slash

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:06 PM +0000 8/30/10, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>Follow-up:
>
>Now several of my students (in different classes) are testifying to
>acquaintance with individuals named "L--a."  Is "L--a" the new
>"Caitlin"?
>
>--Charlie

More exotic, and more elegant in its simplicity, would be ":" for a boy.
(While the name often rhymes with "pollen", it's perhaps equally
often pronounced to rhyme with "bowlin'" and "stolen", especially in
the U.S.  Colin Powell pronounces it that way, if memory serves,
although as a traditionalist he employs the more conventional
spelling.)

LH

>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
>Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 8:07 AM
>
>Not the same topic, really, but this is still about vocalized (or
>"oralized") punctuation marks:
>
>One of my students insists that she attended high school with a girl
>who spelled her name L--a and pronounced it "la dash ah" (the "dash"
>should appear as a solid line, probably).
>
>I shared the information about L--a with a friend who teaches in
>elementary school, and she reported a similarly named student in her
>school:  K--a.
>
>Of course, there are other vocalized and verbalized  punctuation
>marks (not counting Victor Borge's comedy routines), like "dot dot
>dot," and the clause-final exclamation "period!" and "quote" slash
>"unquote."
>
>--Charlie
>
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