explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1010: Etymology-Man

2026-05-14T01:41:29Z

Heleatunda:

That water isn't coming in nearly fast enough to be a tidal wave. Probably just a flood. A really fast flood. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

: Maybe Etymology-Man talks really really fast. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.11|108.162.250.11]] 03:20, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

:: Maybe Etymology-Man also has the power to slow incoming danger by sheer force of knowledge [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.54|108.162.216.54]] 08:57, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

: We need Etymology-Man in this discussion section to describe the term "Flash flood."

;Minor characters

Shouldn't etymology man be in the list of minor characters? [[User:E^ipi|E^ipi]] ([[User talk:E^ipi|talk]]) 12:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

The title text should've wished for King Canute instead :P [[User:The Cat Lady|-- The Cat Lady]] ([[User talk:The Cat Lady|talk]]) 15:32, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Another super-power Etymology-Man doesn't bother using to help anyone: he can break the fourth wall and crash dramatically through the panel frame! [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:54, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
:I disagree. That would be indicated by the comic-frame border being 'broken', which is something Randall has done in the past (or the 'paper' broken through in at least one memorable example). This just looks like an off-frame crash (into the space inhabited by the two tsunami victims, out of some structure he maybe did his Clark Kenting in or perhaps just through a wall/fence that was 'in the way').
:Whichever, it was from the direction of the incoming water, and whether his damage of some barrier (albeit the main inpact high above the ground) is useful or just lets the water flow in faster is a question we probably don't want the answer for... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.29|162.158.159.29]] 13:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

If Etymology-Man's powers included "causing listeners to be enthralled by whatever explanation he gives at the expense of their own health and safety", then cueball and ponytail wouldn't be concerned about the rising water in the last panel. {{unsigned|IJustWantToEditStuff|17:06, 22 March 2023}}

I have a new theory: Etymology‐Man is actually a supervillain who deliberately distracts people from imminent danger via his power to capture their undivided attention until itʼs too late. [[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:41, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Talk:1010: Etymology-Man

2026-05-14T01:39:25Z

Heleatunda:

Talk:3175: Website Task Flowchart

2026-05-12T07:44:30Z

Heleatunda:

> who are available to produce words at you 24/7!

Is "produce words at you" an AI reference? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 19:40, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
:I think it is likely an AI reference. —[[User:Theusaf|theusaf]] ([[User talk:Theusaf|talk]]) 19:46, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
:I tend to agree, but it does say "live agents" earlier so it could also be a reference to live but non-native language speakers in a foreign call center. [[Special:Contributions/47.248.235.170|47.248.235.170]] 20:24, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Pat
::Real-time bots are live but not ''alive''. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.79|64.114.211.79]] 21:26, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
:::I feel like for some certain definition of 'alive' bots could be considered alive. They are (kind of?)sentient, which just means they can think. 'sapient', on the other hand, means that he/she/they is self-aware. While it is generally considered that bots are not live, this may not always be true. Depending on how advanced AI ever get, (most probable answer: not very) they may one day be able to evolve and reproduce. They already perform metabolism and homeostasis (power and fans). They have structure, they are made of computer chips (im not a computer nerd, so this probably isn't accurate). They react to stimuli. Honestly, all that needs to let them be considered 'alive' is for them to be able to make other AI and for those AI to be slightly different, which they kind of already can. Besides being made of metal, there is no real reason to claim that an AI isn't 'alive', that's just what mainstream media claims. --[[User:Kirinhatchi|Kirinhatchi]] ([[User talk:Kirinhatchi|talk]]) 01:05, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
::::I mean, AI isn't always constantly running. Something else decideds whether or not it's actively existing and living, in a sense. I think that's what stops me from really buying into the idea that LLM's are alive in a technical sense. [[User:RG|RG]] ([[User talk:RG|talk]]) 06:14, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
:::They're certainly live as in "live TV" and/or a "live electricity socket", as in active/functional/doing-what-they-are-designed-to-do. [[Special:Contributions/78.144.255.82|78.144.255.82]] 01:44, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

wow second commenter --[[User:LazyTiger0203|LazyTiger0203]] ([[User talk:LazyTiger0203|talk]]) 19:45, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Is Randall just now finding out about this?!? What sequestered Internet space has he been hiding in? I want. Of course it's probably gone now. [[Special:Contributions/205.175.118.2|205.175.118.2]] 20:20, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I have fixed several spelling errors. [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 02:49, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I would replace the "Throw electronics into sea" step with "As soon as the call is no longer on hold, say the website the hold message suggests ''is not working''". Throwing devices into sea causes e-waste. [[Special:Contributions/2001:4C4E:1C14:9800:F167:89F7:6CCE:353B|2001:4C4E:1C14:9800:F167:89F7:6CCE:353B]] 08:30, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
:Who cares about that, when the big problem is still [[1751: Movie Folder|all those Titanics]] to watch out for? [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.203|82.132.237.203]] 16:25, 2 December 2025 (UTC) ;)

Companies can't seem to understand that literally the only reason people call their customer service line is because *THEY NEED TO TALK TO AN ACTUAL HUMAN BECAUSE THE COMPUTER IS INADIQUATE*!--[[Special:Contributions/136.226.7.187|136.226.7.187]] 20:26, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
:But think of the glorious profits we can make by firing humans who need our jobs to survive! --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 20:44, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I always try to solve problems myself before calling the helpdesk. This involves applying the most obvious fix, then the next most obvious.
When these fail (as I expected), I call.
:"Hello, Service Desk, ** speaking, how may I help you?"
:"I'm having trouble trying to do *** on your website. But I've already tried the most obvious solutions, so don't bother suggesting them."
:"OK. Have you tried #1 *** ?"
:"Yes, I said I've tried that."
:"What about #2 ***?"
Why do they insist on suggesting solutions that I've already told them don't work? [[User:Beechmere|Beechmere]] ([[User talk:Beechmere|talk]]) 02:43, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
:Because you haven't? They may or may not have a script to follow, or actually know their thing, but (unless you've abbreviated your introductory description) they've got a voice at the other end only saying "the most obvious solutions" have been tried. But are these the obvious solutions to the actual expert (or the maybe-'experts' who wrote the support-workflow script), or just have skipped the real First Action Points entirely. They probably have to deal with many misconceptions from every (self-professed) 'technicaly-adept' voice on the end of the line. (Or, if script-led, don't recognise your more homegrown terminology as it relates to what they only know from what they've occasionally had described to them on their on-screen 'expert flowchart'.)
:And they've really got to (e.g.) ask ''whether'' you've actually plugged the printer in (in times past, Parallel Port; these days, USB or even network cable; unless it's a wireless connectivity of your choiceñ) because all the rest of the checks (and which driver/config redo to use) isn't going to help much if there's no way that the thing that's supposed to be talking can be heard by the thing that's supposed to be listening.
:(Notwithstanding the old "yes, it's definitely plugged in!", which can sometimes be resolved by "but have you tried plugging the cable in the other way round?"... ''Occasionally'' a bidirectional cable or a symmetrical plug actually works one way round when it won't the other (though I'd suspect cable/connector damage, in such cases, and that's a temporary fix at best), but amazingly it sometimes works(!) with an asymmetric connection (whether D-Sub, USB-pre-C, etc). Because the know-it-all who was adamant that it was plugged in only actually checked when asked to fiddle with it, now plugs it in the 'other' (i.e. one and only) way round and then happily/resentfully accepts that it's started working.)
:That said, as a tech-type myself I do groan at being dealt with by people for whom my 'obvious' and tech-grounded explanation of the steps I've tried so far seem to be heard as nothing much far from "one of cross-beam's gone out of skew on treadle!", just because they can't match my words to the equally descriptive words from their script/training/experience, and so we may have to bounce around a few terms to find common ground (ethernet cable or patch cable, etc... you know, RJ45 ends, etc, and if it's a crossover one I'd tell you) to get onto the same (''early'') page in the troubleshooting handbook.
:When I've been the tech-support (internal, only, so not the same kind of anonymous desk-drone as alluded to above), I've been at the receiving end of a wide range of 'incoming expertise', and a wide range of how complicated the error actually was. From the "Fonzi" repair (Repair Manouevre Number One: Hit it! ...works surprisingly often) and the "Roy" (Repair Manouevre Number Two: "Have you tried turning it off and back on again..?") to the truly weird (the reason why one particular line-printer wouldn't print off one particular client's reports on one particular day... we worked out why, but as the problem wouldn't arise the next working day we didn't change the deliberately obtuse thing work, just suggested those printouts could wait a day, and made an internal note in case any other client's work on any future day stopped printing on any other printer due to a similar confluence of issues). Plenty of them were ''at least partially'' PEBCAK issues, though some of those users really did pride themselves over having tried "all the obvious fixes", despite being proven otherwise from a thirty-second desk-visit after the five minute talk-through over the phone hadn't gone well at all... [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.210|82.132.237.210]] 15:27, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
:: I've been on both sides of the conversation. "It's not working.", "Is it plugged in?", "Do you think I'm an ... , Oh never mind it works once it's plugged in." When all else fails, borrow somebody else's intern and explain how it's supposed to work.[[Special:Contributions/76.180.39.133|76.180.39.133]] 16:23, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

OMFG the struggle is for real. I always lead a new ticket now by saying, “And iʼve already tried all the usual nonsense like rebooting, clearing the cache, etc.”[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 07:44, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Talk:2725: Sunspot Cycle

2026-02-06T03:39:08Z

Heleatunda:

Holy cow, just made my first edit! It was SUPER stressful, and I didn't even know how to make a 'citation needed' thing. Hopefully it was ok, I tried to match the style of the wiki. [[User:GordonFreeman|GordonFreeman]] ([[User talk:GordonFreeman|talk]]) 03:06, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Welcome to explain xkcd then. Any edit that is not vandalism is a good edit, because it makes other think about what should be here. So even if it is later completely changed it got things going. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:I know that editing may be hard. FYI: create {{Citation needed}}s like this: <code><nowiki>{{Citation needed}}</nowiki></code> {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 17:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::Though over-use should be discouraged. Except in exceptional circumstances (many different things separately explained, giving a number of prime opportunities) I'd avoid more than one Citation Needed per comic. And I personally think (and it is the [[explain_xkcd:Editor_FAQ#Is_the_Citation_needed_template_here_similar_to_the_analog_at_Wikipedia.3F|official intention]]) that trying to find even ''one'' 'suitable' item per comic devalues the joke, perhaps should be (on average, but not punctually so just for the sake of it) maybe one for every three or four such pages; but I know there are those who would want to stamp (at least!) one into every comic, just because they can. And I would not normally remove an instance just because its usage is comparatively weaker than those in the two adjacent articles.
::And note that there are redirecting versions of {{Template|citation needed}}, {{Template|cn}} and <nowiki>{{Template|fact}}</nowiki> (amongst others) in case you can't recall that it is "Capital C, small n" or are forgetful/lazy as you try to type it, though I think using the non-redirecting original should be done if you know how to fully write and capitalise it (feels neater). There is also {{Template|Actual citation needed}} when the 'real thing' is needed; though in a manner where you expect that issue to be resolved and removed by the next person who can either ''actually'' 'cite' what is true or else remove the properly doubtful information.
::Anyway, I shall add my thanks to [[User:GordonFreeman|the original Explainer]], it was a good first job, IMO. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.222|172.70.90.222]] 13:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Is it perhaps worth mentioning that sunspots, while they're darker than the rest of the sun's surface, are not actually black. They are cooler than surrounding regions and appear dark by contrast, but they're emitting lots of IR and some visible light. A sunspots-only (ignore the oxymoron) sun would still emit light and heat, just less. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:18, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't the cycle be 20 ("every other decade") or 22 years (11 in each half of the cycle)? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.173|162.158.166.173]] 03:51, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:The cycle of darkness of the sun would be 22 years, but the 11-year cycle referred to in the comic, and described by both diagrams within the comic, is the cycle of "number of sunspots" which peaks when the sun is half light, half dark, and decreases again as there are so many spots that they start to merge into fewer, larger spots. It cycles from very few (or zero) sunspots, when the sun is light, through many sunspots, sun is heavily light/dark spotted, and completes the cycle when the number of spots returns down to near-zero, when the sun is dark. {{unsigned ip|172.70.85.201}}
::Or to put it another way, at "peak sunspot" every 11 years, it would be equally accurate to describe the sun as being bright with dark spots or dark with bright spots. Akin to how the moon has a 29.5 day brightness cycle, but also a 14.75 day halfiness cycle.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.26|172.71.223.26]] 16:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

To what "financial crash of 2014" does this refer? I recall the housing crisis causing financial trouble, but that was around 2008. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.173|162.158.166.173]] 03:51, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:This has nothing to do with finance so if you think the peak at 2014 should have any meaning I think you are wrong. there where just for some reason more sunspots even though the sun was still in the dark period. Maybe most of the few huge sunspots broke into smaller but with only thin lines between, so still dark but the count goes up. Then they closed again later keeping the sun dark but the number of spots fluctuating. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::It was a question about explanation text that was added in [[Special:Diff/304859|this revision]] and removed about [[Special:Diff/304865|half an hour later]].[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.136|162.158.90.136]] 03:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone have any idea what is supposed to be on the Y axis of the bottom graph? Something that goes up when the sun is transitioning between brightnesses and is at its lowest when the sun is either fully bright or fully dark? {{unsigned ip|108.162.241.213}}
:It's the "number of spots" (whether light or dark), since a fully bright sun has no dark spots and a fully dark sun has no "light spots"[[User:Dextrous Fred|Dextrous Fred]] ([[User talk:Dextrous Fred|talk]]) 05:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::But what are the thin lines indicating, it it just to show that the sun is not yet really dark? Like a gray shade with very long between the dark lines? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Did anyone else notice that the sine-wave is wrong? the trough should be the same every cycle, yet it's drawn as bright in the first trough and dark in the second trough. -Weylin Piegorsch [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.117|172.70.126.117]] 06:52, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:If you reefer to the bottom graph it is correctly drawn. The sunspots number are near zero when the sun is bright in the first through and then it is again near zero when the sun is dark as there are then only one sunspot. So that is why it is alternating between light and dark for every through. Just as shown in the upper graph. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::Ah - the y axis of the upper graph is #subspots (which maximizes as they merge and minimizes at full dark/full bright), not magnitude of brightness. Thanks for the clarification! -Weylin Piegorsch [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.79|172.70.114.79]] 14:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not think it is set in an alternate universe per se, but in the images of the sun spots the minimum brightness of the whole sun is subtracted. So only the sun spots stay visible. So the sun images are depictions of our sun. The number of sun spots loses common-sense meaning after merging starts. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.10|162.158.86.10]] 07:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Well since the sun is dark in this universe for 10 years, then it cannot be our universe, and since they also have 90s memes, then it is either a parallel universe or well... Randall's fantasy :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I didn't have enough space in my last edit summary to explain my change. As if anyone who needs to really reads those, anyway... So here (unconstrained by petty character limits!) is why I took off the apostrophes in "90's kid", etc...:
/* Explanation */ Removing apostrophes not used by Randall. (I would personally say '90s, the apostrophe being for the contraction of 1990s, but here only the quoting-apostrophes of '90s kid' seems necessary and capable of being consistent. "The 90s" is a pluralisation of all years of the decade based upon (19)90. A kid *of* the 90s could be a 90s' kid, but I think we're intended to treat this as an adjectival descriptor, not a posessive element.)
And I outright reject the idea that apostrophes can ever be used for pluralising, despite some 'authorities' on the matter. Especially where it clashes with plural-possessive, contraction ''and'' single-quoting uses in a single case, upon a wiki where doubled-up apostrophes would incite ''italics''. Better to rewrite. But, for now, I've just rationalised to go with actual demonstrated usage (both from Randall and {{w|1990s|more or less in general}}) and intent. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.133|172.70.85.133]] 10:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
: Well, I don't think there's any value in spending 000's of hours debating it.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.46|172.70.85.46]] 15:13, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Does this remind anyone else of oscillations in population dynamics (increase in population eventually causes overpopulation and triggers a period of reduction before the population starts to recover, etc.)? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.201|172.70.85.201]] 15:24, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:I had thought to say that a budding sunspot would become 'dark' if it was forming on light surface and 'light' if forming on darkened surface, which has a relationship with some biological population frequencies/responses (even within the same population, an expressed variation can be linked to the perception of what is/is not lacking in its fellows or just various overlapping territories). But a simple scenario (of instantaneous points; having the choice of locale to materialise, or else the accident of 'birth' into any given situation from which to sway their appearance) would settle into an equilibreum as a slightly more than half-dark Sun would spawn proportionately more 'light spots' than a slightly more than half-light one.
:It needs to have a time-delayed aspect (as with natural creature populations, a post-gestation glut being based upon pre-gestation plenty; or upon the opposite negatively influencing pressures), so budding might start (and be fixed into its identity) years before it becomes a visible member of the population. A resonant {{w|hysteresis}}, of some kind? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.132|172.70.85.132]] 16:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

== Is there a way to shrink the size of the comic? ==

Is there some way to shrink the size of the comic? It startled me a little bit when I typed in the URL of this website and saw this taking up a large amount of space, with me initially thinking that this was just another stupid case of vandalism. [[User:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|SilverTheTerribleMathematician]] ([[User talk:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|talk]]) 16:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Fixed {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 17:07, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

----

This comic me think of the long [https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Westeros#Known_seasons seasons of Westeros] in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire A Song of Ice and Fire]. [[User:Mnl|Mnl]] ([[User talk:Mnl|talk]]) 00:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we say anything about the weird aliased version of this comic that went up originally? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.132|172.70.100.132]] 01:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The alternately dark and bright sun is very reminiscent of the OnOff star in Vernor Vinge's novel ''A Deepness in the Sky'', although the duty cycle of the OnOff star is very different, spending 215 years "off" and 35 years "on" in a 250-year cycle. The On-Off Star even has an planet that is Earthlike and habitable, at least during the times the OnOff star is "on". Somehow life on that planet evolved to cope with the cryogenic freezing temperatures (the atmosphere actually freezes to the surface) when the star is "off" and is inhabited by an intelligent race of arachnid-like creatures.
[[User:Stevev|Stevev]] ([[User talk:Stevev|talk]]) 08:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

For different {{w|Helliconia#Astronomy|astronomical reasons}}, it made me mostly think about the Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.222|172.70.90.222]] 13:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Someone put the following in the Incomplete tag. I don't think it's right (a 7 year cycle... Could have been fudged to somehow happen three times in every two solar-cycles to more closely match..?) but it deserves to be seen in the context of every ''other'' potential inspirational source being mentioned:
:Title text is a clear allusion to Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" which is about the sun coming out every 7th year on Venus, an event which only Margot can remember. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day
...also, that editor should have tried using the site-standard {{Template|w}} method for the link, perhaps, if they're reading this. For your future info, ok? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.207|172.71.178.207]] 01:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

We now have a counterexample for "The sun is bright, and its light illuminates the Earth {{cn}}", which is from comic 285 [[Special:Contributions/172.68.58.130|172.68.58.130]] 19:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the world of “Lion of Senet”. The planet actually orbited two suns in a rather erratic fashion and caused one of the suns to “disappear” for years at a time.[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 03:39, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Talk:2725: Sunspot Cycle

2026-02-06T03:38:36Z

Heleatunda:

Holy cow, just made my first edit! It was SUPER stressful, and I didn't even know how to make a 'citation needed' thing. Hopefully it was ok, I tried to match the style of the wiki. [[User:GordonFreeman|GordonFreeman]] ([[User talk:GordonFreeman|talk]]) 03:06, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Welcome to explain xkcd then. Any edit that is not vandalism is a good edit, because it makes other think about what should be here. So even if it is later completely changed it got things going. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:I know that editing may be hard. FYI: create {{Citation needed}}s like this: <code><nowiki>{{Citation needed}}</nowiki></code> {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 17:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::Though over-use should be discouraged. Except in exceptional circumstances (many different things separately explained, giving a number of prime opportunities) I'd avoid more than one Citation Needed per comic. And I personally think (and it is the [[explain_xkcd:Editor_FAQ#Is_the_Citation_needed_template_here_similar_to_the_analog_at_Wikipedia.3F|official intention]]) that trying to find even ''one'' 'suitable' item per comic devalues the joke, perhaps should be (on average, but not punctually so just for the sake of it) maybe one for every three or four such pages; but I know there are those who would want to stamp (at least!) one into every comic, just because they can. And I would not normally remove an instance just because its usage is comparatively weaker than those in the two adjacent articles.
::And note that there are redirecting versions of {{Template|citation needed}}, {{Template|cn}} and <nowiki>{{Template|fact}}</nowiki> (amongst others) in case you can't recall that it is "Capital C, small n" or are forgetful/lazy as you try to type it, though I think using the non-redirecting original should be done if you know how to fully write and capitalise it (feels neater). There is also {{Template|Actual citation needed}} when the 'real thing' is needed; though in a manner where you expect that issue to be resolved and removed by the next person who can either ''actually'' 'cite' what is true or else remove the properly doubtful information.
::Anyway, I shall add my thanks to [[User:GordonFreeman|the original Explainer]], it was a good first job, IMO. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.222|172.70.90.222]] 13:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Is it perhaps worth mentioning that sunspots, while they're darker than the rest of the sun's surface, are not actually black. They are cooler than surrounding regions and appear dark by contrast, but they're emitting lots of IR and some visible light. A sunspots-only (ignore the oxymoron) sun would still emit light and heat, just less. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:18, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't the cycle be 20 ("every other decade") or 22 years (11 in each half of the cycle)? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.173|162.158.166.173]] 03:51, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:The cycle of darkness of the sun would be 22 years, but the 11-year cycle referred to in the comic, and described by both diagrams within the comic, is the cycle of "number of sunspots" which peaks when the sun is half light, half dark, and decreases again as there are so many spots that they start to merge into fewer, larger spots. It cycles from very few (or zero) sunspots, when the sun is light, through many sunspots, sun is heavily light/dark spotted, and completes the cycle when the number of spots returns down to near-zero, when the sun is dark. {{unsigned ip|172.70.85.201}}
::Or to put it another way, at "peak sunspot" every 11 years, it would be equally accurate to describe the sun as being bright with dark spots or dark with bright spots. Akin to how the moon has a 29.5 day brightness cycle, but also a 14.75 day halfiness cycle.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.26|172.71.223.26]] 16:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

