Why the *s

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:04 PM -0800 3/4/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Mar 4, 2009, at 11:45 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>
>>I see many posts on this list with words that are bracketed by
>>asterisks.  I
>>know that an asterisk prior to a word denotes an unattested form,
>>but I
>>don't know what two of them mean.  Is it just a stray mark
>>introduced by
>>cyberspace or the peculiarities of the list software...  Or does it
>>have a particular meaning in linguistics, or possibly to list
>>subscribers?
>
>it's an orthographic convention for indicating emphasis in "plain
>text" postings.  it originated in newsgroups and mailing lists where
>other indications of emphasis (italics, bold face) were unavailable to
>many posters and unreadable by others.
>
and it avoids the perceived rudeness of the alternative convention,
CAPITALIZATION of emphasized items, which tends to be referred to as
shouting.

LH

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