Heh. So: Harry , or Rational (Harry), or (Rational) Harry (for C-style casting)? That would be amusing to see. It does seem slightly less readable, though.
Seemed eminently more readable than rationalist!Harry to me when I first encountered this notation, although now it’s sunk in enough that my brain actually generated “that’s more keystrokes!” as a reason not to switch style.
Just curious (and not necessarily addressed to you specifically), but what on Earth is wrong with the standard, conventional English notation for this, which is a hyphen? E.g. “Rational-Harry” etc.
I’m not a linguist, but hyphen-compounding doesn’t look quite right to me in this context; you usually see that for disambiguation, in compound participles (“moth-eaten”; “hyphen-compounding”), or to cover a few odd cases like common names derived from phrases (“jack-in-the-pulpit”). I think standard English would be to simply treat the modifier as an adjective (“Rational Harry”; “Girl Blaise”; “Death Eater Ron”); nouns often get coerced into their adjective form here if possible, but it’s common to see modifying nouns even if no adjective form exists.
As to why it doesn’t get used this way in fan jargon… who knows, but fans do tend to share a (mildly irritating) fondness for unusual lexical and grammatical constructions (“I have lost my ability to can”). Probably just a shibboleth thing.
I was looking for an explanation of why the exclamation point was used in preference to the already-existing hyphen notation. Instead, that page only contains an explanation of the meaning and the origin of the exclamation-point notation, and does not compare it to the hyphen notation at all.
I don’t think it’s listed explicitly at either of the links, but the principle I’m using is that of hyphenating when you want to make clear that a compound is a compound, and not (e.g.) an adjective happening contingently to modify a noun.
This used to be done a lot more often, e.g. “magnifying-glass”. I generally dislike the trend of eliminating such hyphens.
But in any case my question is the same even if you prefer “Rational Harry” to “Rational-Harry”; why “Rational!Harry” instead of one of the former?
Rational!Harry describes a character similar to the base except persistently Rational, for whatever reason. Rational-Harry describes a Harry which is rational, but it’s nonstandard usage and might confuse a few people (Is his name “Rational-Harry”? Do I have to call him that in-universe to differentiate him from Empirical-Harry and Oblate-Spheroiod-Harry?). Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Anyway, adj!noun is a compound with a well-defined purpose within a fandom: to describe how a character differs from canon. It’s an understood notation, and the convention, so everyone uses it to prevent misunderstandings. Outside of fandom things, using it signals casualness and fandom-savviness to those in fandom culture, and those who aren’t familiar with fandom culture can understand it and don’t notice the in-joke.
Yes. I used it in an earlier version of this post reflexively, without even thinking about the connection to fanfics. My thinking was just ‘this is clearer than subscript notation, and is a useful and commonplace LW shibboleth’.
Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Yes, that’s why I favor the hyphen (in response to shminux above).
I agree that using ! is non-standard outside the fandom cultures. It looked weird to me when I first saw it. Sometimes I am still not sure what goes first, the canon character or the derivative qualifier, especially for crossovers (is it SailorMoon!Harry or Harry!SailorMoon, to take a particularly silly example). However, a special delimiter is needed as a shorthand for “a derivative work based on with elements of ”, and space or a dash is not unambiguous enough. The “bang notation” appears to be one of those memetic leaks from subcultures to the mainstream which is likely to survive for some time.
I don’t think it’s listed explicitly at either of the links, but the principle I’m using is that of hyphenating when you want to make clear that a compound is a compound, and not (e.g.) an adjective happening contingently to modify a noun.
Except Adj-Noun compounds are not actually productive in English. (Also, magnifying glass is arguably from “magnifying” the gerund, not the participle.)
Heh. So: Harry , or Rational (Harry), or (Rational) Harry (for C-style casting)? That would be amusing to see. It does seem slightly less readable, though.
Seemed eminently more readable than rationalist!Harry to me when I first encountered this notation, although now it’s sunk in enough that my brain actually generated “that’s more keystrokes!” as a reason not to switch style.
Just curious (and not necessarily addressed to you specifically), but what on Earth is wrong with the standard, conventional English notation for this, which is a hyphen? E.g. “Rational-Harry” etc.
I’m not a linguist, but hyphen-compounding doesn’t look quite right to me in this context; you usually see that for disambiguation, in compound participles (“moth-eaten”; “hyphen-compounding”), or to cover a few odd cases like common names derived from phrases (“jack-in-the-pulpit”). I think standard English would be to simply treat the modifier as an adjective (“Rational Harry”; “Girl Blaise”; “Death Eater Ron”); nouns often get coerced into their adjective form here if possible, but it’s common to see modifying nouns even if no adjective form exists.
As to why it doesn’t get used this way in fan jargon… who knows, but fans do tend to share a (mildly irritating) fondness for unusual lexical and grammatical constructions (“I have lost my ability to can”). Probably just a shibboleth thing.
Explained here:
http://fanlore.org/wiki/!
I was looking for an explanation of why the exclamation point was used in preference to the already-existing hyphen notation. Instead, that page only contains an explanation of the meaning and the origin of the exclamation-point notation, and does not compare it to the hyphen notation at all.
Which rules or principles are you applying here?
I don’t think it’s listed explicitly at either of the links, but the principle I’m using is that of hyphenating when you want to make clear that a compound is a compound, and not (e.g.) an adjective happening contingently to modify a noun.
This used to be done a lot more often, e.g. “magnifying-glass”. I generally dislike the trend of eliminating such hyphens.
But in any case my question is the same even if you prefer “Rational Harry” to “Rational-Harry”; why “Rational!Harry” instead of one of the former?
Rational!Harry describes a character similar to the base except persistently Rational, for whatever reason. Rational-Harry describes a Harry which is rational, but it’s nonstandard usage and might confuse a few people (Is his name “Rational-Harry”? Do I have to call him that in-universe to differentiate him from Empirical-Harry and Oblate-Spheroiod-Harry?). Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Anyway, adj!noun is a compound with a well-defined purpose within a fandom: to describe how a character differs from canon. It’s an understood notation, and the convention, so everyone uses it to prevent misunderstandings. Outside of fandom things, using it signals casualness and fandom-savviness to those in fandom culture, and those who aren’t familiar with fandom culture can understand it and don’t notice the in-joke.
I always figured it was like the scope resolution operator (“::”) in C++, but in some weird functional language that AI people liked.
Yes. I used it in an earlier version of this post reflexively, without even thinking about the connection to fanfics. My thinking was just ‘this is clearer than subscript notation, and is a useful and commonplace LW shibboleth’.
Yes, that’s why I favor the hyphen (in response to shminux above).
I agree that using ! is non-standard outside the fandom cultures. It looked weird to me when I first saw it. Sometimes I am still not sure what goes first, the canon character or the derivative qualifier, especially for crossovers (is it SailorMoon!Harry or Harry!SailorMoon, to take a particularly silly example). However, a special delimiter is needed as a shorthand for “a derivative work based on with elements of ”, and space or a dash is not unambiguous enough. The “bang notation” appears to be one of those memetic leaks from subcultures to the mainstream which is likely to survive for some time.
Except Adj-Noun compounds are not actually productive in English. (Also, magnifying glass is arguably from “magnifying” the gerund, not the participle.)