To what "financial crash of 2014" does this refer? I recall the housing crisis causing financial trouble, but that was around 2008. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.173|162.158.166.173]] 03:51, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:This has nothing to do with finance so if you think the peak at 2014 should have any meaning I think you are wrong. there where just for some reason more sunspots even though the sun was still in the dark period. Maybe most of the few huge sunspots broke into smaller but with only thin lines between, so still dark but the count goes up. Then they closed again later keeping the sun dark but the number of spots fluctuating. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::It was a question about explanation text that was added in [[Special:Diff/304859|this revision]] and removed about [[Special:Diff/304865|half an hour later]].[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.136|162.158.90.136]] 03:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone have any idea what is supposed to be on the Y axis of the bottom graph? Something that goes up when the sun is transitioning between brightnesses and is at its lowest when the sun is either fully bright or fully dark? {{unsigned ip|108.162.241.213}}
:It's the "number of spots" (whether light or dark), since a fully bright sun has no dark spots and a fully dark sun has no "light spots"[[User:Dextrous Fred|Dextrous Fred]] ([[User talk:Dextrous Fred|talk]]) 05:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::But what are the thin lines indicating, it it just to show that the sun is not yet really dark? Like a gray shade with very long between the dark lines? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Did anyone else notice that the sine-wave is wrong? the trough should be the same every cycle, yet it's drawn as bright in the first trough and dark in the second trough. -Weylin Piegorsch [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.117|172.70.126.117]] 06:52, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:If you reefer to the bottom graph it is correctly drawn. The sunspots number are near zero when the sun is bright in the first through and then it is again near zero when the sun is dark as there are then only one sunspot. So that is why it is alternating between light and dark for every through. Just as shown in the upper graph. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
::Ah - the y axis of the upper graph is #subspots (which maximizes as they merge and minimizes at full dark/full bright), not magnitude of brightness. Thanks for the clarification! -Weylin Piegorsch [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.79|172.70.114.79]] 14:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not think it is set in an alternate universe per se, but in the images of the sun spots the minimum brightness of the whole sun is subtracted. So only the sun spots stay visible. So the sun images are depictions of our sun. The number of sun spots loses common-sense meaning after merging starts. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.10|162.158.86.10]] 07:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Well since the sun is dark in this universe for 10 years, then it cannot be our universe, and since they also have 90s memes, then it is either a parallel universe or well... Randall's fantasy :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I didn't have enough space in my last edit summary to explain my change. As if anyone who needs to really reads those, anyway... So here (unconstrained by petty character limits!) is why I took off the apostrophes in "90's kid", etc...:
/* Explanation */ Removing apostrophes not used by Randall. (I would personally say '90s, the apostrophe being for the contraction of 1990s, but here only the quoting-apostrophes of '90s kid' seems necessary and capable of being consistent. "The 90s" is a pluralisation of all years of the decade based upon (19)90. A kid *of* the 90s could be a 90s' kid, but I think we're intended to treat this as an adjectival descriptor, not a posessive element.)
And I outright reject the idea that apostrophes can ever be used for pluralising, despite some 'authorities' on the matter. Especially where it clashes with plural-possessive, contraction ''and'' single-quoting uses in a single case, upon a wiki where doubled-up apostrophes would incite ''italics''. Better to rewrite. But, for now, I've just rationalised to go with actual demonstrated usage (both from Randall and {{w|1990s|more or less in general}}) and intent. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.133|172.70.85.133]] 10:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
: Well, I don't think there's any value in spending 000's of hours debating it.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.46|172.70.85.46]] 15:13, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Does this remind anyone else of oscillations in population dynamics (increase in population eventually causes overpopulation and triggers a period of reduction before the population starts to recover, etc.)? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.201|172.70.85.201]] 15:24, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:I had thought to say that a budding sunspot would become 'dark' if it was forming on light surface and 'light' if forming on darkened surface, which has a relationship with some biological population frequencies/responses (even within the same population, an expressed variation can be linked to the perception of what is/is not lacking in its fellows or just various overlapping territories). But a simple scenario (of instantaneous points; having the choice of locale to materialise, or else the accident of 'birth' into any given situation from which to sway their appearance) would settle into an equilibreum as a slightly more than half-dark Sun would spawn proportionately more 'light spots' than a slightly more than half-light one.
:It needs to have a time-delayed aspect (as with natural creature populations, a post-gestation glut being based upon pre-gestation plenty; or upon the opposite negatively influencing pressures), so budding might start (and be fixed into its identity) years before it becomes a visible member of the population. A resonant {{w|hysteresis}}, of some kind? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.132|172.70.85.132]] 16:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

== Is there a way to shrink the size of the comic? ==

Is there some way to shrink the size of the comic? It startled me a little bit when I typed in the URL of this website and saw this taking up a large amount of space, with me initially thinking that this was just another stupid case of vandalism. [[User:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|SilverTheTerribleMathematician]] ([[User talk:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|talk]]) 16:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Fixed {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 17:07, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

----

This comic me think of the long [https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Westeros#Known_seasons seasons of Westeros] in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire A Song of Ice and Fire]. [[User:Mnl|Mnl]] ([[User talk:Mnl|talk]]) 00:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we say anything about the weird aliased version of this comic that went up originally? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.132|172.70.100.132]] 01:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The alternately dark and bright sun is very reminiscent of the OnOff star in Vernor Vinge's novel ''A Deepness in the Sky'', although the duty cycle of the OnOff star is very different, spending 215 years "off" and 35 years "on" in a 250-year cycle. The On-Off Star even has an planet that is Earthlike and habitable, at least during the times the OnOff star is "on". Somehow life on that planet evolved to cope with the cryogenic freezing temperatures (the atmosphere actually freezes to the surface) when the star is "off" and is inhabited by an intelligent race of arachnid-like creatures.
[[User:Stevev|Stevev]] ([[User talk:Stevev|talk]]) 08:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

For different {{w|Helliconia#Astronomy|astronomical reasons}}, it made me mostly think about the Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.222|172.70.90.222]] 13:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Someone put the following in the Incomplete tag. I don't think it's right (a 7 year cycle... Could have been fudged to somehow happen three times in every two solar-cycles to more closely match..?) but it deserves to be seen in the context of every ''other'' potential inspirational source being mentioned:
:Title text is a clear allusion to Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" which is about the sun coming out every 7th year on Venus, an event which only Margot can remember. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day
...also, that editor should have tried using the site-standard {{Template|w}} method for the link, perhaps, if they're reading this. For your future info, ok? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.207|172.71.178.207]] 01:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

We now have a counterexample for "The sun is bright, and its light illuminates the Earth {{cn}}", which is from comic 285 [[Special:Contributions/172.68.58.130|172.68.58.130]] 19:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the world of “Lion of Senet”. The planet actually orbit two suns in a rather erratic fashion and caused one of the suns to “disappear” for years at a time.[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 03:38, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Talk:1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2026-01-26T05:49:32Z

Heleatunda:

http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ will take you to the large version, which the comic currently doesn't have a link to. I expect that will be fixed shortly. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.177|108.162.210.177]] 05:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:I just realized he has a text link for it in the top banner. I'd delete my comment, but that's rude on a wiki. Whatever. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.177|108.162.210.177]] 05:35, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The bottom diagonal seems to be mislabelled? Shouldn't it be "Stories written X years and set X years ago" instead of "set 2X years ago"?
--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.175|108.162.250.175]] 05:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:It is correct, if you see both relative from now. The middle line is written X years ago and set X years ago and thus contemporary. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.68|108.162.231.68]] 06:46, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
::Correct, but could be clearer. I thought it was a bug at first. 'Stories written X years ago and set X years before publication' [[User:Jbalcorn|Jbalcorn]] ([[User talk:Jbalcorn|talk]]) 16:21, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure where to open bug tickets, but Lest Darkness Fall actually takes place ~1500 years ago, not ~500. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.121|141.101.80.121]] 06:35, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
: I'll second that -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 12:36, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Kind of reminds of a Minkowski diagram. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.68|108.162.231.68]] 06:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

More and more science fiction works wander into the category obsolete science fiction, and more and more historical works are not recognisable as such by the average viewer as the movies have been filmed such a long time ago anyway. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.68|108.162.231.68]] 06:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be a mistake with the large diagonal line. It says "Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago." It should say, "... and set X years ago." Am I missing something here? [[User:Effy|Effy]] ([[User talk:Effy|talk]]) 09:35, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:Nevermind, I see now that the y-axis is date relative to publication, not absolute dates relative to today. My bad. [[User:Effy|Effy]] ([[User talk:Effy|talk]]) 09:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I may have missed it, but can't see {{w|Paris in the Twentieth Century}}, written in 1863, about 1960, but only published in 1994. Which would have been an interesting addition. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 10:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:In fact, I'm thinking it could have been represented as a (dotted?) ''diagonal'' arrowed line between "1960 in 1863"/future-trending and "1960 in 1994"/past-trending points. But never mind. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 10:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

... this is why experienced sci-fi writers don't date their stories. On the other hand, many sci-fi became obviously obsolete even without the date. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:00, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:I have experience with this. Back in 1995 I advised a prospective author-friend (prospective author; already and still a friend, surprisingly) on the latest computing matters to help a plot device in a "five minutes into the future" story. Even two years later, it sounded so dated and... naff. ('Luckily', it didn't sell too well anyway (bad choice of publishers), so my failure-as-futurologist - uncredited as it also fortunately was - wasn't so wildly known.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 13:04, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I've been trying and trying to figure out what the heck his point might be, as IMO there usually seems to be some point he's trying to make or way he's trying to be clever, beyond the interesting nature of the observation - and I think I might have seen one (though there is probably something else) - anyone notice that the area under the "Stories set in 2015" line is awfully bare? at least compared to the areas on either side of the 'x / 2x' line. that could simply be his particular selection of works(?) anyone have some ideas of things that might deserve to go in there that were not included? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 12:45, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

:I think the point here is that there are a lot of books one hasn't read yet. I, for one, sought out ''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' and ''The Pillow Book'' after reading this strip. --[[User:Koveras|Koveras]] ([[User talk:Koveras|talk]]) 13:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

::He has done stuff like that before, right? Putting the age of some books and movies into perspective, to make the reader feel old. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.151|173.245.53.151]] 15:16, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

:maybe he just wants to see what the people who transcripe it will come up with.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.173|108.162.250.173]] 12:31, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

As for writing a transcript or explanation, concerning order, I would think it would make some sense to flatten it on one axis (probably the y-axis, starting from Star Wars?) or if it is practical enough, the best might be some sort of "radial"(?) axis (is that a thing?), where the axis would be anchored at "this chart", and swing like a radar beam around from the bottom (Downton Abbey, Mad Men, and Star Wars, up through the 'x / 2x' line, through the 'contemporary' line and then the 'set in 2015' line, to finish with '3001', possibly making a small attempt to keep related works (like Star Wars) together in the listing. Any comments? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 12:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:Whatever the fixation, I started work on something, but other people will get there before me. So here's my ideas. Five columns: "Story (and format description/author?)", "First Published/Premiered", "Date offset(s)", "Featured date(s)" and "Notes", with sorting on each potentially numerical one (although ranges/freetext/vagueness may play havoc with such sorting, by past experience).
:I already have a complete list of listed titles (in case anyone needs it), though maybe not error-free and not yet been ordered other than by "input order".
...excised by original author...
:(Do cut that out of this Talk Page when no longer necessary!)
:What I've so far put together (but not yet checked my link formats or WikiTabled) is...
...excised by original author...
:...but I'm probably duplicating someone else's efforts so by the time I get back to it you'll have a complete and better version online. FYI if you're determined to build on this while I'm absent, however. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 14:22, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

This appears to be a log-log graph, but with abrupt changes in scale along one axis yielding cusps in the "still possible / obsolete" line. Is there a name for that? -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.169|108.162.210.169]] 14:29, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:Hello, me again. I'd also played with a 'transcript description' part. Use (or don't, or ''correct'' and then use) what I was writing, if you want. I'm taking the liberty of deleting my prior inserts while I'm here, to avoid the clutter.
X-axis represents "date of publication" of a work and is irregularly split into 1000s (3000BCE to 1000CE) and then decreasing periods of time until 1955, at which point it becomes every five years up to the present day (2015) and one devision of possibly five years into the future (the upcoming "third Star Wars Trilogy" is indicated by an arrow as lying on-or-beyond 'now', with Episode 7 itself due out not long after the comic date).
Y-axis represents "years ahead/behind publication date in which a story is set" with the 'zero axis' being "set at the time of publication. "Years in the future" spreads above, by decades until "30 years" then in a metalogarithmic manner through various orders of ten to top-out at 1 billion years. The "Years in the past" scale, below this, extends by five years down to 60 years and then similarly quickly speeds through to 1 billion years in the past, and the time of the Big Bang as lowest limit.
Above the 'here and now', a region is shaded within a line to represent the border between future settings that should have happened by this date, and below we find a similar shading/line that represents set twice as long ago as was written. Both lines continue into "2015+" territory in a manner similar to a "light cone".
:...ok? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 15:43, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I created a basic table using 141.101.98.192's data - bits corrected. [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 14:46, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm in the process of writing a transcript myself. Mine is not formatted as a table; I am under the impression that this is the preferred approach to transcripts on this site. However, the existing table would be ''perfect'' in another section, where we can give more detail than a true transcript can/should provide (e.g. "this is a book written by X, here's the wikilink", "this is an error, it should be X", etc.) -- [[User:Peregrine|Peregrine]] ([[User talk:Peregrine|talk]]) 14:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:Meh, I created the table as a starting point. If people want to use it and add to it, great. If something better is created, that's fine too. :) [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 15:12, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
::I've moved the table to its own section and put in my more minimalistic, list-style transcript (based on what I found in other "large drawing" articles. I have only included dates in the transcript as an indication of the coordinates at which each item is located (and I found several that seem misplaced vertically, perhaps to accommodate other labels, e.g. ''Next Generation''). Also, it isn't finished; everything's listed, in (more or less) the right order, but the last bunch don't have their dates/coordinates. I got as far as ''Les Mis'' before stopping. -- [[User:Peregrine|Peregrine]] ([[User talk:Peregrine|talk]]) 15:45, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
:::Looks good Peregrine! I like it. =8o) [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 17:02, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Not sure of the protocol here, but the trivia section currently states that "Rip Van Winkel" is a misspelling of "Rip Van Winkle." The use of Winkel in the comic can be correct. (http://i.imgur.com/Z0adeEJ.jpg) The transcription also lists "Rip Can Winkel [sic]" but the comic actually uses "Rip Van Winkel." {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.181}}

This Comic seems to follow the tradition of [[647: Scary]], [[891: Movie Ages]], [[973: MTV Generation]], [[1393: Timeghost]], and [[1477: Star Wars]]. Making people feel old. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.151|173.245.53.151]] 16:14, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Seems like it might have been useful to include some kind of indication of related subject matter from the upper left to the lower right in the "Stories set in the past" section. Mostly looking at the WW II related works. (Bridge/Kwai, Catch-22, Patton, Schindler, Ryan, Pearl Harbor) all seem to make a pretty straight line. Similarly, seeing that relationship between Apocalypse Now and Platoon. Finally, calling the earlier WW II era works 'former period pieces' seems odd. I think I'd still understand which parts were supposed to sound old in those (or maybe it's just that I am old). [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.215|199.27.128.215]] 18:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

did nobody see 2001 or was the title text forgotten about? i didnt see 2001 so i cant explain the joke. im pretty sure its just a joke about how it sounds similar, but i dont want to add that explanation if its wrong.[[User:TheJonyMyster|TheJonyMyster]] ([[User talk:TheJonyMyster|talk]]) 22:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Does Randall exclude the 1984 film The Terminator because the main portion occurs in 1984, or do you suppose it's because the film is not technically obsolete, given the wandering date of the predicted Judgement Day (as well as actual existence of killbots, advanced tactical simulation systems & a large broadband computer network named SkyNet)? It has often occurred to me that the only thing fictional about The Terminator is the existence of a device enabling time travel. ("The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible." T'Pol, Enterprise ;) He seems to have left out many notable predictive works which in fact came true, rather than becoming "obsolete". {{unsigned ip|173.245.55.29}}
: even correct predictions are obsolete. Because they change into facts. Let's say on Thursday I predict it will be sunny on Friday. It is sunny on Friday. Now it's Saturday. Is my prediction from Thursday obsolete, or current? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.166|108.162.249.166]] 05:46, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
: This comic's theme is stories who don't take place on their publication's date. Also, some of the listed stories have a (more or less) historically accurate setting.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.165|108.162.229.165]] 12:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Whoever wrote the date explanation for "The Time Machine" seems to have used a ridiculous number of significant figures justified by neither the book nor comic (or, for that matter, films). Even more important, the dates aren't even the right order of magnitude. I'm going to fix it, but I just thought I'd leave a comment in case the numbers actually came from somewhere. If they did, please enlighten me. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.79|108.162.216.79]] 22:23, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
:At least according to the main Wikipedia, the year in which the traveler first meets the Eloi is known precisely. I'm going to leave it rounded, though, so as not to cause confusion, as the the time of the furthest he gets in the future is definitely not known to more than one sigfig.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.79|108.162.216.79]] 22:40, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
::'Twas I, in my initial (now excised) part-compilation, using the accuracy I could extract from sources like Wiki. And when I tried to add back in the 'range' element (mysteriously lost, and also wanted to add the last column for notes), I kept getting edit conflicts. Sorted now, though. I don't mind the rounding, except for it actually ''being'' a known value (a rare thing). (I had also intended to add in the notes that it actually started in/encompassed 'the present', or rather "three years ago", by the timeline of the primary narator, 'though not indicated as such on the chart.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 14:45, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
The Star Wars footnote is incorrect: our universe is 13.8B, less th 13B for SW uni = ~1B years. The formation of galaxies puts a *maximum* time difference of 13.4B years, not 0.4B. {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.136}}
: I found that confusing myself - it's correct, just badly written. Our universe is 13.8b years old; the Star Wars universe is 13b years old (800,000 years younger). - Andrew Williams, 10:57BST, 28 February 2015.
Now, where on the graph would "The Day After Tomorrow" be placed, I wonder..? ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.181|141.101.98.181]] 21:57, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I just read the explanation's reference to Apollo 13 one day sounding like a contemporary movie and thought "I thought it was made not too long after the actual mission" - and then it hit me: we've crossed the line. I didn't realise it was a period piece... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.122.162|172.71.122.162]] 10:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I want someone to make a current version of this that updates live as time passes, and can have new works added to it. [[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 05:49, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk:77: Bored with the Internet

2026-01-15T03:42:23Z

Heleatunda:

Coming in very late, I know, but why does the article say the character is not to be confused with Hairy ... and then the transcript says it's Hairy? [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 01:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Fixed![[User:Anonia]] ([[Use talk:Anonia|talk]]) 06:30, 16 November 2021 (EST)

== Barrel Boy ==

Does anyone else notice how Not-Hairy looks like a stick figure version of Barrel Boy? I know its probably not, just wanted to throw it out there though. [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 9:33 March 7 2024 (CST)

Should it be noted in the explanation that Black Hat is not being his usual classhole self here? [[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 03:42, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk:428: Starwatching

2026-01-04T18:23:03Z

Heleatunda:

An interesting interpretation. I thought Cueball was just referencing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King The Lion King]. [[Special:Contributions/184.41.49.246|184.41.49.246]] 00:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. "Great kings of the past," "great bloggers of the past"... I don't think there was any intended reference to Christianity.{{unsigned ip|24.20.112.104}}

I think the word "blog" is more an elision than a portmanteau, since it's not a conflation (e.g. mansplain, muppet, or smog) of two words, here "web" and "log," but rather a shortening (or eliding) of the same. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.21|108.162.219.21]] 12:55, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Why is the transcript marked incomplete? [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 16:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

:Fixed a typo and grammar for tag cloud. It was a little cumbersome before, but I think I wound up using bigger words. The part about "or less" seems a little clunky also, but not quite sure how to fix it. [[User:Vorik111|Vorik111]] ([[User talk:Vorik111|talk]]) 18:22, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

There needs to be a running count somewhere on the wiki of how many times the word blogosphere appears in xkcd and how it tracks over time. If Randall reads the wiki perhaps it will induce a spiteful uptick. AzureArmageddon 07:48, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

There seem to be quite a few comics that involve some variation of the phrase “You need to get out either more or less.” Might be worth starting a category? Or at least add cross references in the Trivia section? [[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 18:23, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk:1735: Fashion Police and Grammar Police

2025-12-30T01:08:21Z

Heleatunda:

This sentence of the explanation is confusing: "Grammar police are people who are 'sticklers' to grammar rules and get mad or contradictory if someone uses non-standard grammar in a sentence." What is meant by the grammar police getting 'contradictory' when non-standard grammar is used? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.140|108.162.237.140]] 19:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)->

I added a basic explanation to this comic. I also changed the incomplete to say "Needs more on the explanation". Maybe you guys can help connect the dots and extend the explanation? --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 14:45, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

It should be noted that he uses literally wrong, just to anger the grammar police he's mocking, it's a nice touch.[[User:Trives|Trives]] ([[User talk:Trives|talk]]) 14:59, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
: What? He's using literally because it is literally "literally." He just listed 8 traits which both sides supposedly share. The joke/comment isn't that they are practically the same; it is that they are the identical same group of people.

