--- On Tue, 3/20/12, David Peterson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Mar 20, 2012, at 12:03 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> 
> > He's vèry free with the speculation.
> 
> That's pretty cool and intuitive, but could we possibly
> *not* do that and instead use asterisks or nothing? 

Asteriskses are certainly a valid option, though they also have a specific
use in distinguishing the events and places of one's constructed world / 
timeline from those of the primary world. "*Here*" vs. "*There*".

I don't use axterixides much because I've generally adopted the accent 
marking from Jan, suitably modified for English orthography, and leave it 
at that. Even then, I only use the accents for extréme emphasis, not 
normal stress on any given word, or even ordinary emphasis.

For what it's worth, the system I use is acute accent on "long" vowels &
aesh, and grave accents on short vowels. Accent mark should come on the 
second member of a two vowel group. So I differentiate "extréme" 
& "vèry" and "goóse" & "roòk".

And yes, I do this fairly consistently even outside Conlang/Conculture.

As far as searches in the archives go, I would think that the amount of
accent-emphatics can't quite be as high as the amount conlang words, 
foreign words, mispelled words or otherwise botched turns of phrase that
one might want to search for. It's a wonder we can find ánything in the 
archives!

> The reason is that if you search for the string "very" (using
> this example only) in the Conlang Archives, it won't return
> this message.

Actually, it does. Because you've also spelled it without the accent. ;)

Also, I think it would be very very rare indeed to search for one single,
common word in this way. And the likelihood of that single common word
having an accent-emphatic is even less likely! Far more likely to be
spelled incorrectly!

> Now "very" isn't the most important word in
> that message, but if this practice expànds, pretty soon
> we'll be dropping grave accents on impòrtant words, and
> we'll try to search for those words in the àrchives, and we
> won't be able to find them (or we'll be left guessing if the
> word we're searching for should instead also be spelled with
> a grave accent on the tonic syllable). It'd be better if we
> used a method for emphasis that leaves the string in tact so
> we can avoid this problem.

Anything can be taken to a silly extreme. We could put random accent marks
on every letter of a message! I think most of us will not do that, unless
it's our intent to be purposefully silly. For the most part, we'd only
use it for emphasising particular words. I don't see the practice messing
up archive searches any more than any other mishap. 

> Just my two cents.

And mine. 

Padraic

> David Peterson
> LCS President
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> www.conlang.org