this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
220 points (92.6% liked)

tumblr

3309 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.

  4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.

  5. No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.


Sister Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
all 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Bold is for increasing volume, italics is for stressing the word.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Bold is strength italics is dexterity

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

AND THEN WHAT IS THIS FOR?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Like bold, but even louder.

BOLD CAPS are even louder, throw in BOLD ITALIC CAPS for incredulous outrage.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Stresses out loudly

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

And it's definitely not just an internet thing

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)
  • it’s so shaped
  • one of the most animals

If I had to pick a name for this kind of slang/phrasing, I think it would be something like “superlative trunc”, as in a truncated superlative (biggest, smallest, oldest, richest, tastiest, etc).

I have a friend who suddenly realized they had a habit of blowing on very cold bites of food (like ice cream) as though it was something too hot to eat. They rationalized this as needing to do it for any food that was “too temperature.”

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I like that, superlative trunc, like you simply cant

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Some keyboards actually have That Symbol™

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

on linux you can set a compose key (i use right ctrl) and do "Compose+T+M" to get It™

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Ah, neat, I'll have to check that out! I run Debian, but I don't find myself in need of special characters too often.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Number 3 but as a complete sentence. Like; "What."

Sometimes the question is a statement on its own.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Italic is emphasis, either neutral or annoyed depending on context. Bold emphasis imo is much angrier. The difference between "Maybe you overlooked what I was saying," and "Maybe you didn't quite hear me."

In my experience it is righteous fury emphasis, which is why I see it almost never. Nobody gets angry enough to bring out the bold, they just block first.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Bold also necessary when you really really really want to make a point. I often do this in work emails where if a step is skipped it's going to massively break something.

Do X
Then do Y
Do NOT click save
Click Apply
Only NOW click Save
I swear to God Susan if you mess this up again.

Thanks,
IT support

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think Tumblr's particular grammatical quirks are fascinating. I'm pretty sure it's a result of people replying to posts in the tags, which have some limitations (obviously no commas, exclamation points change the order of tags, no quotes, certain themes changing capitalization, etc). Over time, it's just become the way people talk on there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm not a native speaker and have a few questions about the first point:

  • What is "internet language" about the phrase "that's certainly a thing"? Isn't that just a normal sentence?
  • What the hell do the other two phrases mean?
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There's no mechanical/grammar reason but the first one is used sarcastically. When someone thinks something is a big deal/great/awesome and you say back "well that's certainly a thing" it's implying that the only thing you agree on is that that thing exists, not that it's great.

The other two are nonsense and some people just find that funny.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you for the explanation!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

"That's certainly a thing" refers to phrases such as "You definitely said words." It expresses that one wants to acknowledge that something happened which demands commentary, but the commentary is self-evident, and thus sarcastically skipped.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I've read it like five times and I still don't understand the first one. What are they saying/asking

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

You see someone post a drawing, and it's really not good.

"That's certainly one of the drawings of all time"

The expectation for the phrase would be "that's one of the best drawings of all time" or "one of the worse drawings of all time" but removing the adjective to break the sentence creates this ironic feeling of stating something is underwhelming without directly saying so.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

I've read a lot of comments in my life and this is one of them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That they like semi broken sentences. Ones that make sense, or are super vague, but are incorrectly structured.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

This is one of the comments of all time

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They have replacement words in there.

That's certainly a thing

I.e. "That's certainly a car" or "That's certainly a shirt"

That's so shaped

I.e. "That's so squared" or "That's so rounded" (I'm not certain of this one"

One of the best animals

I.e. "He's one of the best doggos"

That's my best guess but not sure

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Unless they literally meant "that is so shaped", I could also imagine replacing the "so", like, " is friend shaped"

Though thinking about it, I haven't seen anything other than "friend shaped" so that's probably not it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Adding apostrophe's where they don't belong? I know that's kind of a typo/unintentional thing, but I only recently started noting it as widespread.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

oooh. ooh. im the no punctuation thing. or at least no capitals anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

At Least You're Not One Of Those People That Capitalize Every First Letter Of Every Word, As If Everything They Said Was A Title. Some How Your Way Is Easier To Read Than This.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Plus, It's Exhausting To Type Like This. It's Literally Killing Me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

!!! + ! ! !