In my eyes the 2 groups are not standing together in this comic. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 15:12, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
: Yeah I'd have said they were just being presented graphically, the intention isn't to display them as protesting alongside each other. [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 15:31, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Is there an extra joke in the Title Text, "* Mad about jorts"? If it's something which both Grammar Police and Fashion Police would find distasteful, it would add an extra layer to the assertion that they are the same people. {{unsigned ip|172.68.35.71}}
:Yes for sure and this is now in the explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Incidentally, I find it ironic and probably unintentional that the Title Text demonstrates the importance of grammar and undermines Randall's own assertions that Grammar Police are superfluous and annoying. Is he saying that he really likes jorts, or is he saying that he is really angered by them? If only there was some formal ruleset which allowed meaning to be more effectively conveyed, rather than being a system of glorious chaos... https://xkcd.com/1576/ {{unsigned ip|172.68.35.71}}
:I think the comment above is inaccurate: "Title Text demonstrates the importance of grammar and undermines Randall's own assertions that Grammar Police are superfluous and annoying". The "*" represents a bullet point so it is clear that "* Mad about jorts" is an additional bullet point that both groups would find offensive. The irony now is that I'm not familiar with how to structure my wiki comments. ~~dizzydan~~ {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.103}}
::Yes very intentionally and thanks for pointing out it is an extra bullet point ;-) That is why the grammar police would hate that sentence where the other police just hate jorts. And would be mad if they realized it could be understood like they loved jorts. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Technically, the grammar police wouldn't care about jorts, since that is a spelling error, not a grammatical error. Please contact the spelling police. Sincerely,
:The Semantics Police {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.216}}
::Jorts is not a spelling error it is a real term used on Wikipedia and now linked in the explanation. They are mad about the use of "mad about". Because in this case it can be misunderstood as either really loving jorts or being upset about jorts. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
:::Then it would be "* mad about 'mad about jorts'", thus I lean for the portmanteau explanation - Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.167|162.158.86.167]] 03:07, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
::::When I first read it I just took it in the same context for both. I found it funnier to think that the "Grammar Police" are inexplicably mad at people wearing jean-shorts. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 14:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

'''Judgemental''' A spelling of the word 'judgmental,' infrequently used in the UK (which is widely regarded to be more fashionable than the US)? 
'''Deeply Arbitrary''' Internally inconsistent? Arbitrary means based on random chance or whim and as such cannot be strong or deep? 
'''Appreciate . . . are . . . is ''' Subject/verb disagreement with a plural/singular shift? 
'''Cool and casual''' vague use of an indefinite pronoun & a 'cool and casual' fashion choice is likely entails a significant amount of work, meaning it is not casual at all.--[[User:GotWilLeibniz|GotWilLeibniz]] ([[User talk:GotWilLeibniz|talk]]) 18:43, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
:Arbitrary is more 'not based on physical phenomena', and is not necessarily based on chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.35.80|172.68.35.80]] 06:17, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

: 'judgment' v. 'judgement' - I was taught that the first is used as in "using one's judgment," while the latter is "the court issued a judgement." [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 08:22, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

:: First iʼve heard of that distinction. I grew up hearing that “judgement” was simply wrong, and later in life i heard that itʼs more popular in British.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

"Fashion Police and Grammar Police and ExplainXKCD Contributors" {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.69}}
:True ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:Ah yes, of course. The implied "they" is grammatically third-person plural, the "you" is second-person singular (using the same rules as third-person plural for verb agreement), and the "way" is singular. Obviously, this means there is a subject/verb disagreement... somehow. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 01:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Just dropping a couple links here re: the "uncomfortably transparent proxies for race and class" in language. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.227|162.158.214.227]] 21:20, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
http://wordtree.com/what-the-victorians-did-to-english-grammar/
http://www.languagejones.com/blog-1/2014/6/8/what-is-aave {{unsigned ip|162.158.214.227}}

Por simpliĝi gramatikon, nur lernu Esperanton! Ĝi ne havas arbitrajn regularojn. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.158|108.162.249.158]] 22:17, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:Jes!
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

In reality, I support the grammar police. Language is a set of shared rules allowing us to understand each other. Speaking in improper grammar produces misunderstandings and throws off listeners/readers, as well as making the speaker sound incompetent. Imagine if people started piping garbage down TCP connections! Servers wouldn't understand a thing! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.190|108.162.215.190]] 22:50, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:💯
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Rich white people being in high places is not really the point. Classism is the easiest to demonstrate: the grammar police frown on non-prestige dialects, and the fashion police consider poor people's clothing to be unfashionable. Racism is harder to demonstrate simply, but with language you have AAVE being treated as just "bad English" and, to a lesser extent, fashion popular in certain races being considered bad. (See, the literal fashion police of some French towns in reaction to burkinis. [[User:Trlkly|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly|talk]]) 03:24, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
:Hostility to burkini in France has nothing to do with fashion police. This is not a reaction to alleged bad taste in clothing (attemps to make them more fashionable are even well received), but to other things that the French are not comfortable with: public display of rigorist religious behaviour in a strongly secular country, perceived provocation by muslims in a context of islamist terror attacks, considerations around women's liberties (burkini seen as an enslavement to men/husbands)... Or for some it's simply knee-jerk racism... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.14|141.101.98.14]] 11:57, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

::I could be wrong, but you might be thinking of religionism/islamophobia, rather than racism. Islam isnʼt a race, so itʼs quite literally impossible to be racist against it.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Isn't this an example of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing Duck Typing]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.21|141.101.104.21]] 10:17, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Kudos to all who uses badder grammar for this explanations.[[User:Nerdman1|Nerdman1]] ([[User talk:Nerdman1|talk]]) 12:39, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for using words in a way that makes them more performant, regardless of the rules, or whether or not they are in the dictionary. [[User:Psu256|Psu256]] ([[User talk:Psu256|talk]]) 15:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

:I am soooo going to use “performant” now. Thank you.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

'''Why hasn't anybody pointed out the most obvious fact?!'''
They are called 'Grammar Nazis'!!!! {{unsigned ip|198.41.243.240}}
: I have thought about that, but since this term doesn't show up neither in the comic nor in the title text I discarded the idea again. On the other hand, I've never heard of the term "Grammar Police" while "Grammar Nazi" is quite common to me and in Google the term "grammar nazi" has about twice as many results as "grammar police" - despite explainXKCD [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:49, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

: Iʼm betting Randall eschewed the use of “Grammar Nazi” (1) to avoid using a potentially politically charged term—especially in the context of the bullet point about social class, etc.—and (2) to make it line up better with “Fashion Police”.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Glamour and grammar ...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glamour {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.169}}

"...and attempts to do so send strong messages of their own" ....what? i dont understand this part. what did randall mean to say?? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.165|172.70.34.165]] 21:38, 15 September 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

: I think this is at least partly covered in the explanation now, but my take is that if you avoid following the “rules”, the message you send is “Iʼm too lazy and/or ignorant to bother presenting myself in a self‐respectable manner.” Randall doesnʼt appear to leave room for creative bending of the rules by people who are well‐educated in them, but *i* do this quite often.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Talk:1735: Fashion Police and Grammar Police

2025-12-30T01:07:13Z

Heleatunda: Added comments.

This sentence of the explanation is confusing: "Grammar police are people who are 'sticklers' to grammar rules and get mad or contradictory if someone uses non-standard grammar in a sentence." What is meant by the grammar police getting 'contradictory' when non-standard grammar is used? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.140|108.162.237.140]] 19:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)->

I added a basic explanation to this comic. I also changed the incomplete to say "Needs more on the explanation". Maybe you guys can help connect the dots and extend the explanation? --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 14:45, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

It should be noted that he uses literally wrong, just to anger the grammar police he's mocking, it's a nice touch.[[User:Trives|Trives]] ([[User talk:Trives|talk]]) 14:59, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
: What? He's using literally because it is literally "literally." He just listed 8 traits which both sides supposedly share. The joke/comment isn't that they are practically the same; it is that they are the identical same group of people.

In my eyes the 2 groups are not standing together in this comic. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 15:12, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
: Yeah I'd have said they were just being presented graphically, the intention isn't to display them as protesting alongside each other. [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 15:31, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Is there an extra joke in the Title Text, "* Mad about jorts"? If it's something which both Grammar Police and Fashion Police would find distasteful, it would add an extra layer to the assertion that they are the same people. {{unsigned ip|172.68.35.71}}
:Yes for sure and this is now in the explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Incidentally, I find it ironic and probably unintentional that the Title Text demonstrates the importance of grammar and undermines Randall's own assertions that Grammar Police are superfluous and annoying. Is he saying that he really likes jorts, or is he saying that he is really angered by them? If only there was some formal ruleset which allowed meaning to be more effectively conveyed, rather than being a system of glorious chaos... https://xkcd.com/1576/ {{unsigned ip|172.68.35.71}}
:I think the comment above is inaccurate: "Title Text demonstrates the importance of grammar and undermines Randall's own assertions that Grammar Police are superfluous and annoying". The "*" represents a bullet point so it is clear that "* Mad about jorts" is an additional bullet point that both groups would find offensive. The irony now is that I'm not familiar with how to structure my wiki comments. ~~dizzydan~~ {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.103}}
::Yes very intentionally and thanks for pointing out it is an extra bullet point ;-) That is why the grammar police would hate that sentence where the other police just hate jorts. And would be mad if they realized it could be understood like they loved jorts. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Technically, the grammar police wouldn't care about jorts, since that is a spelling error, not a grammatical error. Please contact the spelling police. Sincerely,
:The Semantics Police {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.216}}
::Jorts is not a spelling error it is a real term used on Wikipedia and now linked in the explanation. They are mad about the use of "mad about". Because in this case it can be misunderstood as either really loving jorts or being upset about jorts. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
:::Then it would be "* mad about 'mad about jorts'", thus I lean for the portmanteau explanation - Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.167|162.158.86.167]] 03:07, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
::::When I first read it I just took it in the same context for both. I found it funnier to think that the "Grammar Police" are inexplicably mad at people wearing jean-shorts. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 14:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

'''Judgemental''' A spelling of the word 'judgmental,' infrequently used in the UK (which is widely regarded to be more fashionable than the US)? 
'''Deeply Arbitrary''' Internally inconsistent? Arbitrary means based on random chance or whim and as such cannot be strong or deep? 
'''Appreciate . . . are . . . is ''' Subject/verb disagreement with a plural/singular shift? 
'''Cool and casual''' vague use of an indefinite pronoun & a 'cool and casual' fashion choice is likely entails a significant amount of work, meaning it is not casual at all.--[[User:GotWilLeibniz|GotWilLeibniz]] ([[User talk:GotWilLeibniz|talk]]) 18:43, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
:Arbitrary is more 'not based on physical phenomena', and is not necessarily based on chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.35.80|172.68.35.80]] 06:17, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

: 'judgment' v. 'judgement' - I was taught that the first is used as in "using one's judgment," while the latter is "the court issued a judgement." [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 08:22, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

:: First iʼve heard of that distinction. I grew up hearing that “judgemett” was simply wrong, and later in life i heard that itʼs more popular in British.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

"Fashion Police and Grammar Police and ExplainXKCD Contributors" {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.69}}
:True ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:Ah yes, of course. The implied "they" is grammatically third-person plural, the "you" is second-person singular (using the same rules as third-person plural for verb agreement), and the "way" is singular. Obviously, this means there is a subject/verb disagreement... somehow. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 01:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Just dropping a couple links here re: the "uncomfortably transparent proxies for race and class" in language. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.227|162.158.214.227]] 21:20, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
http://wordtree.com/what-the-victorians-did-to-english-grammar/
http://www.languagejones.com/blog-1/2014/6/8/what-is-aave {{unsigned ip|162.158.214.227}}

Por simpliĝi gramatikon, nur lernu Esperanton! Ĝi ne havas arbitrajn regularojn. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.158|108.162.249.158]] 22:17, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:Jes!
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

In reality, I support the grammar police. Language is a set of shared rules allowing us to understand each other. Speaking in improper grammar produces misunderstandings and throws off listeners/readers, as well as making the speaker sound incompetent. Imagine if people started piping garbage down TCP connections! Servers wouldn't understand a thing! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.190|108.162.215.190]] 22:50, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:💯
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Rich white people being in high places is not really the point. Classism is the easiest to demonstrate: the grammar police frown on non-prestige dialects, and the fashion police consider poor people's clothing to be unfashionable. Racism is harder to demonstrate simply, but with language you have AAVE being treated as just "bad English" and, to a lesser extent, fashion popular in certain races being considered bad. (See, the literal fashion police of some French towns in reaction to burkinis. [[User:Trlkly|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly|talk]]) 03:24, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
:Hostility to burkini in France has nothing to do with fashion police. This is not a reaction to alleged bad taste in clothing (attemps to make them more fashionable are even well received), but to other things that the French are not comfortable with: public display of rigorist religious behaviour in a strongly secular country, perceived provocation by muslims in a context of islamist terror attacks, considerations around women's liberties (burkini seen as an enslavement to men/husbands)... Or for some it's simply knee-jerk racism... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.14|141.101.98.14]] 11:57, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

::I could be wrong, but you might be thinking of religionism/islamophobia, rather than racism. Islam isnʼt a race, so itʼs quite literally impossible to be racist against it.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Isn't this an example of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing Duck Typing]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.21|141.101.104.21]] 10:17, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Kudos to all who uses badder grammar for this explanations.[[User:Nerdman1|Nerdman1]] ([[User talk:Nerdman1|talk]]) 12:39, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for using words in a way that makes them more performant, regardless of the rules, or whether or not they are in the dictionary. [[User:Psu256|Psu256]] ([[User talk:Psu256|talk]]) 15:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

:I am soooo going to use “performant” now. Thank you.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

'''Why hasn't anybody pointed out the most obvious fact?!'''
They are called 'Grammar Nazis'!!!! {{unsigned ip|198.41.243.240}}
: I have thought about that, but since this term doesn't show up neither in the comic nor in the title text I discarded the idea again. On the other hand, I've never heard of the term "Grammar Police" while "Grammar Nazi" is quite common to me and in Google the term "grammar nazi" has about twice as many results as "grammar police" - despite explainXKCD [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:49, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

: Iʼm betting Randall eschewed the use of “Grammar Nazi” (1) to avoid using a potentially politically charged term—especially in the context of the bullet point about social class, etc.—and (2) to make it line up better with “Fashion Police”.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Glamour and grammar ...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glamour {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.169}}

"...and attempts to do so send strong messages of their own" ....what? i dont understand this part. what did randall mean to say?? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.165|172.70.34.165]] 21:38, 15 September 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

: I think this is at least partly covered in the explanation now, but my take is that if you avoid following the “rules”, the message you send is “Iʼm too lazy and/or ignorant to bother presenting myself in a self‐respectable manner.” Randall doesnʼt appear to leave room for creative bending of the rules by people who are well‐educated in them, but *i* do this quite often.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:07, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Talk:142: Parody Week: Megatokyo

2025-12-11T06:11:02Z

Heleatunda:

Isn't it quite unusual that Black Hat does not want to harm anyone in this comic? --[[User:Chtz|Chtz]] ([[User talk:Chtz|talk]]) 22:38, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
:There is no indication that Black Hat isn't trying to harm someone. We don't see Fred come out, and we have no idea what Black Hat put in that cake. Black Hat is standing back, not near the cake, which has lit <strike>fuses</strike> candles on it, despite it not being a birthday cake.
:OTOH, this is only #142, from back in 2006. Maybe Black Hat wasn't quite so heartless back then. [[User:gijobarts|gijobarts]] ([[User Talk:gijobarts|talk]]) 01:53, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
::Well the [[72: Classhole]] comic came long before this. But I also think that when Randall shows that even a Classhole has a soft spot for Fred then it is really serious. So I do not think that Black Hat has anything up his sleeve against Fred. (Have deleted a sentence to that regard in the explanation when I just updated it) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:28, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
::It shows later in the Journal series that Black Hat does have a heart, he just doesn't admit it. [[User:Dontknow|Dontknow]] ([[User talk:Dontknow|talk]]) 18:26, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
:::I'm not sure if Journal shows that Black Hat has a heart, or just feels lust/attraction, which IMHO is not the same thing... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.207|172.69.194.207]]
:I agree with gijobarts. I think Black Hat put ''something'' dangerous in that cake, we just don't know what. He was probably acting sentimental to get Cueball to go along with it. [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 18:08, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
My interpretation of this has always been that Fred is so unfathomably maudlin, vulnerable and (sym)pathetic that even Black Hat takes pity on him. Such is the awesome power of Fred's exceptionally downcast sentimentality. Much like no-one is evil enough to take candy from a baby (re 'Who Shot Mr. Burns') so no-one, not even Black Hat, is callous enough to dick on Fred Gallagher. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.207|172.69.194.207]] 13:13, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Does anyone know if Fred ever responded to this at all?
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 06:11, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3045: AlphaMove

2025-12-07T05:04:04Z

Heleatunda: Success in Losing

Ask Tom Murphy VII to get on this [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.103|141.101.99.103]] 22:50, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

This has actually been done and tested against other strange algorithms:
https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA?t=729

I have attempted to run the proposed bot against itself — if I haven't made any errors, here are the resulting games:

Rounding down:
1. e4 e6 2. f3 f5 3. e5 g5 4. d4 d5 5. exd6 g4 6. d7+ Kf7 7. dxc8=N Ke8 8. fxg4 h6 9. gxf5 Kd7 10. g4 h5 11. fxe6+ Ke8 12. g5 Na6 13. h3 Nc5 14. h4 Ne7 15. Kd2 Ne4+ 16. Ke1 Nf5 17. g6 Nf6 18. g7 Ng3 19. gxf8=N Nge4 20. Ke2 Ng4 21. Kf3 Ngf2 22. Ke2 Nh3 23. Ke3 Nhf2 24. Nb6 Nh3 25. Na4 Nhf2 26. Nac3 Nxc3 27. Kxf2 Nxd1+ 28. Kf3 Qc8 29. c4 Ne3 30. Ke4 Nf5 31. Kd3 Ng3 32. e7 Nxh1 33. Kc2 Qb8 34. d5 Kxe7 35. d6+ Kf6 36. dxc7 Nf2 37. c8=R Ng4 38. Kd2 Nh2 39. Ke3 Ng4+ 40. Kd4 Nh2 41. Kd5 Nxf1 42. Nc3 Nh2 43. Nce2 Ng4 44. Nd4 Nh6 45. Nd7+ Kf7 46. Ndf3 Qd6+ 47. Ke4 Qd2 48. Nf8 Qd5+ 49. Ke3 Qd2+ 50. Ke4 Qd5+ 51. Ke3 Qd2+ 52. Ke4

Rounding up:
1. f3 f5 2. e4 f4 3. d4 e6 4. e5 g6 5. g3 fxg3 6. c3 g2 7. d5 gxf1=Q+ 8. Kxf1 exd5 9. Ke2 d6 10. Kd3 g5 11. Kd2 dxe5 12. Ke2 d4 13. Kd3 dxc3+ 14. Ke3 e4 15. Ne2 exf3 16. Ng1 f2 17. Nxc3 fxg1=N 18. Qc2 Kd7 19. Ne2 h6 20. Qa4+ Ke6 21. Qb3+ Ke7 22. Qb4+ Ke8 23. Qb5+ Kf7 24. Qa6 Kg7 25. Qa4 Kg6 26. Qb3 Kg7 27. Qb4 Kh7 28. Qb5 Kg7 29. Qa6 Nc6 30. Nxg1 Na5 31. Qb6 Kh7 32. Qb3 Kg6 33. Qb4 Kg7 34. Qb6 Kh7 35. Qb3 Kg6 36. Qb4 Kg7 37. Qb6

Rounding down code:
const { Chess } = require("chess.js");

const chess = new Chess();
while (!chess.isGameOver()) {
const moves = chess.moves();
moves.sort((a, b) => b.localeCompare(a));
const move = moves[Math.floor(moves.length / 2)];
chess.move(move);
}
console.log(chess.pgn());

To round up, swap the a and b in the sort function.

Both games end in a threefold repetition draw. The game with rounding down does, in fact, have 6 knights in it, so I believe he did code this to see what would happen.

[[User:Ohpointfive|Ohpointfive]] ([[User talk:Ohpointfive|talk]]) 22:52, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

To elaborate on the Tom VII point - this is the YouTube video that possibly inspired the comic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.179|141.101.98.179]] 22:55, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
:Specifically, it's the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA&t=1483 Arithmetic Player at 24:43] set to ½. [[User:ChaoticNeutralCzech|ChaoticNeutralCzech]] ([[User talk:ChaoticNeutralCzech|talk]]) 17:52, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately for white, it's mate in 1 with Bb4# [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.124|162.158.90.124]] 23:25, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Even if white makes a different move, its still forced mate in one. RIP XKCD Bot. [[User:Redacted II|Redacted II]] ([[User talk:Redacted II|talk]]) 00:53, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
:Well, for most options. Queen to a4 puts Black in check, forestalling an immediate move to mate White; capturing the knight de-threatens enough squares around the king that Black can't check next turn without leaving an escape route. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.176.28|172.70.176.28]] 17:45, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
::I also see either Qb3 or pawn to a3 as setting up a defense against the Black bishop's impending checkmate, even without the Black check. (The Qa4+ move would also do this as a side effect.)[[Special:Contributions/165.225.213.98|165.225.213.98]] 16:43, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

<s>Although it wouldn't change the outcome much (either by changing black's move or white's general options), I'm currently not understanding why Kd4 isn't on the list of options at this point in time. So long since I played serious(ish) chess, and the only reason I could think of is that it's probibited by some strict ortbodox game rule recognising the ''potential'' moving of the knight out of the way (in the next white move-cycle). But I'd have treated that later option as forbidden, as a revealing-mate. But, as I said, it's been a while, so maybe I'm just blind to something like a sweeping bishop-range that disbars this (much as the near knight, bishop and pawn disbars four out of the five moves).</s> ...darn, it's just clicked. That's the AlphaMoved white-knight's destination (before that, the black queen was entirely covering that square, and double-teaming one of the adjacent black-knight covered squares), I'd been thinking that was the piece's origin (with the empty highlighted square as its destination) until I'd finally read the highlighted movelist item properly and deciphered it as Knight To King Two (done), not the (intention of) Knight To King's Bishop One. So ignore the above. Although, just to note, for the Black Queen to have even achieved that position would probably have required at least ''one'' normally-sacrificial exposure to the deadly white Q/B/R pieces guarding the obvious entry, give or take the algorithmic development of their (and the "gateway pawns"') current positions. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.104|141.101.99.104]] 02:00, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
:Follow-up... As far as the black queen is concerned, I suppose she could have done d6, (x?)g3 then f2, in-between the other black and white moves made, largely safe from the white 'defence'. Or to d4 then f2, if white Queen's Pawn was shielding still. (Appears to have been taken, but it would have been bold to have done that with the queen, for a normally immediate pawn-queen exhange!) A bolder/more opportunistic set of moves than I would have tried, either. Even (unknowingly) against AlphaMove, I'd have been wary of the unconventionally developing white disposition actually being an idiot-trap (and I'm really not that far off being an idiot, insofar as chess). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.162|172.70.162.162]] 02:17, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

The explanation gives both O-O and 0-0 as notations for castling and then explains why 0-0 can never occur, even though O-O can be sorted pretty centrally. So, which is the correct notation? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.250.91|172.71.250.91]] 09:14, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
:According to the [https://ia802908.us.archive.org/26/items/pgn-standard-1994-03-12/PGN_standard_1994-03-12.txt pgn spec], section 8.2.3.3: they are capital Os and not zeros [[Special:Contributions/172.68.3.96|172.68.3.96]] 15:10, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we're looking at a retrograde puzzle. [[User:Ohpointfive|Ohpointfive]] is onto something here, with the six knights on the board a strong indicator. The question is, of course, where is the joke? White plays Alphamove all along and must have started with e4 (rounding down) or f3 (rounding up). Both are consistent with the end position. So from my point of view, the joke is
* either that the "stronger engine" is not a strong engine at all but maybe the same algorithm, rounding up instead of down
* or that black doesn't win this position (in real chess, White is of course toast) because its algorithm is even worse
@Ohpointfive, could you run the two versions against each other? --[[User:Pganon|Pganon]] ([[User talk:Pganon|talk]]) 15:55, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I created a playable version of this game in like 10 minutes using ChatGPT ;)

https://enn-nafnlaus.github.io/AlphaMove/alphamove.html

Git page here:

https://github.com/enn-nafnlaus/AlphaMove

-- [[User:Rei|Rei]] 17:52, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I checked, castling and en passant both work. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.245.25|172.68.245.25]] 19:26, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

@Pganon certainly:
White rounding down vs. black rounding up:
1. e4 f5 2. f3 f4 3. d4 e6 4. e5 g6 5. d5 exd5 6. g3 fxg3 7. c4 g2 8. h3 gxf1=Q+ 9. Kd2 Kf7 10. Kc3 Ke8 11. Kc2 Kf7 12. Kb3 Ke8 13. Kc2 Kf7 14. Kb3 Ke8 15. Kc2
White rounding up vs. black rounding down:
1. f3 e6 2. e4 f5 3. e5 g5 4. d4 d5 5. f4 gxf4 6. h3 h5 7. h4 Kd7 8. Kd2 Kc6 9. Kd3 Kb6 10. Ke2 Kb5 11. Ke1+ Kb4 12. Ke2 Kb5 13. Ke1+ Kb4 14. Ke2 Kb5

The first game is quite exciting, with black at one point having a chance at checkmate in one, but alas too many available pawn moves drives the winning move Qxc4# far past the center of the list. The second game is much less exciting.

