Hacker Writing Style

Hacker Writing Style
======================

We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
grammatical rules.  This is one aspect of a more general fondness for
form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in
hackish writing.  One correspondent reports that he consistently
misspells `wrong' as `worng'.  Others have been known to criticize
glitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas
Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad
speling", or "Incorrectspa cing."  Similarly, intentional spoonerisms
are often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are
confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most
common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm
cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today").  This sort of
thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned.

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses,
much to the dismay of American editors.  Thus, if "Jim is going" is a
phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers
generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock
groks".  This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which
would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the
string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to
mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them.
Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of
programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading.
When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra
characters can be a real pain in the neck.

Consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like
this:

     Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".

Standard usage would make this

     Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."

but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to
type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in `vi(1)' dot
repeats the last command accepted.  The net result would be to delete
*two* lines! 

The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.

Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great
Britain, though the older style (which became established for
typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and
quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there.  "Hart's Rules" and
the "Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors" call the hacker-like
style `new' or `logical' quoting.

Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare'
quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single
quotes for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actual
reports of speech or text included from elsewhere.  Interestingly,
some authorities describe this as correct general usage, but
mainstream American English has gone to using double-quotes
indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in
fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked with
Usenet -- ESR].  One further permutation that is definitely
*not* standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by
using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'.
This is modelled on string and character literal syntax in some
programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-only
terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical
single quote).

One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of UNIX
hackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally
all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C
routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the
beginning of sentences.  It is clear that, for many hackers, the case
of such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation
(the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an
appropriate reflex because UNIX and C both distinguish cases and
confusing them can lead to {lossage}).  A way of escaping this dilemma
is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of
sentences.

There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to
the effect that precision of expression is more important than
conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or
lose information they can be discarded without a second thought.  It
is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example,
in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even
when constructed to appear slangy and loose.  In fact, to a hacker,
the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a
substantial part of its humor!

Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis
conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and
these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when
normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.

One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and
this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who
goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting,
please, you're hurting my ears!".

Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to
signify emphasis.  The asterisk is most common, as in "What the
*hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the
asterisk suffix as a footnote mark.  The underscore is also common,
suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles;
for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote
_The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel of
the future military, _Starship_Troopers_.").  Other forms exemplified
by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed
that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to
the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling
over).  Finally, words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a
series of carets (^) under them on the next line of the text.

There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which
emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which
suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a
very young child or a mentally impaired person).  Bracketing a word
with the `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes
readers to consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is
being made.  Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*,
*mumble*.

Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a
term; this derives from conventions used in {BNF}.  Uses like the
following are common:

     So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day...

There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text

     Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,
     he's visiting from corporate HQ.

reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...".  This comes
from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print
representation for a backspace.  It parallels (and may have been
influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction
fanzines.

A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to
previous text.  This custom is fading as more mailers get good editing
capabilities, but one occasionally still sees things like this:

     I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often. 
     Send it to Erik for the File.  Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.

The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding".  This
syntax is borrowed from the UNIX editing tools `ed' and `sed', but is
widely recognized by non-UNIX hackers as well.

In a formula, `*' signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row
are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN).  Thus,
one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.

Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2^8 = 256'.  This
goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII
`up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny
and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the
`bc(1)' and `dc(1)' UNIX tools, which have probably done most to
reinforce the convention on Usenet.  The notation is mildly confusing
to C programmers, because `^' means bitwise exclusive-or in C.
Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of
Usenet.  It is used consistently in this lexicon.

In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper
fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed
fractions (`3-1/2').  The major motive here is probably that the
former are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire
to avoid the risk that the latter might be read as `three minus
one-half'.  The decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions
with a terminating decimal representation; there may be some cultural
influence here from the high status of scientific notation.

Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very
small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN).  This
is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for
example, one year is about 3e7 seconds long.

The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of
`approximately'; that is, `~50' means `about fifty'.

On Usenet and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
relational operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=',
`>', `<', `>=', and `=<' are often combined with English.  The Pascal
not-equals, `<>', is also recognized, and occasionally one sees `/='
for not-equals (from Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90).  The use of
prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly
common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'.

A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages
to express ideas in a natural-language text.  For example, one might
see the following:

     In <jrh578689@thudpucker.com> J. R. Hacker wrote:
     >I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
     >Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator.  The price was
     >right, and the racing stripe on the case looked
     >kind of neat, but its performance left something
     >to be desired.

     Yeah, I tried one out too.

     #ifdef FLAME
     Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
     decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
     net volumes?
     #endif /* FLAME */

     I guess they figured the price premium for true
     frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
     Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
     I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
     you're on a *very* tight budget.

     #include <disclaimer.h>
     --
                      == Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)

In the above, the `#ifdef'/`#endif' pair is a conditional compilation
syntax from C; here, it implies that the text between (which is a
{flame}) should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined
on) the switch FLAME.  The `#include' at the end is C for "include
standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' is understood to
read, roughly, "These are my personal opinions and not to be construed
as the official position of my employer."

The top section in the example, with > at the left margin, is an
example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.

Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
usage.  In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit
sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string
that names that number in English.  So, hackers prefer to write
`1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter looks
like a possessive).

It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to
use multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English.  Part of
this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply
nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has
also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing
with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting
effect on people.  Deprived of the body-language cues through which
emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about
other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link.  This has
both good and bad effects.  A good one is that it encourages honesty
and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad
one is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous
rudeness.  Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often
display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has
passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example,
the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).

Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would
face to face.

Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and
clarity of expression.  It may well be that future historians of
literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal
letters as art.