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Complex Numbers #1084770 added March 4, 2025 at 9:50am
Restrictions: None
Stress Marks
First, an Exclaimer! ▼EXCLAIMER
(explanation/disclaimer)
The theme for this round of Journalistic Intentions is "Banned Instagram hashtags! All of these will get posts shadow banned on Instagram." So there are a few things my readers should know:
#1- I do not have, have never had, will never have, an Instagram account.
#2- Consequently, I have no idea what a shadow ban is or what it entails, only that it has something to do with suppression of posts with the indicated tag.
#3- I do not acknowledge the pronunciation of the octothorpe (#) as "hashtag." That symbol is either "number" or "pound," and that's more than enough definitions for one character. Anytime I see the # with letters following, I pronounce it pound, which made #MeToo way more hilarious than it should have been.
However, I hold the belief that I can write about absolutely anything, regardless of prior knowledge. This contest round tests that conceit. All entries, including this one, were selected at random from the list of 16 prompts provided.
#stressed
There is a myriad of ways to denote stress in online writing. One can bold the desired portion of text, or use italics—though the latter runs the risk of being confused with certain styles of quotation, such as the one I use in this blog.
Another option is to underline the stressed text. Classically, an underline denotes a book title, but I think that style has fallen out of favor. Besides, if you do use it for that, the words generally follow an established capitalization pattern; this and other context clues should be sufficient to distinguish text underlined for stress from text underlined for a book title.
There are also numerous colors that can be used to make words and/or phrases stand out. And let's not forget the potential of increasing a word or phrase's size, though it must be remembered that this can cause problems with formatting and flow.
Don't overlook the impact (pun intended) of font type, either: a word in Impact will definitely stand out amidst the standard font here; Times can give your stressed bits an old-time serif look; and Comic, while sneered at by font snobs, has its uses, especially as the long-sought sarcasm font.
Let's not forget the trick of making certain portions of text *stand out* using only ~keyboard~ strokes, or even  emoticons/emoji. Just remember, though: the use of quotes like 'single' or "double" quotation marks should be reserved for dialogue or quoted text, and never for emphasis or stress.
Nor should Capital Letters be used for stress. I use them sometimes to indicate Important Ideas, but I'm probably wrong to do so; it's a kind of stylistic signature for me. Also, the technique of typing in ALL CAPS is frowned upon except in rare circumstances, and definitely not to be used exclusively because then it makes you look like you're writing your manifesto.
To *really* make your desired text stand out, you can use almost any combination of these techniques. The possibilities are... well, not limitless, but numerous, and a better mathematician than I am could probably enumerate them more precisely. But as I said up there at the beginning, "there is a myriad of ways to denote stress;" the word 'myriad' comes from a Greek word meaning ten thousand, and ten thousand is a pretty large number, more combinations than you probably truly need. It's a good number, so we'll go with that for now.
The stress on 'myriad,' incidentally, falls on the first syllable. |
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