[[User:Ohpointfive|Ohpointfive]] ([[User talk:Ohpointfive|talk]]) 21:30, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Here's a question: What is the quickest way to checkmate AlphaMove? Here's the quickest that I have found so far:
# f3 d5
# e4 d5xe4
# f4 e5
# g3 Bg4
# d4 Qxd4
# f5 e3
# f6 Qxd1#
Thus, we have mate in seven. This might be good to mention outside the comments section as a demonstration tha AlphaGo is not very good (not to mention failing to attack black's queen with a less valuable piece), but a quicker checkmate might be possible, in which case we should mention that instead.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.159|172.70.207.159]] 11:08, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

: Checkmating Alphamove is easy. Getting checkmated *by* Alphamove is challenging. You basically have to forget everything you know about normal chess. -- [[User:Rei|Rei]] ([[User talk:Rei|talk]]) 14:48, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

:: Fastest mate against Alphamove playing Black 3 moves (natural max), White 5 moves (exhaustive search), selfmate 9 moves - problem composers and mathematicians solve that in a jiffy. See here: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/46651/fastest-win-against-xkcds-alphamove [[Special:Contributions/172.70.248.29|172.70.248.29]] 09:11, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

One possible move, Kd2, is missing! /[[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.164|141.101.76.164]] 17:41, 2 February 2025 (UTC)
:That can't be done. The Knight isn't between d2 and the Q@f2 at the point that the moves are being compiled. The Ne2 hasn't happened yet (we now see it, as having moved there, ''as a result'' of Ne2 being selected from the list, so ''next'' turn the King could move there, assuming the game isn't lost (or black decides to do something ''else'' which prevents it, for some strange reason). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.25|162.158.74.25]] 18:47, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

I [https://lichess.org/analysis/r1b1k2r/1pp1nppp/8/p1b1p3/2PnpP1P/2K5/PP3q2/RNBQ1BNR_w_kq_-_0_1?color=white put the position before White's move into Lichess] and it says it's mate in 12 for Black.

On a related note, I'm also wondering how they got to the comic position in the first place. Anyone want to try constructing a proof game? [[User:Arcorann|Arcorann]] ([[User talk:Arcorann|talk]]) 03:30, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

A lot of the explanation is based on a round-up version of AlphaMove. It should round down for even lists like the title text says. The [https://enn-nafnlaus.github.io/AlphaMove/alphamove.html example implementation] is wrong too. The first move should be e4, not f3. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.187.55|162.158.187.55]] 07:25, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

If there ever was an explanation that needed to be broken up into three paragraphs and a Detail section, this is it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.30|172.71.142.30]] 17:19, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

It is not mentioned what happens when there is a tie for the middle move (for an even number of possible moves). Is it then chosen "at random"? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.102|162.158.155.102]] 19:38, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
:The title text discusses it, so presumably that's the principle we should consider at play. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.6.110|162.158.6.110]] 21:23, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Why is there still a pawn on a2? It would seem that a3 would be the first move, followed by a4. {{unsigned ip|172.69.135.191|23:20, 3 February 2025 (UTC)}}
: a3 would be the first ''in the list'' for the compilation of first move (then a4, then [b-h] x [2-3], then four "N"-moves. The middle of the list would therefore (depending upon round-up or round-down) "e4" or "f3". Assuming e4, the next white move list is going to be seven pawns that can move to self.3 or self.4, one that can move to self.5, with some B-moves between b4 and c3, a K-move, five N-moves and a number of Q-moves. pawn on a2 just doesn't get a look-in, move-wise, at least not until after a lot of moves (possibly designed by the opponent ''specifically' to remove moves from anything that isn't pawn-move from a2 to a3 or a4. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.252|162.158.33.252]] 15:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

What does this mean? The current explanation includes a paragraph starting with "The actual middle of the list might vary away from the usual alphabetic median if the moves (and the pieces removed by the opponent) are heavily biased to a particular subset of player-pieces." I can't make head or tail of this, but maybe that's just 'cause I'm dumb. Why would the middle of the list be different from the median? It should be re-worded to be clearer, or perhaps removed. [[User:DKMell|DKMell]] ([[User talk:DKMell|talk]]) 22:43, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
: As an example, when the King is in check, there are far fewer legal moves, but they might include (or be limited to) interposing with a bishop, so that a bishop actually does get moved. That differs from the _usual_ median, even though the median function is still being used. [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 06:56, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
: Several ways of reading "alphabetic median", one is that, in a-z, the m/n point is the median, or divide between the two halves. But of course not all letters are used (a-h as no-prefix pawn-destinations, B, K, N, Q, R as non-pawn prefices to destinations, a capturing pawn-move will start with x (of a-h and ''then'' an x, if needing disambiguationg, and then there's O-O and O-O-O). That's already overbalanced, so that 'g' is the 'middle' of the first-letters (unweighted by whatever actual opportunities, or lack of them, there are).
: But, in any given board position, the lower-case letters tend to be pawns with (initially) two possible moves, generally just one move, ''maybe'' up to four (a first-move pawn given 1/2-step forward options ''and'' given two different options to capture away from its current file, where near-neighbour pawns require the disambiguation to be used) A queen can (where not restrained, until (possible capturing whilst) hitting the edge-of-board) have 28 moves (seven positions front/back, seven left/right, similar on the two diagonals). Rooks and Bishops might have 14 move-to positions. The kNight might have up to 8 'landing spots'. Initially, apart from the kNight with two moves, they of course have no opportunity to do anything. As the game develops, though, whatever you prior preconceived 'median' might be, in the alphabetically-sorted list, the gaining (by gaining opportunity to move) eand losing (by a piece being capture) adjusts the move-state's 'middle' of all valid-moves up and down the alphabet. Probably never as far as an unambiguous pawn-capture, or a first-file pawn move (or disambiguated capture from that positions), but it'll change a lot.
: How to concisely explain this, I don't know. Especially as I'm just running off the various possibilities off the top of my head, and might have forgotten some of the 'algebraic' notation's subtleties. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.252|162.158.33.252]] 15:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

This comic reminds me of suckerpinch's "Elo World" video, where he made a whole bunch of similarly single-minded chess engines and ranked them against each other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA - If I recall correctly there was an alphabet-based one but it picked the first result rather than the middle result. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.23.136|172.68.23.136]] 01:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Is there any series of moves to be checkmated by alphamove?[[User:799571388|799571388]] ([[User talk:799571388|talk]]) 11:34, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

also invoked in chesszoo simulation. --[[User:Bb777|hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 01:40, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

maybe someone should put alphamove into the chess zoo simulation with each piece having their own alpha move algorithm. [[User:Aprilfoolsupdate!|Aprilfoolsupdate!]] ([[User talk:Aprilfoolsupdate!|talk]]) 09:08, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
:(Didn't somebody already suggest this, ages ago? Maybe I dreampt that!) Chess Zoo deliberately has zero chances of pieces taking other pieces, so you could simulate white and black's options on their own without having to respect each other's turns. But you would have to still work out if it's "simultaneous chess", every piece is autonomous and always has a choice of move, per 'game tick', or (like "sequential chess") the AlphaMove algorithm chooses the one move of ''all'' pieces' possible moves that it will make. And, because the zoo-board is much bigger than 8x8, the coordinate-square names could favour particular pieces; unless you use different coordinates according to the practical limits of a given piece-'class' (small for the pawn-enclosures, larger for the 'royal' king/queen areas) or even overlapping bounds (in the case of the rook/bishop/knight ones), in which case other alphanumeric spreads apply. So several decisions need to be applied to ''how'' AlphaMove applies to the ChessZoo 'board', or 'boards'.
:Might be easier to apply to something like [[839: Explorers]], though. See if the on-ship conflict can ever be resolved? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.182|172.70.91.182]] 13:31, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Is it even possible to lose to this bot? I mean, I bet it is, but if it is, how would one go about doing it?

I did it! Qd8# for the loss. I had K on a8 behind pawns on a7 and b7. Now, who wants to try to reverse engineer my game?
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 05:04, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Talk:2868: Label the States

2024-04-13T19:24:31Z

Heleatunda: added 1 comment

I have not counted the states, but I deeply hope reaching the 64-state count involves splitting Michigan's mitten and peninsula in separate states. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.130|108.162.241.130]] 16:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:I have now counted them. Sadly, with a Unified Michigan, there are 64 states, plus DC, plus those 3 enclave-looking bits in California, Utah and Florida that have the darker outlines. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.73|172.69.214.73]] 16:09, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
::Those "enclave" parts are large bodies of water that actually exist. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 16:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
::I am not at all sure that the areas in California, Utah, and Florida are intended to be additional states. They look like Okeechobee (Lake in Florida), Salt Lake (Utah) and the Salton Sea (California), approximately. There does seem to be an additional band of states starting between Oregon and California though- as a supporter of the Great State of Jefferson, I appove![[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 16:17, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:::They didn't really seem to be; they do have the coastline outlines, instead of the lighter state boundaries. The 64-count did work out without these lakes (though a part of me wishes one of them had been one, because it would have been funny to imply a state formed fully landlocked inside another, and even funnier if that state is just an entire body of water) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.38|108.162.242.38]] 16:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:::: Should have been Salt Lake, if any of them, mostly because its closer to being "salt flats" than a "lake." And also nearly completely valueless as real estate (I've driven through, I forgot to fill my gas tank before leaving the city and in order to reach the nearest gas station I had to drive 10 miles to the next exit in order to turn around, because the tiny village the exit was for didn't have a gas station). [[User:Draco18s|Draco18s]] ([[User talk:Draco18s|talk]]) 21:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe I have identified (but not named) all the new states:
# South of Oregon
# South of Idaho
# South of Wyoming
# East of Montana
# East of Wyoming
# South of the previous new state
# East of Arizona
# North of Tennessee
# North of North Carolina
# East of New Hampshire
Additionally, the following states have been stretch and/or split:
# Colorado
# Nebraska
# Arkansa
# Ohio
The distinction between a split state and a new state is purely arbitrary based on what preserves distinctive state corners. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.108|172.69.214.108]] 16:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
: Personally, would describe the new state as being south of North Carolina. The one to the north better matches the general outline of North Carolina (particularly the Outer Banks and that long, straight northern border). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.65|172.69.247.65]] 16:58, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I added locations for the new states in the explanation. If you think my interpretation is wrong, feel free to change it! [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|Trogdor147]] ([[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|talk]]) 16:49, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Could this be considered in a "series" with other maps like the mixed up states and left out states ones? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.233|162.158.158.233]] 17:19, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if it's relevant but the number of 64 (as a power of 2) doesn't seem completely random. Could be a hint towards states in the computer science sense. You could use 6 bit to represent any number of states up to 64 - and you'd already need 6 bit for the actual number of US states.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.129|172.69.22.129]] 17:40, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

someone with better photoshop skills than me should overlay the normal map and point out the inconsistencies! [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 17:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:Overlaying the maps goes beyond my skills with Paint, but I hope showing the real map and xkcd's one with extra states highlighted is clear enough.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 18:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Labeled all… INCLUDING Central Dakota, Central Carolina, North Arkansas, West Mexico, Kansorado, Ohindiana, Kentussee, Eyoming, East Hampshire, North Wyoming, West Dakota, South Oregon, Udaho, and Montanyoming. [[User:TenGolf MathHacker|TenGolf MathHacker]] ([[User talk:TenGolf MathHacker|talk]]) 18:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:I propose instead that the state north of Colorado be Wyoming, the one to the west become Wyamping, and the one to the north become Wyvolting. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.132|172.71.22.132]] 19:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

My proposal (hope the image is fine):

[[File:Labelledstates.png|400x400px]]
[[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 20:00, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

: You've labeled Nebraska as a "new" state for some reason, and it looks like it's been added to the actual description. Someone really ought to fix that. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.118|172.71.154.118]] 08:24, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
:: I, too, object to Nebraska having been marked as one of the added states (and I don't even live there). [[User:Draco18s|Draco18s]] ([[User talk:Draco18s|talk]]) 08:44, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
::: Sorry, european moment. I just took the highlighted map at its word! [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
:::: No worries. I even screwed up the copy *I* did because I had to fix the in-color so it didn't look like ass and missed two of the new states (I love that no one can agree on which Wyoming is the right one, though). [[User:Draco18s|Draco18s]] ([[User talk:Draco18s|talk]]) 21:19, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Here's my take. [https://imgur.com/a/Cjvybx1] [[User:N-eh|N-eh]] ([[User talk:N-eh|talk]]) 20:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
: This is absolutely delightful, Hyperbolic Kansas is my favorite [[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 15:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:: I just got the joke... oh my goodness it's perfect. [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|Trogdor147]] ([[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|talk]]) 00:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Loving the state name proposals. [https://imgur.com/a/DgWvox5 Here's mine.] [[User:Chasingballoons|Chasingballoons]] ([[User talk:Chasingballoons|talk]]) 21:16, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

: I liked N-eh's names better, except for "Occupied South Oregon and New Worchestershire". Those are truly inspired names.
:: New Worcestershire Sauce would be loaded with maple syrup as a major flavouring. [[User:Nutster|Nutster]] ([[User talk:Nutster|talk]]) 10:06, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but what you have labelled as Kansbraska is actually just Nebraska. Just south of Nebraska is the new state, which I'd tentatively name Nebrahoma or perhaps Oklaska.

The image with the added states highlighted in the explanation has Nebraska highlighted. The correct state highlighted should be the one above Nebraska. [[User:Firestar233|guess who]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|if you want to]] | [[Special:Contributions/Firestar233|what i have done]]) 22:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
:The image history just flips between South Dacota (with notch in NE) and Nebraska (with inward corner in SW), without ever marking the new state between them. One half each of Arkansas and Ohio disappeared too. There will probably be some more iterations with similar edit collisions... :D Anyways, the maps are aesthetically pleasing. Good job! --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.87.205|162.158.87.205]] 14:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Very proud of everyone here for somehow managing to edit war over which states to highlight and getting it wrong Four Times In A Row [[User:IloLisipo|IloLisipo]] ([[User talk:IloLisipo|talk]]) 17:31, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
:It's really bothering me that Colorado is currently marked in blue as a new state, when it seems rather obvious by the distorted outlines that "East Utah" (the one entirely West of Texas) is the "new" one... (Also, is ''no one'' going to make a Garfield joke about Wyoming being a made-up state?)
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 02:06, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
:Clearly, the state next to New Mexico is Newer Mexico.

Based on historical precedent, should the state south of Oregon and north of California be called Jefferson?

I think currently the real Tennessee and Arkansas are highlighted. It's hard to tell, but given that the new states tend to be aligned, the real Colorado might also be highlighted. This comment is about the fifth version of the highlighted map image. [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 18:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
:I agree, & it looks like the only thing delaying the corrections already called for, is that no one has wanted to do the image editing, to update the blue tiles in the explanation.
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:21, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
::Well, given that I've seen no objections over the past roughly a day, I went ahead and did it myself. Someone else can change the explanation text if it needs to be changed. [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 18:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:::Cool, now I fully agree with the highlights. Thanks Draco! (Now waiting for someone to highlight Arkansas, so we are back at the initial version. :D) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.87.164|162.158.87.164]] 14:46, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
::::<nowiki/>*Nebraska—You know, I am an european... --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.87.164|162.158.87.164]] 14:50, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Any comment on the use of the word "even" in the title text? That phrasing suggests that it's easier to name the states with a blank map. But that obviously makes it harder, not easier. And also, if the map weren't blank there would be no need to name them in the first place. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 02:37, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:It's easier to name the States with a blank map as opposed to no map at all. [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 04:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:Yup, if asked to "name all the states", unless you particularly have an order in mind (that you can remember, through some mnemonic progression or other) you're prone to stabbibg away at the unordered list, not knowing if you've missed an 'obvious' one, perhaps not even knowing how many you've named, etc. Put an (unlabeled) map in front of you and a pen and you can general see which gaps you've filled (hopefully correctly, but when you realise that you wqnt to fill a neighbour with the same name then you can at least rewrite it/accept that you might have North Dakota/South Dakota the wrong way round but at least you have them both) and zero in on likely bits of memory you need to trawl through ("...another 'southern' state; I've got Arkansas, I've got Tennessee, I've got...").
:Depends upon your own mind (maybe you're a whiz at reciting all states alphabetically/by abbreviation/by area/by population/by support for a given party or politician), but definitely can't hurt. (Unless you miss Rhode Island's small footprint, or get confused about the discontinuity of that one state up in the Great Lakes, or have managed to shuffle the mid-west flyover 'square states' up or down one to leave the gap in ''totally'' the wrong place, or ...) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.211|172.71.242.211]] 13:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Of course I can name all the states. Naming them ''correctly'' is a completely different matter, of course. (And as for naming the "new" states, it's obvious to me that the one beside Maine should be called Secondary.) --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.5|172.69.214.5]] 13:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
: "Fred", "Bob", "Dan", "Gregory", "Janine", "Hans", "Merryweather", "Caroline", "Jo", "Joe", "Joey", "Jock", "Jack", "George", "Geraldine", "Jerry", "Gerry", "Gary", "Gru", "Gerald", "Gerald Ford", "Henry Ford", "Henry Kissinger", "Henry Hoover", "Henry Dyson", "Henry Electrolux" "Electra", "Oedipus", "Œdipus", "Wikipædia", "FriendsReunited", "anon.penet.fi", "capitals" "LOWERCASE", "Mississippibutwithdoubledvowelsandsingleconsonants", "Fifty-first state", "Old Hampshire", ",", "Z00000L", "xxTattered Pig-Tail Vestxx", "Fred's cousin", "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. [...] It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.", "sic[sic]", "🤮", "ibid", "Ra Ra Rasputin", "Russian Queen", "Rush Limbaugh", "Rishi Sunak", "[[Randall]]"
: ...and, though it isn't a state, "Washington A.C."! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.178|172.71.242.178]] 14:03, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Is Maine the only state which actually became ''larger'' in this version of the US map? --[[User:Raviolio|Raviolio]] ([[User talk:Raviolio|talk]]) 15:31, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

==Friends reference==
Should the episode of Friends be referenced in explanation in which Ross tries to name all states or he doesn't get Thanksgiving Turkey and eventually comes in the middle of the night to eat with list of 50 states while aware Nevada is there twice? Meanwhile Joey's list way more than 50 states and accuses Ross of making stuff up as he listed 'Utah'?
Script of episode: https://www.livesinabox.com/friends/season7/708cdld.htm
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.162|162.158.103.162]] 09:37, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:I, uh, think this might be a bit of a reach. [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 00:38, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

==Are the right states highlighted?==
I could be wrong, but I think this page currently identifies the real Colorado, Wyoming, and Tennessee as "new" states. The states where Colorado and Wyoming should be with respect to Utah are more accurate proportionally to those states, and the more southern of the two Tennessee-like states just looks more like Tennessee to my eyes. [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 03:14, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
:I disagree strongly. The real Tennessee is a quadrilateral. The upper Tennessee is a quadrilateral. The lower one is not. It also makes absolutely no sense for that random state to be the real Wyoming. Look how much cleaner the previous version is. You can see how states were slid apart to fit new states. You can't just look at proportions, you also need to consider positions. I strongly suggest reversion. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.201|172.71.167.201]] 13:14, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
::I was partially going off of the discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/18j9nnb/the_bonus_14_states/. I'll change it back, but looking at a real map I'm not entirely convinced.

