home from school last week and asked me if I knew what the plastic tabs on loaves of bread meant. My response was, "yes, they are printed with the sell by dates." Little did I know they are color-coded by delivery date as well.

Snopes.com verified this newly-realized semiotic information for the plastic tabs and the twist ties.

According to Snopes, bread is delivered fresh five days a week to grocery stores: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has its own colored twist tie or plastic tab. This color-coding is alphabetical based on the first letter of the color which is coordinated with the order of the days of the week.

Monday - Blue

Tuesday - Green

Thursday - Red

Friday - White

Saturday - Yellow

The main purpose of the color-coding is to help grocery-stocking personnel switchover the bread inventory in a more expedient manner.

Now that I have this new information, I will never purchase a loaf of bread with a blue tab or tie on a Saturday.

###

From a previous post: semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. In semiotics a sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

More on semiotics here.

Word Play - License Plate Semiotics

License Plate Quiz

Custom license plates (sometimes called vanity plates) often make use of a combination of letters and numbers to convey a message semiotically.



What do you think this license plate says?





Please click on the comment button to submit your answer.


For more fun with license plates, be sure to check out Vanity Plates: Creepiness in 8 Characters or Less.

Fun with Semiotics - Assicons

From an e-mail I received (talk about having fun with semiotics).

We all know those cute little computer symbols called 'emoticons' where
:) means a smile and :( is a frown.

Well, how about some 'ASSICONS?'

Here goes:

(_!_) a regular ass

(__!__) a fat ass

(!) a tight ass

(_*_) an ass hole

{_!_} a swishy ass

(_o_) an ass that's been around

(_x_) kiss my ass

(_X_) leave my ass alone

(_zzz_) a tired ass

(_13_) an unlucky ass

(_E=mc2_) a smart ass

(_$_) money coming out of his ass

(_?_) dumb ass

(_~_) a latin ass

(_/_) an Asian ass

(_+_) a French ass

As for me, I am feeling like a (__!__) and a (_zzz_) after yesterday's Thanksgiving feast.


Click here for more about semiotics.

What is Semiotics?

In yesterday's post about the name of T-Pain's album (THR33 RINGZ), I referred to the use of the "3's" for the "E's" as semiotic. Because semiotics is not a widely known area of linguistics, I thought I should explain a bit more. Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. In semiotics a sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.


With the album THR33 RINGZ, semiotics refers to the use of the use of the number "3" as a symbol for the letter "E". Semiotics also examines the relationship between the "3" and the "E" and what it is about the relationship that allows people to determine the intended meaning of the symbol.