DOOLITTLE’S FACEBOOK MARKDOWN LANGUAGE Use the HIGHLIGHT flag for THOUGHT pieces

DOOLITTLE’S FACEBOOK MARKDOWN LANGUAGE

Use the HIGHLIGHT flag for THOUGHT pieces, and for silly stuff – don’t.

USE ALL CAPS FOR TITLES

(lower case parenthesis for tags)

_Underscore For Book Titles_

“Quotes For Article Titles”

RE:”…for quoting comments…”

—For block quotes—

**for emphasis of an idea in a sentence**

And INLINE ALL CAPS for key TERMS that can be visually scanned.

And use … when you’ve cut from a quote,

And [when you] have replaced words in a quote for clarity.

STYLE

My preference is for Oxford commas because my long sentences require clarity, so “a, b, and c” is preferable to a, b and c.

There is a big difference between comma , semicolon ; and period.

Your vocabulary should suit your audience. But that requires a lot of verbose, and imprecise language that is very easy to misinterpret.

NOTE TO SELF: OPEN PERSONAL ISSUES IN WRITING

(I am generally trying to convey a different causal sequence or emphasis on causal properties than we do in normal language. It is this articulation of causal dimensions that people find illuminating in my work. But it makes for very long sentences. I’ve found that over time, just through repetition I can usually simplify it down. And then when I use that chain of causes, repeatedly, people begin to grasp it fairly easily, with the same repetition. Hayek is very, very good at this problem and I struggle to emulate him whenever possible. There is a certain verbal tempo to his work, and that tempo facilitates articulating multiple causal axis while retaining comprehensibility. My short term memory is not as good as his was, and I do not necessarily think in words in the first place, so it is harder for me to construct sentences as well, but I work at it. )

(My vocabulary, despite all my work at it, still scores as largely academic. But honestly I can’t take it down any further. I have to work on sentence structure and the organization of concepts instead. And that seems to be working if I just keep at it.)

(Unfortunately, again, my programming history is a little closer to how I think, and reinforced my thinking, and was terribly damaging to my writing, which is a blend of spoken word and programmatic argument. So I tend to use periods, not as verbal cues, but as “end-concept” markers. And I should use more semicolons, and more periods, and shorter sentences. And I’m having a problem breaking those tendencies. Partly because I type at something like 100wpm, and don’t think about it. )