==New State Name Proposals and Abbreviations==
Tried to come up with serious-sounding names while including some proposed states and native people in order to determine what to call certain regions. [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/859658248177319937/1194519792669962310/2868_catboy_proposal_v1.png View Map] Feel free to make your own edits, or tell me to edit it if you want the style to be consistent. Note that I’m not dead-set on the placement of Tennessee/Cherokee and Arkansas/Cahokia or the Cherokee/Cahokia abbreviations. [[User:CatboyNiko|CatboyNiko]] ([[User talk:CatboyNiko|talk]]) 06:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)CatboyNiko
:Your "Central Dakota" is the real South Dakota, and your South Dakota is actually the new state. Arkansas is AR, and Nebraska is NE. US states actually can't have the same abbreviations as Canadian provinces; Alberta is AB. Since these states would have gotten their abbreviations before the Canadian provinces if they actually existed, you might want to change the names. I won't comment any further about the controversy surrounding which states are actually AR, CO, TN, and WY... [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 22:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
::I'd probably do this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Squee3/Misc/main/label_the_states_2x_highlighted.png. Names that don't match yours are from here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/return-of-horrible-educational-maps.375167/page-293. [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 16:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
:::Whoops! State abbreviations are hard. [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/859658248177319937/1203300382185623592/2868_catboysquee_proposal_v2.png Here]’s the updated map with your suggestions and [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/859658248177319937/1203303529398411324/2868_catboysquee_proposal_v2_noted.png one with your amendments labeled]. [[User:CatboyNiko|CatboyNiko]] ([[User talk:CatboyNiko|talk]]) 11:38, 3 February 2024 (UTC)CatboyNiko
::::When I click on your new maps, I get "This content is no longer available."... [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 01:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::I've come up with a new set of names for you that I think might work better: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Squee3/Misc/main/label_the_states_2x_highlighted.png Names mostly have historical precedent where possible. [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 19:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::: Here's mine: https://imgbox.com/OmT0Zuq6
:::::: Name Origins: Dineta is the Navajo homeland -- it could replace either Gadsen or Nuuchi. The Yankton are part of the Dakota, so this makes it so there are (secretly) three Dakotas. Nuuchi is the endonym of the Ute. Seedskeedee is Shoshone for the Green River. When the province of Carolina was split in twain OTL, the new provinces were named after two of the lords proprietary, the Earl of Clarendon and the Duke of Albemarle. The Earl of Craven was another lord proprietary. [[User:JackBonhomie|JackBonhomie]] ([[User talk:JackBonhomie|talk]]) 02:47, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::::Great suggestions! Used them (except for Franklin, since the new state is apparently the southern one, and Quapaw, since they weren't on the AR/LA border) here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Squee3/Misc/main/label_the_states_2x.png [[User:Squee333|Squee333]] ([[User talk:Squee333|talk]]) 20:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Iʼm surprised no one suggested “Nebraskota” for the new state between Nebraska and South Dakota.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 19:24, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Talk:1285: Third Way

2023-09-28T06:43:09Z

Heleatunda:

I think the article should explain the 'typewriter story' mentioned in the title text. [[User:Ollieollieoxenfree|Ollieollieoxenfree]] ([[User talk:Ollieollieoxenfree|talk]]) 04:22, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm wondering if the title text refers to the habbit many people have of slamming on their space key creating a very load sound- hence you can hear the difference between one space and two. But I'm not confident enough to edit the page [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.97|173.245.52.97]] 19:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

One line per sentence is reminiscent of a diagrammed/formal logic argument in philosophy. It would be a much more effective convention to help people parse and interpret content and validity of e.g. political claims. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.63.198|173.245.63.198]] 17:21, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Line break after every sentence. 
Because I can. 
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 04:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

ONE SPACE AFTER A PERIOD. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE TOO!!! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 18:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE, TWO!!! (not really) [[User:Orazor|Orazor]] ([[User talk:Orazor|talk]]) 09:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Writing plaintext, I always do two spaces after a sentence ending period.
This is probably because I did in fact start typing on a real typewriter.
In an environment where automatic formatting will take place, like a web page or wiki text, I use the newline.
I have had people in this wiki collapse my multiple line forms to one of the others.
(I was disappointed.)
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 04:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I prefer double spacing, but I used single spacing in writing the explanation, just to make people happy. Perhaps I should have used new lines. [[User:Concomitant|Concomitant]] ([[User talk:Concomitant|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: I'm a double-spacer too. Am I wrong? I can't break myself of the habit, I even do it in tweets! --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 16:43, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The 'third way' is a little underappreciated here: it divides the text into self contained logical units, and makes text processing tools (grep, diff etc.) much more usable.
Proper text rendering engines (TeX, HTML, etc.) already make this assumption and group sentences accordingly.
If only I realized this earlier, it would have made my thesis revisions much more easier.
In fact, up to this moment, I thought I was that lone guy in the comic.
EDIT: this comment in xkcd forums makes my point clear: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=106217#p3489055
--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.11|141.101.96.11]] 05:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:As a programmer, I find nothing weird in adapting your style to language. Writing two spaces in HTML or TeX is useless, as they won't render as two spaces anyway. (While using for this purpose nonbreakable spaces, which would render, is a crime.) -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::It would also render incorrectly if the period was close to the end of a line. If the markup is [last word of sentence][period][nbsp][space][next sentence], the last word of the first sentence could end up on the next line unnecessarily. But if it's [last word of sentence][period][space][nbsp][next sentence], the next line of text would start with a space, which is much worse.--[[User:Rael|Rael]] ([[User talk:Rael|talk]]) 15:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

::I end my sentences with a line break, a % and another linebreak. Only after commata etc i use a single line break. Oh, and don't forget to protect the space after points used in abbreviations, not as full stops, by a backslash. Most TeX increase the length of the space after a full stop a bit. Bit question: Why don't double space people, when using Word not just use a longer space instead of a double space. Noone would have the idea to indent a paragraph or substitute a tab with a series of spaces.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.117|108.162.242.117]] 03:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Because the keyboard does not contain a longer space key.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I always just find and replace double space with single space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.228|108.162.231.228]] 06:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC) Synthetica

I always just find and replace single space with double space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

So, why did double spacing after a period ever exist? It doesn't seem necessary. [[User:PheagleAdler|PheagleAdler]] ([[User talk:PheagleAdler|talk]]) 07:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Here's the standard explanation: on typewriters, each character takes up the same amount of space. So a lower-case "i" takes up the same amount of space as a capital "M". This is called a monospace font. When typing, if you just put a single space after the end of period ending a sentence, the reader doesn't necessarily get the sense that a new sentence has started. This is particularly true if you were typing in all caps, as might be common on some types of forms or documents. Two spaces, however, does the job nicely. In theory, with modern proportional-width fonts, this is unnecessary. [[User:Rylon|Rylon]] ([[User talk:Rylon|talk]]) 23:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::Here's the researched explanation: http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324 So technically, an em-space after a period, an en-space after a comma. Or you know, whatever you want. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 06:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

even though i learned typing on a typewriter, to this day i had never heard of the double space thing. maybe it's a US only thing, like the stupid french with spaces BEFORE punctuation marks. [[User:Peter|Peter]] ([[User talk:Peter|talk]]) 07:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:I've always taken the double-space thing as a US thing. Some editors like emacs default to it, which is really annoying. That said, as a frenchman, the "space before punctuation" is normal to me and it is part of the ''codified'' typography -- and I think this is actually an important distinction to make. Is this double-space vs single-space something codified somehow? As a last word, I need to be nitpicky: the exact French typography rule is "a space before punctuation made of two parts (namely colon, semi-colon, exclamation/question mark) and no space before punctuation made of a single part (dots, commas.)" It's a very deterministic rule that is easy to apply (whether one agrees to it or not.) [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 16:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::This is a common question from the French and some other nationals. The answer is that English does not work that way. There is no official codified version. The most you have is small pockets of codification within an organization, such as The University of Boulder, or UPI or the US Army. If you're working in or with such an organization you should use their standard. If you try to extend any such standard to the rest of the world you are a nasty egomanical control freak who should be chopped into pieces and fed to the fishes.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

As a german typographer I have to say I’m ''shocked''! ''Two'' spaces per period? A space ''before'' punctuation?! My scientific opinion: you all are completely crazy ;-) (Just kidding, but seriously, two spaces? In Germany, the first possibility to do that safely is your last will …) [[User:Quoti|Quoti]] ([[User talk:Quoti|talk]]) 10:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The doubled spaces appear in my browser's tooltips. (Maybe someone should add some non breaking spaces to the quotation of the tooltip text?) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.236|141.101.98.236]] 10:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a(n automatic) two-spacer person (just you watch, I'll use 'em here, despite it obviously not being rendered), it's just what I learnt, back in the '70s, here in the UK. I've no idea ''why'' I learnt it. However, it may stem from the same root as the 'rule' in handwriting (not biros, but nibbed pens dipped in ink... wow, I feel old, but it ''was'' at primary school) that we use a gap as big as our our (very little) little-fingers to separate sentences. I imagine differentiating full-stops (US: periods) from commas in the messy medium of ink might be a valuable visual indicator as to what a given smudge might ''actually'' be. So, anyway, double-spacing. On the other hand I should report that, "I've dropped the habit it of appropriate punctuation prior to quotes," I say, "despite being the way I learnt it." And instead I will drop "<- Commas from that sort of position," you see, "even through I'll keep the ones that are semantic pauses." You see how my standards are slipping? Anyway, good comic. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programme.  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 14:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:I'm in the same boat this this bloke. I don't get the typewriter tie in. I seem to recall being taught to use a finger gage correct gap of whitespace to leave between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. This was in an American small town southern school in the early 1980s. I assume it was for readability. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The "third way" is used for articles on the [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news BBC News] website :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 14:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Actually, they put each sentence into a paragraph of its own, which is yet different. (In HTML: <code>... .</code> vs. <code>... . </code>) --[[User:Das-g|Das-g]] ([[User talk:Das-g|talk]]) 16:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:That's what I came here to say, that the Third Way is common-place on the web today, it is the tabloid style. This headline article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24775846 off the BBC right now only has full-stops (periods in en-US) before paragraph breaks, apart from quotations (ie what the BBC did not write). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.229|141.101.98.229]] 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:The BBC is not the only web site to do that - and it is '''so''' annoying. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.244|108.162.222.244]] 10:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

There's a FOURTH way! I receive a "Weekly Update from Senator Tim Scott" HTML formatted email about once a week (unsurprisingly) which, in lieu of spaces between words, uses a carriage return and a linefeed. This alleviates the question of how many spaces between sentences completely! It also renders as oneverylongword in my email client. Ie: <blockquote>Thankyouforsubscribingtomye-newsletter.</blockquote> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: And a fifth: In France, they use one whitespace before and after double punctions (:;?!) but only one whitespace after single punctuation (.,). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.79.25|141.101.79.25]] 20:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the finger space was to help kids create clear separation while developing their proficiency at penmanship.
I think the 2x space is a fall out from the fixed width formatting of typewriters to help assist the reader (or proof reader) with the start and end of a sentence.
Double spacing has almost become OCD for me. I can't help it. Of course I also leave paragraph marks on while I type as well. I wonder if the French would require a space before a double quote, "The author ponders. "

I think we could improve old school cryptography if we just used carriage returns and ignored the 'new' line.
I might be able to accept and adopt the single space rule if I can make my spaces default to twice the point size of every other character in the style.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.186|199.27.128.186]] 19:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:FOROL DSCHO OLCRY PTOGR APHYT AKEYO URCUE FROME NIGMA DECOD ESAND ARRAN GEEVE RYTHI NGING ROUPS OFFIV EWITH OUT''AN Y''PUNC TUAT IONAN DINAL LCAPS  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 01:38, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have my word processor set to a a gap equal to one and a half spaces after a sentence ends[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.198|173.245.52.198]] 19:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

New paragraph (TWO line brakes) after every sentence :-) --[[User:Sten|Sten]] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 20:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I love how the explanation uses the third method. Nice touch. [[User:JRDeBo|JRDeBo]] ([[User talk:JRDeBo|talk]]) 23:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone think there's any significance to the sword and the spear? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.208.144|108.162.208.144]] 23:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:Yes, because this is a SERIOUS ISSUE. [[User:Alpha|Alpha]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) 06:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:A sword has a longer blade, while a spear keeps people further away. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.210|108.162.219.210]] 12:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

According to the [[http://fireemblemwiki.org/Weapon_triangle Fire Emblem weapon triangle]], the 1-spacers win against the 2-spacers. Then again, I put one space after each sentence. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Picture of a cat after every full stop !!! {{unsigned ip|173.245.51.221}}

With all the whitespace compression and variable width fonts in modern technology switching back to 2-space is as viable as switching over to localized Programmer Dvorak. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.18|108.162.231.18]] 13:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey, does anyone know if there's any way to make the wiki keep two spaces in a row, so the title text shows up properly? [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 15:46, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I was mildly confused about the weird phrasing of "This comic refers to the dance-off occurring ..." I already forgot my browser plugin that I've installed an hour ago. I think its great that it happened on a xkcd-related site. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.22|141.101.92.22]] 12:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not from the US so I never actually heard about a rule with two spaces. From my point of view the rule is stupid, really dumb. Just let go of it! There is no reason for it. My brain starts to spasm when I hear about a rule of two spaces after a period. Ungh!! {{unsigned ip|162.158.86.113}}

The 2 spaces used in (early) PCs and TypeWriters (and TTYs) could be caused by the too little difference between a «.» and a «,» with little fonts on CRTs (''320*200px with 8*8px single letter with <16" monitors with a signal trought an RF cable, for a C64''), dot-printers (''like 60*75 dpi (h*v), 9*9 per character, for an Epson MX-80'') and typewritten sheets (''maybe with dirty sort/type'')?
[The examples in parentheses are for a mid-level-case, because there are worst monitors and standards than those, see previous comments]
''Nickh''²+, [[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.166|188.114.103.166]] 00:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC) .

Well, looks like the one-spacers will win due to the weapon triangle. After all, lances best swords. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.64|172.68.174.64]] 16:54, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
:Do line breakers count as axes or staves? [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that there's a line break after ever sentence in this article.
(Insert formatting here)
:It’s four tildes (~ Those guys) to sign your comment. [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I have an easy solution to the debate.
Just press the TAB key after each sentence (doesn't work here, because of editing reasons).

google docs actually enforces the one space style for capitalization.

Is it just me, or is the wiki intentionally using the third way? (I'm a one-spacer. See?
:WHy did you not close the bracket :( [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 10:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
::You opened another parenthesie! ):) --{{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 18:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
0 spaces after a period.yes.[[User:Sci0927|Sci0927]] ([[User talk:Sci0927|talk]]) 15:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Interesting…I was always told that after an abbreviation like Mr. or Mrs. within a sentence, you were supposed to use a single space, and then after a sentence you would double space. Thus you would always have a clear visual indicator of whether a period was indicating an abbreviation or an end of sentence. Makes total sense, is entirely consistent, just like that weird French rule about spacing before double punctuation. Truly, has no one else here heard of this? Thatʼs why Iʼm inclined (prior to doing any research) to be in full agreement with the protestor saying that the monospaced font myth is totally made up. That being said, I also see it as a complete and total waste of good programming on the part of whoever it was who even bothered to cause HTML, et al to reduce extra whitespace in the first place! Imho, it should never have even occurred to them to write those lines of code at all. People should be free to write their whitespace exactly the way they want it and have it stay that way, without some web browser daring to presume that it knows the correct formatting better than the user does. smh lol
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 06:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1285: Third Way

2023-09-28T06:41:03Z

Heleatunda:

I think the article should explain the 'typewriter story' mentioned in the title text. [[User:Ollieollieoxenfree|Ollieollieoxenfree]] ([[User talk:Ollieollieoxenfree|talk]]) 04:22, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm wondering if the title text refers to the habbit many people have of slamming on their space key creating a very load sound- hence you can hear the difference between one space and two. But I'm not confident enough to edit the page [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.97|173.245.52.97]] 19:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

One line per sentence is reminiscent of a diagrammed/formal logic argument in philosophy. It would be a much more effective convention to help people parse and interpret content and validity of e.g. political claims. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.63.198|173.245.63.198]] 17:21, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Line break after every sentence. 
Because I can. 
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 04:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

ONE SPACE AFTER A PERIOD. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE TOO!!! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 18:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE, TWO!!! (not really) [[User:Orazor|Orazor]] ([[User talk:Orazor|talk]]) 09:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Writing plaintext, I always do two spaces after a sentence ending period.
This is probably because I did in fact start typing on a real typewriter.
In an environment where automatic formatting will take place, like a web page or wiki text, I use the newline.
I have had people in this wiki collapse my multiple line forms to one of the others.
(I was disappointed.)
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 04:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I prefer double spacing, but I used single spacing in writing the explanation, just to make people happy. Perhaps I should have used new lines. [[User:Concomitant|Concomitant]] ([[User talk:Concomitant|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: I'm a double-spacer too. Am I wrong? I can't break myself of the habit, I even do it in tweets! --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 16:43, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The 'third way' is a little underappreciated here: it divides the text into self contained logical units, and makes text processing tools (grep, diff etc.) much more usable.
Proper text rendering engines (TeX, HTML, etc.) already make this assumption and group sentences accordingly.
If only I realized this earlier, it would have made my thesis revisions much more easier.
In fact, up to this moment, I thought I was that lone guy in the comic.
EDIT: this comment in xkcd forums makes my point clear: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=106217#p3489055
--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.11|141.101.96.11]] 05:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:As a programmer, I find nothing weird in adapting your style to language. Writing two spaces in HTML or TeX is useless, as they won't render as two spaces anyway. (While using for this purpose nonbreakable spaces, which would render, is a crime.) -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::It would also render incorrectly if the period was close to the end of a line. If the markup is [last word of sentence][period][nbsp][space][next sentence], the last word of the first sentence could end up on the next line unnecessarily. But if it's [last word of sentence][period][space][nbsp][next sentence], the next line of text would start with a space, which is much worse.--[[User:Rael|Rael]] ([[User talk:Rael|talk]]) 15:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

::I end my sentences with a line break, a % and another linebreak. Only after commata etc i use a single line break. Oh, and don't forget to protect the space after points used in abbreviations, not as full stops, by a backslash. Most TeX increase the length of the space after a full stop a bit. Bit question: Why don't double space people, when using Word not just use a longer space instead of a double space. Noone would have the idea to indent a paragraph or substitute a tab with a series of spaces.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.117|108.162.242.117]] 03:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Because the keyboard does not contain a longer space key.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I always just find and replace double space with single space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.228|108.162.231.228]] 06:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC) Synthetica

I always just find and replace single space with double space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

So, why did double spacing after a period ever exist? It doesn't seem necessary. [[User:PheagleAdler|PheagleAdler]] ([[User talk:PheagleAdler|talk]]) 07:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Here's the standard explanation: on typewriters, each character takes up the same amount of space. So a lower-case "i" takes up the same amount of space as a capital "M". This is called a monospace font. When typing, if you just put a single space after the end of period ending a sentence, the reader doesn't necessarily get the sense that a new sentence has started. This is particularly true if you were typing in all caps, as might be common on some types of forms or documents. Two spaces, however, does the job nicely. In theory, with modern proportional-width fonts, this is unnecessary. [[User:Rylon|Rylon]] ([[User talk:Rylon|talk]]) 23:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::Here's the researched explanation: http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324 So technically, an em-space after a period, an en-space after a comma. Or you know, whatever you want. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 06:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

even though i learned typing on a typewriter, to this day i had never heard of the double space thing. maybe it's a US only thing, like the stupid french with spaces BEFORE punctuation marks. [[User:Peter|Peter]] ([[User talk:Peter|talk]]) 07:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:I've always taken the double-space thing as a US thing. Some editors like emacs default to it, which is really annoying. That said, as a frenchman, the "space before punctuation" is normal to me and it is part of the ''codified'' typography -- and I think this is actually an important distinction to make. Is this double-space vs single-space something codified somehow? As a last word, I need to be nitpicky: the exact French typography rule is "a space before punctuation made of two parts (namely colon, semi-colon, exclamation/question mark) and no space before punctuation made of a single part (dots, commas.)" It's a very deterministic rule that is easy to apply (whether one agrees to it or not.) [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 16:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::This is a common question from the French and some other nationals. The answer is that English does not work that way. There is no official codified version. The most you have is small pockets of codification within an organization, such as The University of Boulder, or UPI or the US Army. If you're working in or with such an organization you should use their standard. If you try to extend any such standard to the rest of the world you are a nasty egomanical control freak who should be chopped into pieces and fed to the fishes.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

As a german typographer I have to say I’m ''shocked''! ''Two'' spaces per period? A space ''before'' punctuation?! My scientific opinion: you all are completely crazy ;-) (Just kidding, but seriously, two spaces? In Germany, the first possibility to do that safely is your last will …) [[User:Quoti|Quoti]] ([[User talk:Quoti|talk]]) 10:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The doubled spaces appear in my browser's tooltips. (Maybe someone should add some non breaking spaces to the quotation of the tooltip text?) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.236|141.101.98.236]] 10:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a(n automatic) two-spacer person (just you watch, I'll use 'em here, despite it obviously not being rendered), it's just what I learnt, back in the '70s, here in the UK. I've no idea ''why'' I learnt it. However, it may stem from the same root as the 'rule' in handwriting (not biros, but nibbed pens dipped in ink... wow, I feel old, but it ''was'' at primary school) that we use a gap as big as our our (very little) little-fingers to separate sentences. I imagine differentiating full-stops (US: periods) from commas in the messy medium of ink might be a valuable visual indicator as to what a given smudge might ''actually'' be. So, anyway, double-spacing. On the other hand I should report that, "I've dropped the habit it of appropriate punctuation prior to quotes," I say, "despite being the way I learnt it." And instead I will drop "<- Commas from that sort of position," you see, "even through I'll keep the ones that are semantic pauses." You see how my standards are slipping? Anyway, good comic. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programme.  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 14:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:I'm in the same boat this this bloke. I don't get the typewriter tie in. I seem to recall being taught to use a finger gage correct gap of whitespace to leave between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. This was in an American small town southern school in the early 1980s. I assume it was for readability. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The "third way" is used for articles on the [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news BBC News] website :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 14:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Actually, they put each sentence into a paragraph of its own, which is yet different. (In HTML: <code>... .</code> vs. <code>... . </code>) --[[User:Das-g|Das-g]] ([[User talk:Das-g|talk]]) 16:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:That's what I came here to say, that the Third Way is common-place on the web today, it is the tabloid style. This headline article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24775846 off the BBC right now only has full-stops (periods in en-US) before paragraph breaks, apart from quotations (ie what the BBC did not write). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.229|141.101.98.229]] 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:The BBC is not the only web site to do that - and it is '''so''' annoying. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.244|108.162.222.244]] 10:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

There's a FOURTH way! I receive a "Weekly Update from Senator Tim Scott" HTML formatted email about once a week (unsurprisingly) which, in lieu of spaces between words, uses a carriage return and a linefeed. This alleviates the question of how many spaces between sentences completely! It also renders as oneverylongword in my email client. Ie: <blockquote>Thankyouforsubscribingtomye-newsletter.</blockquote> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: And a fifth: In France, they use one whitespace before and after double punctions (:;?!) but only one whitespace after single punctuation (.,). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.79.25|141.101.79.25]] 20:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the finger space was to help kids create clear separation while developing their proficiency at penmanship.
I think the 2x space is a fall out from the fixed width formatting of typewriters to help assist the reader (or proof reader) with the start and end of a sentence.
Double spacing has almost become OCD for me. I can't help it. Of course I also leave paragraph marks on while I type as well. I wonder if the French would require a space before a double quote, "The author ponders. "

I think we could improve old school cryptography if we just used carriage returns and ignored the 'new' line.
I might be able to accept and adopt the single space rule if I can make my spaces default to twice the point size of every other character in the style.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.186|199.27.128.186]] 19:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:FOROL DSCHO OLCRY PTOGR APHYT AKEYO URCUE FROME NIGMA DECOD ESAND ARRAN GEEVE RYTHI NGING ROUPS OFFIV EWITH OUT''AN Y''PUNC TUAT IONAN DINAL LCAPS  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 01:38, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have my word processor set to a a gap equal to one and a half spaces after a sentence ends[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.198|173.245.52.198]] 19:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

New paragraph (TWO line brakes) after every sentence :-) --[[User:Sten|Sten]] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 20:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I love how the explanation uses the third method. Nice touch. [[User:JRDeBo|JRDeBo]] ([[User talk:JRDeBo|talk]]) 23:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone think there's any significance to the sword and the spear? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.208.144|108.162.208.144]] 23:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:Yes, because this is a SERIOUS ISSUE. [[User:Alpha|Alpha]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) 06:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:A sword has a longer blade, while a spear keeps people further away. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.210|108.162.219.210]] 12:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

According to the [[http://fireemblemwiki.org/Weapon_triangle Fire Emblem weapon triangle]], the 1-spacers win against the 2-spacers. Then again, I put one space after each sentence. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Picture of a cat after every full stop !!! {{unsigned ip|173.245.51.221}}

With all the whitespace compression and variable width fonts in modern technology switching back to 2-space is as viable as switching over to localized Programmer Dvorak. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.18|108.162.231.18]] 13:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey, does anyone know if there's any way to make the wiki keep two spaces in a row, so the title text shows up properly? [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 15:46, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I was mildly confused about the weird phrasing of "This comic refers to the dance-off occurring ..." I already forgot my browser plugin that I've installed an hour ago. I think its great that it happened on a xkcd-related site. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.22|141.101.92.22]] 12:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not from the US so I never actually heard about a rule with two spaces. From my point of view the rule is stupid, really dumb. Just let go of it! There is no reason for it. My brain starts to spasm when I hear about a rule of two spaces after a period. Ungh!! {{unsigned ip|162.158.86.113}}

The 2 spaces used in (early) PCs and TypeWriters (and TTYs) could be caused by the too little difference between a «.» and a «,» with little fonts on CRTs (''320*200px with 8*8px single letter with <16" monitors with a signal trought an RF cable, for a C64''), dot-printers (''like 60*75 dpi (h*v), 9*9 per character, for an Epson MX-80'') and typewritten sheets (''maybe with dirty sort/type'')?
[The examples in parentheses are for a mid-level-case, because there are worst monitors and standards than those, see previous comments]
''Nickh''²+, [[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.166|188.114.103.166]] 00:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC) .

Well, looks like the one-spacers will win due to the weapon triangle. After all, lances best swords. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.64|172.68.174.64]] 16:54, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
:Do line breakers count as axes or staves? [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that there's a line break after ever sentence in this article.
(Insert formatting here)
:It’s four tildes (~ Those guys) to sign your comment. [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I have an easy solution to the debate.
Just press the TAB key after each sentence (doesn't work here, because of editing reasons).

google docs actually enforces the one space style for capitalization.

Is it just me, or is the wiki intentionally using the third way? (I'm a one-spacer. See?
:WHy did you not close the bracket :( [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 10:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
::You opened another parenthesie! ):) --{{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 18:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
0 spaces after a period.yes.[[User:Sci0927|Sci0927]] ([[User talk:Sci0927|talk]]) 15:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Interesting…I was always told that after an abbreviation like Mr. or Mrs. within a sentence, you were supposed to use a single space, and then after a sentence you would double space. Thus you would always have a clear visual indicator of whether a period was indicating an abbreviation or full stop.
Makes total sense, is entirely consistent, just like that weird French rule about spacing before double punctuation. Truly, has no one else here heard of this? Thatʼs why Iʼm inclined (prior to doing any research) to be in full agreement with the protestor saying that the monospaced font myth is totally made up. That being said, I also see it as a complete and total waste of good programming on the part of whoever it was who even bothered to cause HTML, et al to reduce extra whitespace in the first place! Imho, it should never have even occurred to them to write those lines of code at all. People should be free to write their whitespace exactly the way they want it and have it stay that way, without some web browser daring to presume that it knows the correct formatting better than the user does. smh lol
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 06:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1285: Third Way

2023-09-28T06:37:29Z

Heleatunda: added comment

I think the article should explain the 'typewriter story' mentioned in the title text. [[User:Ollieollieoxenfree|Ollieollieoxenfree]] ([[User talk:Ollieollieoxenfree|talk]]) 04:22, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm wondering if the title text refers to the habbit many people have of slamming on their space key creating a very load sound- hence you can hear the difference between one space and two. But I'm not confident enough to edit the page [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.97|173.245.52.97]] 19:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

One line per sentence is reminiscent of a diagrammed/formal logic argument in philosophy. It would be a much more effective convention to help people parse and interpret content and validity of e.g. political claims. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.63.198|173.245.63.198]] 17:21, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Line break after every sentence. 
Because I can. 
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 04:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

ONE SPACE AFTER A PERIOD. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE TOO!!! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 18:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:MY VOTE, TWO!!! (not really) [[User:Orazor|Orazor]] ([[User talk:Orazor|talk]]) 09:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Writing plaintext, I always do two spaces after a sentence ending period.
This is probably because I did in fact start typing on a real typewriter.
In an environment where automatic formatting will take place, like a web page or wiki text, I use the newline.
I have had people in this wiki collapse my multiple line forms to one of the others.
(I was disappointed.)
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 04:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I prefer double spacing, but I used single spacing in writing the explanation, just to make people happy. Perhaps I should have used new lines. [[User:Concomitant|Concomitant]] ([[User talk:Concomitant|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: I'm a double-spacer too. Am I wrong? I can't break myself of the habit, I even do it in tweets! --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 16:43, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The 'third way' is a little underappreciated here: it divides the text into self contained logical units, and makes text processing tools (grep, diff etc.) much more usable.
Proper text rendering engines (TeX, HTML, etc.) already make this assumption and group sentences accordingly.
If only I realized this earlier, it would have made my thesis revisions much more easier.
In fact, up to this moment, I thought I was that lone guy in the comic.
EDIT: this comment in xkcd forums makes my point clear: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=106217#p3489055
--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.11|141.101.96.11]] 05:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:As a programmer, I find nothing weird in adapting your style to language. Writing two spaces in HTML or TeX is useless, as they won't render as two spaces anyway. (While using for this purpose nonbreakable spaces, which would render, is a crime.) -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::It would also render incorrectly if the period was close to the end of a line. If the markup is [last word of sentence][period][nbsp][space][next sentence], the last word of the first sentence could end up on the next line unnecessarily. But if it's [last word of sentence][period][space][nbsp][next sentence], the next line of text would start with a space, which is much worse.--[[User:Rael|Rael]] ([[User talk:Rael|talk]]) 15:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

::I end my sentences with a line break, a % and another linebreak. Only after commata etc i use a single line break. Oh, and don't forget to protect the space after points used in abbreviations, not as full stops, by a backslash. Most TeX increase the length of the space after a full stop a bit. Bit question: Why don't double space people, when using Word not just use a longer space instead of a double space. Noone would have the idea to indent a paragraph or substitute a tab with a series of spaces.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.117|108.162.242.117]] 03:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Because the keyboard does not contain a longer space key.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I always just find and replace double space with single space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.228|108.162.231.228]] 06:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC) Synthetica

I always just find and replace single space with double space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

So, why did double spacing after a period ever exist? It doesn't seem necessary. [[User:PheagleAdler|PheagleAdler]] ([[User talk:PheagleAdler|talk]]) 07:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Here's the standard explanation: on typewriters, each character takes up the same amount of space. So a lower-case "i" takes up the same amount of space as a capital "M". This is called a monospace font. When typing, if you just put a single space after the end of period ending a sentence, the reader doesn't necessarily get the sense that a new sentence has started. This is particularly true if you were typing in all caps, as might be common on some types of forms or documents. Two spaces, however, does the job nicely. In theory, with modern proportional-width fonts, this is unnecessary. [[User:Rylon|Rylon]] ([[User talk:Rylon|talk]]) 23:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::Here's the researched explanation: http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324 So technically, an em-space after a period, an en-space after a comma. Or you know, whatever you want. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 06:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

even though i learned typing on a typewriter, to this day i had never heard of the double space thing. maybe it's a US only thing, like the stupid french with spaces BEFORE punctuation marks. [[User:Peter|Peter]] ([[User talk:Peter|talk]]) 07:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:I've always taken the double-space thing as a US thing. Some editors like emacs default to it, which is really annoying. That said, as a frenchman, the "space before punctuation" is normal to me and it is part of the ''codified'' typography -- and I think this is actually an important distinction to make. Is this double-space vs single-space something codified somehow? As a last word, I need to be nitpicky: the exact French typography rule is "a space before punctuation made of two parts (namely colon, semi-colon, exclamation/question mark) and no space before punctuation made of a single part (dots, commas.)" It's a very deterministic rule that is easy to apply (whether one agrees to it or not.) [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 16:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::This is a common question from the French and some other nationals. The answer is that English does not work that way. There is no official codified version. The most you have is small pockets of codification within an organization, such as The University of Boulder, or UPI or the US Army. If you're working in or with such an organization you should use their standard. If you try to extend any such standard to the rest of the world you are a nasty egomanical control freak who should be chopped into pieces and fed to the fishes.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.188|173.245.52.188]] 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

As a german typographer I have to say I’m ''shocked''! ''Two'' spaces per period? A space ''before'' punctuation?! My scientific opinion: you all are completely crazy ;-) (Just kidding, but seriously, two spaces? In Germany, the first possibility to do that safely is your last will …) [[User:Quoti|Quoti]] ([[User talk:Quoti|talk]]) 10:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The doubled spaces appear in my browser's tooltips. (Maybe someone should add some non breaking spaces to the quotation of the tooltip text?) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.236|141.101.98.236]] 10:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a(n automatic) two-spacer person (just you watch, I'll use 'em here, despite it obviously not being rendered), it's just what I learnt, back in the '70s, here in the UK. I've no idea ''why'' I learnt it. However, it may stem from the same root as the 'rule' in handwriting (not biros, but nibbed pens dipped in ink... wow, I feel old, but it ''was'' at primary school) that we use a gap as big as our our (very little) little-fingers to separate sentences. I imagine differentiating full-stops (US: periods) from commas in the messy medium of ink might be a valuable visual indicator as to what a given smudge might ''actually'' be. So, anyway, double-spacing. On the other hand I should report that, "I've dropped the habit it of appropriate punctuation prior to quotes," I say, "despite being the way I learnt it." And instead I will drop "<- Commas from that sort of position," you see, "even through I'll keep the ones that are semantic pauses." You see how my standards are slipping? Anyway, good comic. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programme.  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 14:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:I'm in the same boat this this bloke. I don't get the typewriter tie in. I seem to recall being taught to use a finger gage correct gap of whitespace to leave between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. This was in an American small town southern school in the early 1980s. I assume it was for readability. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The "third way" is used for articles on the [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news BBC News] website :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 14:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Actually, they put each sentence into a paragraph of its own, which is yet different. (In HTML: <code>... .</code> vs. <code>... . </code>) --[[User:Das-g|Das-g]] ([[User talk:Das-g|talk]]) 16:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:That's what I came here to say, that the Third Way is common-place on the web today, it is the tabloid style. This headline article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24775846 off the BBC right now only has full-stops (periods in en-US) before paragraph breaks, apart from quotations (ie what the BBC did not write). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.229|141.101.98.229]] 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:The BBC is not the only web site to do that - and it is '''so''' annoying. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.244|108.162.222.244]] 10:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

There's a FOURTH way! I receive a "Weekly Update from Senator Tim Scott" HTML formatted email about once a week (unsurprisingly) which, in lieu of spaces between words, uses a carriage return and a linefeed. This alleviates the question of how many spaces between sentences completely! It also renders as oneverylongword in my email client. Ie: <blockquote>Thankyouforsubscribingtomye-newsletter.</blockquote> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
: And a fifth: In France, they use one whitespace before and after double punctions (:;?!) but only one whitespace after single punctuation (.,). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.79.25|141.101.79.25]] 20:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the finger space was to help kids create clear separation while developing their proficiency at penmanship.
I think the 2x space is a fall out from the fixed width formatting of typewriters to help assist the reader (or proof reader) with the start and end of a sentence.
Double spacing has almost become OCD for me. I can't help it. Of course I also leave paragraph marks on while I type as well. I wonder if the French would require a space before a double quote, "The author ponders. "

I think we could improve old school cryptography if we just used carriage returns and ignored the 'new' line.
I might be able to accept and adopt the single space rule if I can make my spaces default to twice the point size of every other character in the style.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.186|199.27.128.186]] 19:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:FOROL DSCHO OLCRY PTOGR APHYT AKEYO URCUE FROME NIGMA DECOD ESAND ARRAN GEEVE RYTHI NGING ROUPS OFFIV EWITH OUT''AN Y''PUNC TUAT IONAN DINAL LCAPS  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 01:38, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have my word processor set to a a gap equal to one and a half spaces after a sentence ends[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.198|173.245.52.198]] 19:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

New paragraph (TWO line brakes) after every sentence :-) --[[User:Sten|Sten]] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 20:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I love how the explanation uses the third method. Nice touch. [[User:JRDeBo|JRDeBo]] ([[User talk:JRDeBo|talk]]) 23:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone think there's any significance to the sword and the spear? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.208.144|108.162.208.144]] 23:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
:Yes, because this is a SERIOUS ISSUE. [[User:Alpha|Alpha]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) 06:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:A sword has a longer blade, while a spear keeps people further away. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.210|108.162.219.210]] 12:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

According to the [[http://fireemblemwiki.org/Weapon_triangle Fire Emblem weapon triangle]], the 1-spacers win against the 2-spacers. Then again, I put one space after each sentence. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 18:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Picture of a cat after every full stop !!! {{unsigned ip|173.245.51.221}}

With all the whitespace compression and variable width fonts in modern technology switching back to 2-space is as viable as switching over to localized Programmer Dvorak. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.18|108.162.231.18]] 13:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey, does anyone know if there's any way to make the wiki keep two spaces in a row, so the title text shows up properly? [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 15:46, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I was mildly confused about the weird phrasing of "This comic refers to the dance-off occurring ..." I already forgot my browser plugin that I've installed an hour ago. I think its great that it happened on a xkcd-related site. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.22|141.101.92.22]] 12:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not from the US so I never actually heard about a rule with two spaces. From my point of view the rule is stupid, really dumb. Just let go of it! There is no reason for it. My brain starts to spasm when I hear about a rule of two spaces after a period. Ungh!! {{unsigned ip|162.158.86.113}}

The 2 spaces used in (early) PCs and TypeWriters (and TTYs) could be caused by the too little difference between a «.» and a «,» with little fonts on CRTs (''320*200px with 8*8px single letter with <16" monitors with a signal trought an RF cable, for a C64''), dot-printers (''like 60*75 dpi (h*v), 9*9 per character, for an Epson MX-80'') and typewritten sheets (''maybe with dirty sort/type'')?
[The examples in parentheses are for a mid-level-case, because there are worst monitors and standards than those, see previous comments]
''Nickh''²+, [[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.166|188.114.103.166]] 00:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC) .

Well, looks like the one-spacers will win due to the weapon triangle. After all, lances best swords. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.64|172.68.174.64]] 16:54, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
:Do line breakers count as axes or staves? [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I just realized that there's a line break after ever sentence in this article.
(Insert formatting here)
:It’s four tildes (~ Those guys) to sign your comment. [[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 14:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I have an easy solution to the debate.
Just press the TAB key after each sentence (doesn't work here, because of editing reasons).

google docs actually enforces the one space style for capitalization.

Is it just me, or is the wiki intentionally using the third way? (I'm a one-spacer. See?
:WHy did you not close the bracket :( [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 10:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
::You opened another parenthesie! ):) --{{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 18:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
0 spaces after a period.yes.[[User:Sci0927|Sci0927]] ([[User talk:Sci0927|talk]]) 15:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Interesting…I was always told that after an abbreviation like Mr. or Mrs. within a sentence,you were supposed to use a single space, and then after a sentence you would double space. Thus you would always have a clear visual indicator of whether a period was indicating an abbreviation or a full stop.
Makes total sense, is entirely consistent, just like that weird French rule about spacing before double punctuation. Truly, has no one else here heard of this? Thatʼs why Iʼm inclined (prior to doing any research) to be in full agreement with the protestor saying that the monospaced font myth is totally made up.
That being said, I also see it as a complete and total waste of good programming on the part of whoever it was who even bothered to cause HTML, et al to reduce extra whitespace in the first place! Imho, it should never have even occurred to them to write those lines of code at all. People should be free to write their whitespace exactly the way they want it and have it stay that way, without some web browser daring to presume that it knows the correct formatting better than the user does. smh lol
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 06:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1576: I Could Care Less

2023-09-20T07:55:25Z

Heleatunda: Added signature to my comment

I interpreted the title text as saying that it's impossible to care so little about something that you can't care less about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.146.170|172.68.146.170]] 02:57, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|‎141.101.98.100}}

The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels".

Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:
* "Head over heels"
* "Break a leg"
* "It's the shit"
* "That's bad"
* "She's phat"
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}
: "Diametrically opposed" is redundant. The words mean the same thing. Sorry, when the topic of conversation is pedanticism I couldn't resist :P [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.170|108.162.221.170]] 22:17, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
: I think "diametrically opposed" is not redundant. I visualize "opposed" = could be points of a circle greater than 90 degrees but less than 180 degrees apart. "diametrically opposed" = exactly 180 degrees apart, to the maximum extent possible. Whereas "opposed" implies only one dimension of opposite-ness, "diametrically opposed" implies multiple (or colloquially, even all) dimensions of opposite-ness, emphasizing that there is no common ground between the sides in question. 21:07, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.
::*Because your head is ''normally'' over your heels. Nothing special about it. Heels over head would be much more interesting...[[User:Silverpie|Silverpie]] ([[User talk:Silverpie|talk]]) 17:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:::*Personally I always think of it as your head being bowled over your heels - not the sort of "over" as in "higher gravitational potential energy", but in the same "around" sense of being "turned over" or "starting over". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.47|108.162.218.47]] 03:58, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
::::*Yes, this never sounded "opposite" to me. Imagine a contortionist with knees and toes on the ground, bent over backwards so that his head is literally over his heels. This is absolutely not normal. I took it as meaning something is so exciting/surprising that one contorting himself in unnatural ways. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.124|162.158.255.124]] 21:14, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::It's a reversal, of the original British expression "heels over head". [https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/head-over-heels.html] [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 21:13, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.
::: The "Vaudeville theory" on this page is where I got my understanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_a_leg --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).
::: I understand it's an acronym: Pretty Hot And Tempting. --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:::''Actually'', to follow-up on myself: "It's cheap(, it being in this instance) at half the price (I would normally charge)" works best. Why has that only just occured to me? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

:::Attempting to interpret "head over heels" to somehow mean "head down, heels up" isn't etymologically accurate; it's simply a reversal of the original expression, which was "heels over head." There's a similar expression in German ("Hals über Kopf") and Scandinavian (Norwegian "hals over hode", Swedish "hals över huvud") literally "neck over head," which means "in great hurry or disarray, without thinking" and is also sometimes (particularly in Norwegian) reversed for no particular reason: perhaps it's just the "mouth feel" that makes it tempting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:40, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:: Agreed. Words have meanings and reducing the amount of trust you can place in those meanings decreases the value of the language. "You could never understand me, so I might as well not even try to make myself understood" is a cop-out. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.23|108.162.219.23]] 15:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

:: I stand by my comment that most linguists would argue that the phrase does not warrant censure, on the grounds that it is (1) in very common use, probably about 5 times as common as "couldn't care less" in American speech, including educated speech, and about half as common in writing, (2) long established, with the OED's first reference back in 1966, only twenty years after it first notes "I couldn't care less" (and with Google Book Search, we can push this back to the 1940s: it occurs repeatedly in the official transcript of a House Congressional Hearing in 1947, for example), (3) idiomatic, so that logical analysis of its strict literal content is not helpful, and (4) analogous to other constructions (in English and other languages) that don't raise any eyebrows or hackles. That does not mean that they don't consider it interesting and worthy of explanation, of course. Indeed, almost all the work of actually trying to explain how "could care less" arose has been done by people who are at pain to point out that they find the phrase unobjectionable (while those who disapprove of it don't seem to get much further than calling it "an ignorant substitution" or a result of "sloppy speech and sloppy writing"). It's of course hard to prove that this is the majority view in academic circles, but I refer to Lawler, Liberman, Pullum, Okrent [http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/03/18/why_i_could_care_less_is_not_as_irrational_or_ungrammatical_as_you_might.html], Pinker, the various dictionaries that list it without deprecation (e.g. RH Webster's: "usage: could care less, the apparent opposite of couldn't care less, is actually used interchangeably with it to express indifference. Both versions occur mainly in informal speech."), and linguistic popularizers such as Grammarist [http://grammarist.com/usage/could-care-less/]. This clearly reflects the descriptivist paradigm that seeks to understand language as it actually occurs, and looks skeptically on attempts to impose "rules" that are often demonstrably wrong. In other words, treating linguistics as an empirical science. The version of this position that Megan argues in the comic is obviously heightened for comic effect (she's also using a sort of mock-Gricean analysis to impute a possible helpful intent to Ponytail). You can find most of these points endorsed in a very reasonable [http://blog.dictionary.com/could-care-less/ blog post by dictionary.com]. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.152|141.101.105.152]] 09:25, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
[[http://www.linkedin.com/in/Comet Comet]] 23:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

:Another American chiming in here to say that I never, ever, ever say "I could care less" when I mean "I couldn't care less". Characterizing it as "*the* American form" is incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.167|173.245.56.167]] 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:I had an alternate take on the title text. Since I could care less literally means I care some but could stand not to care as much, I took it to mean that for all the comic says about the true spirit and nature of communication and the evils of forcing linguistic absolutism onto other people, at the end of the day Randall still does care about people using correct phraseology. Yes, language is so much more than words and sounds but without clear grammatical usage rules communication could descend into chaos. This is actually one of the pivotal points in Jet Li's movie Hero which is a great commentary on this comic's profundity. The deep resonating pools of meaning that communication stores is only useful for peace and coexistence if we can all understand each other and come together as one. --[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
::I'm solidly with the IP. Randall is saying that, evidently, this is something which is important to him, and something he's put a lot of thought into. [[User:FourViolas|FourViolas]] ([[User talk:FourViolas|talk]]) 17:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}

: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm fighting a long lost battle, I know, but can I mention my fight against the (long-standing) misuse of Decimation when the speaker/writer probably means Devastation? These days it's often assumed to be its own mathematical complement (around ~10% survival, rather than the intended ~10% depletion). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I am right with you on this one. Although I don't think the users are mistaking the Dev- for the Dec-, they have just forgotten or never learned that "decimate" had anything to with percentages. Heck, many English speakers don't grasp that percent has anything to do with percentages. [[User:NoniMausa|NoniMausa]] ([[User talk:NoniMausa|talk]]) 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Either one works, depending on how the sentence is finished:
* I could care less...about this than other things.
* I couldn't care less...about this than I already do.
--EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:Indeed, but "I could..." also begs the question "...but will I?" and so does not actually affirms that "I ''will'' care less (than with other things)", whilst "I couldn't..." is more imperative as in "...and therefore I wouldn't". (Unless you want to read the latter as "I couldn't care less because I actually care quite a lot already and I know that this will never change", I suppose! Oh dear, we uregently need to start using one of those totally-umambiguous ConLangs based upon predicate logic!) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

On a different note: The way the panels are set up is pretty interesting. Anyone a idea, why he set it up like that? Does he want to tell us something? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.196|162.158.92.196]] 17:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
:The panels seem to form a logical story progression: introduction / development / conclusion, each on 3 lines. The panel on solitude and darkness is inverted -- it's literally dark -- which is a common comics idiom to emphasize a specific panel and break monotony {{Citation needed}}. [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 20:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

This is starting to feel like the [http://english.stackexchange.com/ English Language & Usage Stack Exchange] :-)

It's quite amusing as most of the discussion here is about the pedantic usage solely focused on how the listener perceives the expression irregardless (;-p) of what the speaker tried to express, which is is exactly what the comic is ranting about.
If we want to be all pedantic, I'd offer the alternative that "I could care less" is a literally (;-p) perfectly sound form in itself. It's all about expressing the emotional value that someone attaches to a concept or thing -- think of it as an emotional energy or charge. Since everything is inter-dependent, there is no such thing as an absolute zero, it's the relation to other things that matters. The expression "I don't care" would imply the speaker devotes a neutral emotional energy value to the subject. Since it's a relative value, there are no boundaries in either direction and consequently "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" are perfectly valid. It's all relative, as used to say Frank. [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 20:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum; 'but it isn't so, nohow.'
'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
[[http://www.linkedin.com/in/Comet Comet]] 23:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

"I could care less, but I would have to try" is the phrase as I have always known it (shortened to "I could care less...). I always took this to mean that someone was indifferent to a thing. It is a bit of an oxymoron since to try would mean you care more when your goal is to care less. My assumption has always been that the way someone feels about something generally exists on a scale from love to hate with the dead center being indifference. To care more from an indifferent standpoint is too move towards one of the poles (love or hate) and thus the oxymoron.--[[User:The elusive pickle|The elusive pickle]] ([[User talk:The elusive pickle|talk]]) 22:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Is it proper to use citations or should we just link to the source? {{User:17jiangz1/signature|10:44, 12 September 2015}}

;Negation by association in French

The [http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html assertion] that ''could care less'', or ''give a damn'', is "negative in its own right" in the same way as ''pas'' in French sounds dubious to me to say the least, if not downright bovine excrement. In French, the original word for negation is ''ne'', it came to be associated with ''pas'', so that there was a perceived redundancy. Dropping ''ne'' when ''pas'' is used clearly conserves the negative meaning (it is only usual in oral French though, and frowned upon in written French). The same applies with adverbs that have a negative meaning, like ''jamais'' (never). But this is a very generic process, and thus completely different from very specific cases like ''could care less''. [[User:Zoyd|Zoyd]] ([[User talk:Zoyd|talk]]) 17:28, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
:Absolutely off-topic: there's a fairly good overview of the evolution leading to ''ne... pas'' in French [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9gation_en_fran%C3%A7ais#.C3.89volution_de_l.27expression_de_la_n.C3.A9gation over there in The Other Wiki]. The link (or lack thereof) with ''could care less'' would definitely qualify as ''capilotracté''. [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 00:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I've heard people say they ''couldn't'' give a damn. Never heard someone say they ''could''. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 13:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

It's a shame we don't know Ponytail's name. If we did, this would pass the Bechdel test. Out of interest, are there any xkcds which pass the Bechdel test? {{unsigned ip|108.162.249.183}}

I could care more. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.33|198.41.238.33]] 00:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This was done on [http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2015/08/03 Pearls Before Swine] a couple of weeks ago. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.118|173.245.54.118]] 13:53, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps she's saying she could care a lot about the correction if it's intended to help her, but she could care less than that if the correction stems from the desire to complete a mental checklist.
In other words, there are two interpretations of the significance of Ponytail's correction. If the first interpretation is correct, she will care a lot. If the second interpretation is correct, she will care less. But she's not sure which is the case right now, so she could either care a lot or care less.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.78.10|172.68.78.10]] 13:53, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I literally could care less about this. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.160|108.162.219.160]] 19:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

The entire explanation seems off, to me... this comic isn't merely about a quirk of English parlance but is an exploration of the state of the human condition and relationships, and the role of communication. Sure, the comic starts off with Ponytail's attempted correction of a common English idiom, and it ends with a call-back to this idiom, but that doesn't mean the comic is all about the idiom. Rather, I think discussing the idiom is the means by which Randall can express his understanding of the role of ALL language and communication in human relationships - to remarkable depth, I would say. He has expressed the sentiment before that "literally the only thing that matters" is how others feel and our relationships with them (in [[1216: Sticks and Stones]], for example, and even as far back as [[24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey]].) This, for him, is the reason effective communication is so important and worth studying - because communication is required for human connection, and human connection has such a profound effect on our psychological well-being. Language pedants, therefore, are missing the point: why get so caught up correcting peoples' grammar, when the whole reason they're talking to you is because they feel alone in a void and they want to feel seen and understood? If you can understand them just fine, why make it harder for them? Language is more or less arbitrary anyway. The only reason we should correct others' grammar, as Megan implies in the seventh panel, is because you ''do'' understand why language exists (that is, to improve our relationships) ''and'' because you desire to improve the lives of others by helping them to express themselves more effectively. That is a noble goal; one-upping others is not. MeZimm [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.219|162.158.74.219]] 17:20, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I just undid someone's removal of the "Head over heels" example, that came with the comment of ''(Even with a literal interpretation I can't see how "Head over heels" means the opposite of what it reads (which would be to stand upright?).)'' - I disagree with the removal, but I'm not sure what I'm disagreeing with due to a key ambiguity. Is "(which would be to stand upright)" refering to whole "the opposite of what it reads" or just the "what it reads" part?
 My own interpretation is that "what it reads" ''is'' the literal interpretation of the phrase (the head is up above the heels, a truth when standing. "The literal thing means not the literal thing" is the logical problem at the core, which makes it the perfect example of the paradixical non-literal intent behind the phrase. So it's valid.
 But if the intent here is to say that the standing upright is the opposite of the literal read, then the literal read is being declared by our editor as the tumbling behaviour. Clearly wrong (IMO, but that is indeed the whole point), and thus I can only strongly disagree with the whole worldview. Even suspecting a certain cheeky contrarianism.
 ...now, obviously, the arguments above are said and done. And if I could be sure it was an honest edit, ''and'' a valid replacement candidate was being provided, then I'd grumble and gripe internally over a needless replacement. But I'm just not sure it deserves to be edited out with such uncertain justification. And, clearly, I feel strongly enough about that to not only revert it but write (...counts...) ''four'' whole paragraphs trying to explain my multifaceted thoughts on the subject. But over to all you other editors, if anyone understands (or thinks they understand) both the question and the possible answer. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.186|172.71.178.186]] 00:45, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Autism in a nutshell (both the comic content and the discussion here)
[[Special:Contributions/172.64.236.28|172.64.236.28]] 08:02, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It drives me nuts how everyone is so focused on the two extremes of “caring about someone enough to help them communicate more effectively” and “running it past some mental checklist so you can show off how well you know it”, as though there were literally nothing in between. In a similar vein, Randall has [https://xkcd.com/1984/ stressed the point] before (via a sarcastic counterstatement) that there is in fact a “middle ground between 'taking personal responsibility for the thoughts and feelings of every single person on Earth' and 'covering your eyes and ears and yelling logically correct statements into the void.'” What if I were simply genuinely confused about what Megan intended? Or put another way: What if I were the one who felt alone, and needed to receive effective communication in order to bridge the gap? But by indirectly accusing Ponytail of “showing off” her knowledge, Megan is effectively Humpty-Dumpty-ing her way out of any personal responsibility for any potential ambiguity in what she said.

Whenever I “correct” an “error” that I find, it is in no way driven by some kind of need to show off or to feel superior—and neither is it for the purpose of helping the author to feel less alone. It’s simply the case that we already have something good going with the currently-agreed-upon conventions for word choice, spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc., and it makes the most sense to take full advantage of that general consensus as much as possible.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 07:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1576: I Could Care Less

2023-09-20T07:53:53Z

Heleatunda:

Talk:1019: First Post

2023-08-19T17:09:17Z

Heleatunda:

Consistent posting order . . . .

You know, I think you're right, [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]]. That's a good point. [[User:SilverMagpie|SilverMagpie]] ([[User talk:SilverMagpie|talk]]) 00:29, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

With a Wiki, you can edit the posting order any way you want, there's no reason you have to add your comments to the bottom [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]] ([[User talk:Blaisepascal|talk]]) 20:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=first First!!] (ok, bad joke...)--[[User:Bpothier|B. P.]] ([[User talk:Bpothier|talk]]) 19:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I personally prefer seeing comments in chronological order, especially if the respondents reply to each other. I find it very annoying to see the reply before I've had a chance to read the original. The current comment system on Slate (where not only do new comments appear first, the page defaults to auto-updating, so the comments move down the page as you are trying to read them) is especially horrible. [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]] ([[User talk:Blaisepascal|talk]]) 20:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
:I prefer threaded discussions. Chronological is close enough for short discussions, but threaded makes it so much easier to find read all the replies a comment got. (Yes, I know I'm replying to a year-old post.) [[User:gijobarts|gijobarts]] ([[User Talk:gijobarts|talk]]) 07:06, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is. [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 23:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

. . . . is overrated. [[Special:Contributions/74.213.186.41|74.213.186.41]] 17:01, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I have the same interpretation as the current explanation, yet the "Incomplete" text says there are other interpretations. What are they? [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 15:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

This is precisely why Digg failed and now Reddit will fail. The moment the owners think they can manipulate discussions is the moment any discussion has any real value. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.161|173.245.50.161]] 02:53, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if this cartoon was the inspiration for the Russian trolling operations targeted at the US 2016 Presidential elections and the subsequent European elections. {{unsigned ip| 172.68.58.5}}

He definitely foretold Bloomberg's run for Dem nominee in 2019. (Maybe Bloomberg needed more college students.)[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.167|162.158.107.167]] 01:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

:What?? This is definitely a prediction about "democracy" in Serbia few years after this comic. By the way, who's Bloomberg? [[User:BytEfLUSh|BytEfLUSh]] ([[User talk:BytEfLUSh|talk]]) 03:26, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone have any examples of parties actually doing this/anyone know how to contact them? Sure could use the extra cash. 😂
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 17:09, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2657: Complex Vowels

2022-11-23T01:16:27Z

Heleatunda:

Spoken symbol bears resemblance to 🜏, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%9F%9C%8F
:Not really, it's closer to 'əG.' [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.25|172.69.33.25]] 01:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::Looks like ꬱ to me. Plus some diacritics sprinkled over it, of course. It does look ''similar'' to 🜏 when you include the zalgo. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.99|172.71.98.99]] 06:53, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

sscchhwwaa is easy, say it like the x in "fire" and the silent p in "bath"[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.13|172.70.85.13]] 21:42, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
:What? There is no 'x' in "fire." [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.25|172.69.33.25]] 01:17, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Ideas: bellows-, reed-, and lucite-based voiced phone production tracts typical in science museums; {{w|diphone}}s as an alternative to phomemes (a diphone is the second half of one phoneme followed by the first half of the next -- NOT two adjacent phomemes as the Wikipedia article claims. Two adjacent phomemes are a biphone, not a diphone); the relationship of the position of the tongue in two dimensional place × closedeness space to the fundamental and second {{w|formant}} frequencies of speech audio; {{w|diphthong}}s; {{w|Mel-frequency cepstrum|cepstral}} representation such as {{w|MFCC|mel-frequency ceptstral coefficients}}; and {{w|Zalgo text}} IPA. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.213|172.70.206.213]] 22:41, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
: Roger. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.149|172.69.33.149]] 03:25, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

The vowelspace is depicted in two dimensions for convenience, but it has at least three dimensions. Look at the IPA vowel diagram (already added to this page). The third dimension is roundedness.
:Yes, of the lips; apart from the two dimensions (out: place, and up: closedeness) of the tongue. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.95|172.70.206.95]] 22:59, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
::Does roundedness also involve the tongue and cheeks to any extent? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.199|172.69.33.199]] 23:36, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
:I wonder if Randall is doing this similarly to the way physicists present space-time diagrams with only 2 dimensions of space. We can visualize 3 dimensions using projections on 2-dimensional images, but it's hard to visualize 4 dimensions. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:18, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::If you can't visualize 4-D, play tennis. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.58|172.69.34.58]] 03:15, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

This linguist character has appeared 3 times now. Will there be a new character page dedicated to Gretchen or "The Linguist"? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.225|172.69.33.225]] 00:21, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:I second this motion. I think it would make more sense to have a generic character called "the Linguist" since, as the explanation for 2381 points out, not every linguist in xkcd is necessarily Gretchen. Plus, it seems like with this comic he's varied the artistic style, with the hair looking slightly less frizzy. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.248.143|172.69.248.143]] 22:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Can someone please create and paste in a zalgostring for the fancy 'əG' ligature shown twice in the comic? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 01:10, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Is this another example of Randall trolling Explainxkcd as in [[2619: Crêpe]]? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.37|172.69.33.37]] 01:45, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

: This is the best I could do ə ̯̣̌̄̊̇c̵. I added the zalgo marks to a narrow no-break space in between the schwa and a "c" with a line over it (there's no reverse schwa apparently). Obviously it's not a perfect match, but I think that's sort of the point of this comic. [[User:RDiMartino|RDiMartino]] ([[User talk:RDiMartino|talk]]) 15:31, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

: ꬱ̯̣̌̄̊̇ would work if only I could get the diacritics centered.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:16, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Someone please remind me how to Zalgo a top horizontal bar over √-1. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 02:34, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
: Slow way = Windows Character Map --> Group by: unicode subrange... Group By: Combining Diacritical Marks. 6th character from the top left (U+0305:Overline) yields √-̅1̅.
:Fast way = HTML character entities, ''{character it combines with}&#{character number code};'' (773:Overline) yields √-̅1̅
:Ignore other codes as they are either non-combining or have height relative to combining character (ie Macron) -- [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.201|172.69.70.201]] 04:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::Are you sure? Those aren't wide enough to connect along the top for me. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.10|172.69.34.10]] 07:57, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::[same person as previous above] looks great now, let me check innthe browser that it had issues in.... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.45|172.70.214.45]] 02:24, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:::[different person...] It's never looked Ok for me, on multiple browsers and platforms it always rendered as two separate overstrikes, and even the first does not connect to the √ bit. As an extended root-overstrike is more useful for visually bracketting ambiguities, like the central bit in "(-b±√(b²-4ac))/(2a)" I consider it superfluous for what would be "√(-1)" but cannot be "√(-).1". Nice try, though.
:::Related, I've exchanged "1/2" for ½. On this device it looks similar (slanted numerator/denominator bar and still an offset, unlike the drawn comic which is vertically aligned), but it might look better or even direct over-under with the correct font rendered into. And, like the former, probably ''read'' better as screen-readers process the Transcript for the visually impaired.
:::If it weren't for that latter point, I'd take the idea used in [[2614]] for the in-Explanation <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table> (<code><nowiki><table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table></nowiki></code>) and put it as: <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table> [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.221|172.70.85.221]] 10:41, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:::Ok, back to the 'root' bit: the (Explanation, not Transcript) current use of <code><nowiki>√-1</nowiki></code> is ok''ish'' but hovers the line above the "√" top by about ¾ of the initial down-tick's height (as rendered here... Chrome on Android, for reference), which is clearly not pixel-perfect. Maybe this is an outlier (obscure browser and OS that applies to hardly anyone, right?) so not gonna edit it away, but "√-1" is already unambiguous for anyone who knows what "√" is actually used for. Do we absolutely ''need'' to solve this rendering problem at all? At least until we persuade Unicode to release a special arbitrary-width over-kerning version of the √-character. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 09:09, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think what Randall is trying to do is provide a “roundness” dimension, but that’s how the explanation reads to me right now (“such” a dimension, e.g.) [[User:Szeth Pancakes|Szeth Pancakes]] ([[User talk:Szeth Pancakes|talk]]) 05:13, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
: Agreed - rearranged it a bit to deal with the real-life dimensions first, then be more explicit that the proposal is to add to the existing dimensions in a way analogous to how imaginary numbers expand the domain of real numbers. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.128|172.70.91.128]] 08:19, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Being an Englishman of a certain age, I had a panic flash back to the ITA. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 12:55, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:What was wrong with the Independant Television Authority?
:(Seriously, though, the Initial Teaching Alphabet was very bad... It insisted that "book" had a different vowel in it to "up", contrary to everyone's experience, including the teacher who tried to use it. - Ironically, though, when a few years later we were in 'big school' and being taught our first French lesson we got confused by being told at the very start that the words "''un''" and "''une''" (written on the board) were the equivalent to the English word "uh" (spoken)... Uh? What's "uh"?... "You know, as in 'uh book', 'uh table', 'uh chair'...") [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.13|172.70.85.13]] 14:37, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::I'm curious how you pronounce them if they *aren't* different vowels: is it uhp and b'uhk (^p and b^k in IPA), the Near-close near-back rounded vowel (not sure how to describe it or get the upside down omega to render, or something entirely different? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.131.126|172.70.131.126]] 21:57, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:::Quite possibly, but I'm never entirely confident that I have the right impression of what a given IPA means, from my particular regional accent as a baseline. Definitely the same (excepting the phonemic ending each of "-uck/-upp" and the presence or not of another initial element).
:::A good comparative linguist could probably name the various zones (encompassed by various isogloss lines) where this is true. And, by actually hearing me, perhaps narrow down the one from which I actually hail, quite accurately. At least one set of my grandparents always said "book" (or "look") more like the longer "ew" than "uh", and they were pretty much always local to another town just 10-15 miles away from the one of my own birth/upbringing (don't remember much of the other grandparents, but they were also from a village more in the other area than my own, but making an almost equilateral triangle on the map). Traces of this kind of 'elsewhere' accent from my parents probably did make me stand out a little bit from my "nth generation local" peers. But still up≈book applies.
:::If I had a cat, by now it would be staring up at me, wondering why I've been saying "up book book up look whup uck luck suck tuck muck Krup ... (etc)" to myself, trying to detect any changes and all similarities. While imaging myself in various social situations that demand broader or more RPified pronunciations... ;) ((Plus trying to calculate my exact tongue-placement/etc.)) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.242|141.101.99.242]] 23:09, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Blast from the past! I remember ITA from when I was in elementary school on Long Island in the 60's. In my later years I frequently confused this with IPA. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:18, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what the text "There is one unique such function and the new mathematics is consistent." - in current version, with similarly bad historic variations - is supposed to mean. The point of sqrt(-1) is that it never had a valid result on the Real number-line, and only by imagining a non-real dimension can you start to work with such a number (alone or in combination with real values) with a consistency that allows even nth-roots and exponentiation. The "unique (...) function" bit sounds strange. And note that -1 does ''not'' have a single unique root (which I can't help feeling is what is trying to be said, still)... its two roots are i and -i, for much the same reason that sqrt(1)=±1. But maybe the statement I'm wondering about is written under some branch of functional number-theory that I'm not familiar with, so could the relevent editor(s) please do it in a way that won't so confuse/trouble me or mislead others? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.80|172.70.91.80]] 22:03, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Done. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.58|172.69.34.58]] 23:09, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Since when does a completely generic orthogonal projection from 2- to 3-D invoke the Gell-Mann quark model? Unicode needs a glyph to tell physicists to settle down. Removed: "The multi-plane scheme of the comic seems inspired by the representation of the Gell-Mann quark model used in particle physics (you can see one on page 4 of the [https://pdg.lbl.gov/2022/reviews/rpp2022-rev-quark-model.pdf Particle Data Group quark model review])." [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.88|172.70.211.88]] 02:02, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Reminds me of ''[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54431070-battle-of-the-linguist-mages Battle of the Linguist Mages]'' - Punctuation marks are alien invaders from another dimension, and magic consists of pronouncing "power morphemes" (assuming learning them doesn't drive you mad, first). --[[User:Bobson|Bobson]] ([[User talk:Bobson|talk]]) 02:43, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

The symbol reminds me of the {{w|Mandelbrot Set}} but turned on its side. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.93.43|172.70.93.43]] 07:17, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Not sure about ''the most common vowel sound in English polysyllabic words (the 'a' in "comma" or the second 'e' in "letter.")'' - those are pronounced completely differently (unless perhaps you are from the south of England and pronounce 'letter' as 'lettah'). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 07:32, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
: I would pronounce them 'commuh' and 'lettuh', with a very short 'uh', which would fit with it being the most common vowel sound, given people say 'uh?' quite a lot. Although that's about as unpolysyllabic as you could get. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.80|172.70.91.80]] 09:02, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:: Again, probably multiple isoglosses apply. I'm an "uh"-common person from the North and recognise "ah"-common accents as (certain bits of) the South, but it's possible that "lettah"<->"lettuh" and "commah"<->"commuh" transition at different boundaries across/around/through the Midlands, thus confusing many people. I think RP goes more "commah" and "lettuh(r)". Checking Wiktionary, though, IPA is given as /ˈkɒm.ə/ (UK, otherwise unspecified) and /ˈlɛtə(ɹ)/ (RP), but there's not much info on direct comparisons between, say, East London/East Midlands/East Yorkshire/East Anglia/East Kilbride/Dwyran... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.34|172.70.86.34]] 11:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

You could do something like this comic with the embeddings of a language model trained on IPA and human responses. Stuff like https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-word-embedding-and-word2vec-652d0c2060fa http://www.isle.illinois.edu/speech_web_lg/pubs/2021/gao2021zero.pdf . A speech generating reinforcement learning system rewarded on human response would almost certainly discover complex vowels: sounds humans recognise partly, possibly impossible mixes of normal vowels, that produce erratic or novel human behavior. This has likely happened in some kind of marketing or attention research. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.237|172.70.110.237]] 19:20, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
: To add on to this, when playing with or demoing powerful neural networks, people often give the networks impossible prompts (like dall-e’s original example of an armchair in the shape of an avocado, a contradiction as avocados are never shaped like something that is a chair) —- and surprisingly a strong model will actually produce a result humans believe meets the request. This is like the example of “x in fire" —- mainstream neural networks usually do not reject input, they just solve it the best they can, producing an output that best matches everything they learned, or is an extrapolation from what they learned along their internal dimensions. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.237|172.70.110.237]] 19:26, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

"the properties of complex numbers could conceivably support representing physiological features of the vocal tract" - not sure about this - the properties of complex numbers stem from imaginary numbers being defined in relation to the square root of -1 - it's not obvious how a value of -1 would have any meaning in vocalspace (since it's a limited scale, not a continuous plane), never mind its square root, so how would the interactions between real and imaginary numbers read across to those between tongue movements and other vocal tract features? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.223|172.70.90.223]] 10:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
:Well... Although I never liked the way it was worded, I envisaged it as depicting extradimensional movements/displacements, possibly introducing resonances of air beyond the current three dimensions (and time) of movement. Such as compressive waves in a further imaginary dimension. (For transverse/tortional-waves, in media that support them, moments of movement/wbatever perpendicular/hyperradial to any 'real' version, but in air tbat's probably moot. Unless it isn't..?)
:Or you could consider, as you say, a limited scale of 0..1 being the distance of the tongue-tip between roof-touching and floor-touching (-1 would be a tongue ''embedded'' in whichever surface is zero, somehow phased through and creating a 'nevative cavity' of resonance, somehow, and an i-ward position would be... Well, not 'sideways' (though that does change things) but ''hyper''-sideways (again those other dimensions, probably requiring muscles/etc we don't normally consider), and all that implies.
:...that's if you want my assumptions about how an entirely ficticious and frankly esoteric scenario might 'really' be implemented. I won't say it's the way it ''would'' be, and there are limely many other (mis)interpretations of how it might happen, these were just my first thoughts on initially reading the comic (but it used less words in my head, as I could more easily imagine the necessary illustrative diagrams that did most of the heavy lifting). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.78|172.70.91.78]] 11:52, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2657: Complex Vowels

2022-11-23T01:11:08Z

Heleatunda:

Spoken symbol bears resemblance to 🜏, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%9F%9C%8F
:Not really, it's closer to 'əG.' [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.25|172.69.33.25]] 01:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::Looks like ꬱ to me. Plus some diacritics sprinkled over it, of course. It does look ''similar'' to 🜏 when you include the zalgo. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.99|172.71.98.99]] 06:53, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

sscchhwwaa is easy, say it like the x in "fire" and the silent p in "bath"[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.13|172.70.85.13]] 21:42, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
:What? There is no 'x' in "fire." [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.25|172.69.33.25]] 01:17, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Ideas: bellows-, reed-, and lucite-based voiced phone production tracts typical in science museums; {{w|diphone}}s as an alternative to phomemes (a diphone is the second half of one phoneme followed by the first half of the next -- NOT two adjacent phomemes as the Wikipedia article claims. Two adjacent phomemes are a biphone, not a diphone); the relationship of the position of the tongue in two dimensional place × closedeness space to the fundamental and second {{w|formant}} frequencies of speech audio; {{w|diphthong}}s; {{w|Mel-frequency cepstrum|cepstral}} representation such as {{w|MFCC|mel-frequency ceptstral coefficients}}; and {{w|Zalgo text}} IPA. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.213|172.70.206.213]] 22:41, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
: Roger. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.149|172.69.33.149]] 03:25, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

The vowelspace is depicted in two dimensions for convenience, but it has at least three dimensions. Look at the IPA vowel diagram (already added to this page). The third dimension is roundedness.
:Yes, of the lips; apart from the two dimensions (out: place, and up: closedeness) of the tongue. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.95|172.70.206.95]] 22:59, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
::Does roundedness also involve the tongue and cheeks to any extent? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.199|172.69.33.199]] 23:36, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
:I wonder if Randall is doing this similarly to the way physicists present space-time diagrams with only 2 dimensions of space. We can visualize 3 dimensions using projections on 2-dimensional images, but it's hard to visualize 4 dimensions. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:18, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::If you can't visualize 4-D, play tennis. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.58|172.69.34.58]] 03:15, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

This linguist character has appeared 3 times now. Will there be a new character page dedicated to Gretchen or "The Linguist"? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.225|172.69.33.225]] 00:21, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:I second this motion. I think it would make more sense to have a generic character called "the Linguist" since, as the explanation for 2381 points out, not every linguist in xkcd is necessarily Gretchen. Plus, it seems like with this comic he's varied the artistic style, with the hair looking slightly less frizzy. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.248.143|172.69.248.143]] 22:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Can someone please create and paste in a zalgostring for the fancy 'əG' ligature shown twice in the comic? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 01:10, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Is this another example of Randall trolling Explainxkcd as in [[2619: Crêpe]]? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.37|172.69.33.37]] 01:45, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

: This is the best I could do ə ̯̣̌̄̊̇c̵. I added the zalgo marks to a narrow no-break space in between the schwa and a "c" with a line over it (there's no reverse schwa apparently). Obviously it's not a perfect match, but I think that's sort of the point of this comic. [[User:RDiMartino|RDiMartino]] ([[User talk:RDiMartino|talk]]) 15:31, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

ꬱ̯̣̌̄̊̇ would work if only I could get the diacritics centered.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 01:11, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Someone please remind me how to Zalgo a top horizontal bar over √-1. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 02:34, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
: Slow way = Windows Character Map --> Group by: unicode subrange... Group By: Combining Diacritical Marks. 6th character from the top left (U+0305:Overline) yields √-̅1̅.
:Fast way = HTML character entities, ''{character it combines with}&#{character number code};'' (773:Overline) yields √-̅1̅
:Ignore other codes as they are either non-combining or have height relative to combining character (ie Macron) -- [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.201|172.69.70.201]] 04:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::Are you sure? Those aren't wide enough to connect along the top for me. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.10|172.69.34.10]] 07:57, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::[same person as previous above] looks great now, let me check innthe browser that it had issues in.... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.45|172.70.214.45]] 02:24, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:::[different person...] It's never looked Ok for me, on multiple browsers and platforms it always rendered as two separate overstrikes, and even the first does not connect to the √ bit. As an extended root-overstrike is more useful for visually bracketting ambiguities, like the central bit in "(-b±√(b²-4ac))/(2a)" I consider it superfluous for what would be "√(-1)" but cannot be "√(-).1". Nice try, though.
:::Related, I've exchanged "1/2" for ½. On this device it looks similar (slanted numerator/denominator bar and still an offset, unlike the drawn comic which is vertically aligned), but it might look better or even direct over-under with the correct font rendered into. And, like the former, probably ''read'' better as screen-readers process the Transcript for the visually impaired.
:::If it weren't for that latter point, I'd take the idea used in [[2614]] for the in-Explanation <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table> (<code><nowiki><table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table></nowiki></code>) and put it as: <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; vertical-align: middle; font-size:7pt; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>2</td></tr></table> [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.221|172.70.85.221]] 10:41, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:::Ok, back to the 'root' bit: the (Explanation, not Transcript) current use of <code><nowiki>√-1</nowiki></code> is ok''ish'' but hovers the line above the "√" top by about ¾ of the initial down-tick's height (as rendered here... Chrome on Android, for reference), which is clearly not pixel-perfect. Maybe this is an outlier (obscure browser and OS that applies to hardly anyone, right?) so not gonna edit it away, but "√-1" is already unambiguous for anyone who knows what "√" is actually used for. Do we absolutely ''need'' to solve this rendering problem at all? At least until we persuade Unicode to release a special arbitrary-width over-kerning version of the √-character. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 09:09, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think what Randall is trying to do is provide a “roundness” dimension, but that’s how the explanation reads to me right now (“such” a dimension, e.g.) [[User:Szeth Pancakes|Szeth Pancakes]] ([[User talk:Szeth Pancakes|talk]]) 05:13, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
: Agreed - rearranged it a bit to deal with the real-life dimensions first, then be more explicit that the proposal is to add to the existing dimensions in a way analogous to how imaginary numbers expand the domain of real numbers. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.128|172.70.91.128]] 08:19, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Being an Englishman of a certain age, I had a panic flash back to the ITA. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 12:55, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:What was wrong with the Independant Television Authority?
:(Seriously, though, the Initial Teaching Alphabet was very bad... It insisted that "book" had a different vowel in it to "up", contrary to everyone's experience, including the teacher who tried to use it. - Ironically, though, when a few years later we were in 'big school' and being taught our first French lesson we got confused by being told at the very start that the words "''un''" and "''une''" (written on the board) were the equivalent to the English word "uh" (spoken)... Uh? What's "uh"?... "You know, as in 'uh book', 'uh table', 'uh chair'...") [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.13|172.70.85.13]] 14:37, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
::I'm curious how you pronounce them if they *aren't* different vowels: is it uhp and b'uhk (^p and b^k in IPA), the Near-close near-back rounded vowel (not sure how to describe it or get the upside down omega to render, or something entirely different? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.131.126|172.70.131.126]] 21:57, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:::Quite possibly, but I'm never entirely confident that I have the right impression of what a given IPA means, from my particular regional accent as a baseline. Definitely the same (excepting the phonemic ending each of "-uck/-upp" and the presence or not of another initial element).
:::A good comparative linguist could probably name the various zones (encompassed by various isogloss lines) where this is true. And, by actually hearing me, perhaps narrow down the one from which I actually hail, quite accurately. At least one set of my grandparents always said "book" (or "look") more like the longer "ew" than "uh", and they were pretty much always local to another town just 10-15 miles away from the one of my own birth/upbringing (don't remember much of the other grandparents, but they were also from a village more in the other area than my own, but making an almost equilateral triangle on the map). Traces of this kind of 'elsewhere' accent from my parents probably did make me stand out a little bit from my "nth generation local" peers. But still up≈book applies.
:::If I had a cat, by now it would be staring up at me, wondering why I've been saying "up book book up look whup uck luck suck tuck muck Krup ... (etc)" to myself, trying to detect any changes and all similarities. While imaging myself in various social situations that demand broader or more RPified pronunciations... ;) ((Plus trying to calculate my exact tongue-placement/etc.)) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.242|141.101.99.242]] 23:09, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Blast from the past! I remember ITA from when I was in elementary school on Long Island in the 60's. In my later years I frequently confused this with IPA. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:18, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what the text "There is one unique such function and the new mathematics is consistent." - in current version, with similarly bad historic variations - is supposed to mean. The point of sqrt(-1) is that it never had a valid result on the Real number-line, and only by imagining a non-real dimension can you start to work with such a number (alone or in combination with real values) with a consistency that allows even nth-roots and exponentiation. The "unique (...) function" bit sounds strange. And note that -1 does ''not'' have a single unique root (which I can't help feeling is what is trying to be said, still)... its two roots are i and -i, for much the same reason that sqrt(1)=±1. But maybe the statement I'm wondering about is written under some branch of functional number-theory that I'm not familiar with, so could the relevent editor(s) please do it in a way that won't so confuse/trouble me or mislead others? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.80|172.70.91.80]] 22:03, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
:Done. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.58|172.69.34.58]] 23:09, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Since when does a completely generic orthogonal projection from 2- to 3-D invoke the Gell-Mann quark model? Unicode needs a glyph to tell physicists to settle down. Removed: "The multi-plane scheme of the comic seems inspired by the representation of the Gell-Mann quark model used in particle physics (you can see one on page 4 of the [https://pdg.lbl.gov/2022/reviews/rpp2022-rev-quark-model.pdf Particle Data Group quark model review])." [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.88|172.70.211.88]] 02:02, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Reminds me of ''[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54431070-battle-of-the-linguist-mages Battle of the Linguist Mages]'' - Punctuation marks are alien invaders from another dimension, and magic consists of pronouncing "power morphemes" (assuming learning them doesn't drive you mad, first). --[[User:Bobson|Bobson]] ([[User talk:Bobson|talk]]) 02:43, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

The symbol reminds me of the {{w|Mandelbrot Set}} but turned on its side. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.93.43|172.70.93.43]] 07:17, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Not sure about ''the most common vowel sound in English polysyllabic words (the 'a' in "comma" or the second 'e' in "letter.")'' - those are pronounced completely differently (unless perhaps you are from the south of England and pronounce 'letter' as 'lettah'). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 07:32, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
: I would pronounce them 'commuh' and 'lettuh', with a very short 'uh', which would fit with it being the most common vowel sound, given people say 'uh?' quite a lot. Although that's about as unpolysyllabic as you could get. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.80|172.70.91.80]] 09:02, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
:: Again, probably multiple isoglosses apply. I'm an "uh"-common person from the North and recognise "ah"-common accents as (certain bits of) the South, but it's possible that "lettah"<->"lettuh" and "commah"<->"commuh" transition at different boundaries across/around/through the Midlands, thus confusing many people. I think RP goes more "commah" and "lettuh(r)". Checking Wiktionary, though, IPA is given as /ˈkɒm.ə/ (UK, otherwise unspecified) and /ˈlɛtə(ɹ)/ (RP), but there's not much info on direct comparisons between, say, East London/East Midlands/East Yorkshire/East Anglia/East Kilbride/Dwyran... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.34|172.70.86.34]] 11:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

You could do something like this comic with the embeddings of a language model trained on IPA and human responses. Stuff like https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-word-embedding-and-word2vec-652d0c2060fa http://www.isle.illinois.edu/speech_web_lg/pubs/2021/gao2021zero.pdf . A speech generating reinforcement learning system rewarded on human response would almost certainly discover complex vowels: sounds humans recognise partly, possibly impossible mixes of normal vowels, that produce erratic or novel human behavior. This has likely happened in some kind of marketing or attention research. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.237|172.70.110.237]] 19:20, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
: To add on to this, when playing with or demoing powerful neural networks, people often give the networks impossible prompts (like dall-e’s original example of an armchair in the shape of an avocado, a contradiction as avocados are never shaped like something that is a chair) —- and surprisingly a strong model will actually produce a result humans believe meets the request. This is like the example of “x in fire" —- mainstream neural networks usually do not reject input, they just solve it the best they can, producing an output that best matches everything they learned, or is an extrapolation from what they learned along their internal dimensions. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.237|172.70.110.237]] 19:26, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

"the properties of complex numbers could conceivably support representing physiological features of the vocal tract" - not sure about this - the properties of complex numbers stem from imaginary numbers being defined in relation to the square root of -1 - it's not obvious how a value of -1 would have any meaning in vocalspace (since it's a limited scale, not a continuous plane), never mind its square root, so how would the interactions between real and imaginary numbers read across to those between tongue movements and other vocal tract features? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.223|172.70.90.223]] 10:10, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
:Well... Although I never liked the way it was worded, I envisaged it as depicting extradimensional movements/displacements, possibly introducing resonances of air beyond the current three dimensions (and time) of movement. Such as compressive waves in a further imaginary dimension. (For transverse/tortional-waves, in media that support them, moments of movement/wbatever perpendicular/hyperradial to any 'real' version, but in air tbat's probably moot. Unless it isn't..?)
:Or you could consider, as you say, a limited scale of 0..1 being the distance of the tongue-tip between roof-touching and floor-touching (-1 would be a tongue ''embedded'' in whichever surface is zero, somehow phased through and creating a 'nevative cavity' of resonance, somehow, and an i-ward position would be... Well, not 'sideways' (though that does change things) but ''hyper''-sideways (again those other dimensions, probably requiring muscles/etc we don't normally consider), and all that implies.
:...that's if you want my assumptions about how an entirely ficticious and frankly esoteric scenario might 'really' be implemented. I won't say it's the way it ''would'' be, and there are limely many other (mis)interpretations of how it might happen, these were just my first thoughts on initially reading the comic (but it used less words in my head, as I could more easily imagine the necessary illustrative diagrams that did most of the heavy lifting). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.78|172.70.91.78]] 11:52, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Talk:532: Piano

2021-11-19T22:24:35Z

Heleatunda:

Maybe I'm wrong here, but by looking at the size of the piano compared with Cueball and having read the title text, I wonder if the joke might be that he wished for a 4-5 inch penis instead? I wasn't sure enoough to go ahead an change it though.{{unsigned|Athang}}
: If you look at the piano compared to Cueball's forearm plus hand, they are approximately the same length. Considering how the average male human is slightly shorter in height (1.7 m) than a grand piano is long (2 m), a to-scale pianist would be slightly shorter than Cueball's forearm. The average length of a 1.7 m tall person's forearm plus hand is about 47 cm, so the pianist would need to be about 40 cm. (1.7:2 = 0.85 ratio. 47 cm * 0.85 = 40 cm.) 40 cm is almost 16 inches. In [[526: Converting to Metric]], 14 cm is labeled "penis", and according to the {{w|Kinsey Institute}}, the largest medically recorded was 13.5 inches (34 cm).

:Alternatively, the title text might have been saying "Good thing [the genie] didn't make [his penis] smaller [than it was before?], or [his penis would] need someone three inches tall to play [with] it." [[User:Tryc|Tryc]] ([[User talk:Tryc|talk]]) 15:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

:The extremely clear implication is that he asked for a 12-inch pianist, echoing the original joke. Occam's Razor and Megan's response support this view. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]]

Currently, this comic is listed as being in the "My Hobby" series, but it doesn't fit the series description. It's not phrased as if this is Randall's hobby, it's more situation-specific than the other My Hobby comics, and the title doesn't start with "My Hobby:". Should it be removed from the list? [[User:Sciepsilon|Sciepsilon]] ([[User talk:Sciepsilon|talk]]) 22:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
:The first two words from Cueball are: "My hobby...". The category is appropriate here. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 18:16, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
:Agreed. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]]
:Disagreed. It has nothing to do with the other "my hobby" comics, which all describes some weird trolling activity. This is just a guy making miniatures, a much more normal hobby. The ensuing panels of discussion doesn't fit the pattern either. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.119|108.162.254.119]] 20:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
:Also disagreed. The "my hobby" comics are about Randall's, and not Cueball's (albeit his alter-ego) hobbies. They all begin vey clearly with the phrase "My hobby:" in superscript before describing that hobby for comedic effect. Here, Cueball's hobby is not the subject and punchline of the comic, but rather the set-up for the joke about the size of his erm... member. It might meet the letter, but misses the spirit of the "my hobby" rubric. Any person searching for a comic in the "my hobby" series would be pretty surprised to find this one. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.21|108.162.219.21]] 08:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
::I agree with the disagreement, it's clearly not a My Hobby entry. But I still think it wouldn't hurt to have it in that category, for inclusiveness. Clearly, some subset of the proles think of it that way, so including it will help them, meanwhile harm nobody else. —[[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 14:56, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Wow. I really misunderstood this joke. I thought he had asked a genie and just assumed it went wrong, when it actually went right. I thought Megan showing up was the result of the genie, and that her hobby was playing miniature pianos (perhaps using some finger extenders, like those things for Halloween that make your hands bigger and further out, but in reverse). And that she was intrigued by Cueball because she likes his hobby. Penis joke goes woosh. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.125|172.70.130.125]] 13:03, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

;The pianis<s>t</s> section
Because ''someone'' doesn't understand the joke, I'll explain it here: "Twelve-inch penis" sounds similar to "twelve-inch pianist", so the genie in the joke and the genie mentioned in the comic misheard it as the other. Try saying it out loud in English. [[User:MrGameZone|0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101]] ([[User talk:MrGameZone|talk page]]) 04:34, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

:There is no mention of a "twelve-inch pianist" at this comic at all! And jokes I can find only misunderstandings on words like bucks/ducks and similar. The penis issue is always only raised at some comments. Furthermore the spelling "penis(t)" for "pianist" would be bad English — does this slang really exist? If so it has to be explained. Second: The link at the explain doesn't explain the penis issue. And finally citing the title text "Good thing he didn't make it smaller, or it'd need someone three inches tall to play it." would mean that a three inches tall Megan would have to "play" with a much smaller penis. Those penis jokes are still annoying, Randall just mentions a piano. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:10, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

::''Twelve. Inch. Piano.''

::The "bucks/ducks" jokes are ''directly'' based off of the "twelve-inch pianist" joke.

::It's a pun. "Pianist" sounds like "penis", and "penis" sounds like "pianist". Seriously, the only difference between the two is the "an".

::The link ''does'' address the "penis/pianist" issue. Read the last line carefully. It says that because of the genie's poor hearing, instead of the wish he wanted, he got a twelve-inch pianist. He wished for a twelve-inch penis and ended up with a twelve-inch pianist.

::And the "three-inch person playing with a three-inch penis" just came from Tryc horribly overthinking it. The title text says that if Cueball made a three-inch piano instead of a twelve-inch one, the genie would've misheard "three-inch pianist" as "three-inch penis", which is less preferable to a twelve-inch one.

::I'm trying my best to not be rude, but the joke is right there and you can't notice it. [[User:MrGameZone|0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101]] ([[User talk:MrGameZone|talk page]]) 21:23, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
:::I still can't see that Randall does mention any "Twelve Inch" issues here. So, if that is the first imagination to some people it has to be EXPLAINED. The link here isn't helpful, Gooogle neither.
:::According to all my findings I would recommend a first section to explain the comic itself and then a second section how "penis-addicted" people would interpret this.
:::And remember the miniature trebuchet from [[1190: Time]]. Also a penis???
:::--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:41, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

::::Ughhhhhhhh it's getting harder and harder to explain this to you
::::Could someone help me out, here? [[User:MrGameZone|0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101]] ([[User talk:MrGameZone|talk page]]) 06:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

:::::I'm trying it simple: If this is a common joke somewhere in the US, maybe Midwest, or East, or wherever it has to be explained by that manner.
:::::The link to [http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/old90/304.html rec.humor.funny] isn't a helpful explain because there is NO penis at this entire page.
:::::I'm only calling for a better explain!
:::::--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:19, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
::::::The cited joke is an obvious pun on penis, without which the joke is dead. The comic is an obvious reversal of the obvious pun. There is ample provided context. If you can't provide concrete evidence/sources to refute the concrete source cited in the explanation, don't keep marking it as incomplete on the grounds that you don't get it. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
:::::::I was calling for a better explain. Done now by me and I still do not claim it's perfect. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:17, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
::::::::So my NON PERFECT edit is removed by admin David. But please understand that the "In the original..." statement implies that the page on "rec.humor.funny" is the original. There is still no explain to the origin of this original penis joke for non native English speakers. Even Goooogle isn't helpful. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:34, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
:::::::::The explanation already provides a source for the joke, an explanation and guides the punchline for the slow. Your version of the explanation introduced six grammatical errors and omits context for the joke that the comic is derived from. Googling "Pianist penis genie joke" returns a pagefull of relevant results, including two Q/A sites where people ask for it to be explained, a Reddit thread where the original joke is discussed in great detail and the xkcd forum page for the comic where people repeatedly refer to the cited joke as the basis of the comic. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
::::::::::Throwing in the towel. I was trying to get a better explain for non native English speakers. I accept this knock out. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:45, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I find it interesting that for at least two of the Penis related comics there has been a very long discussion with Dgbrt before he could accept (or accept his defeat here on these pages) that Randall (as he actually often does) makes these kind of juvenile penis jokes (or your mother etc.) The other one I have seen is [[450: The Sea]] [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 22:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
:I always thought the joke was supposed to be that the asked for a miniature pianist, and Megan's response was sarcasm.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.217.89|108.162.217.89]] 02:18, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

;MY HOBBY

It reads"[[my hobby]] is ..." should it be included in the series? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.148|108.162.218.148]] 01:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
:There is some discussion on this point near the top of the discussion section. It seems to have been agreed that the comic doesn't fit the normal style of the typical 'My Hobby' comics, and therefore wasn't really appropriate to be in that category. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 07:49, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Has anyone looked into what a miniature grand piano might actually sound like? I think that would be quite fascinating.
[[User:Heleatunda|Heleatunda]] ([[User talk:Heleatunda|talk]]) 22:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)