Programmer Humor

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[–] Colonel_Panic_@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago

Because of "reasons"

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[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Because trashy people never saw Austin Powers and updated their use of quotation marks to denote sarcasm.

Quotation marks were historically used to add emphasis to text, the way asterisks are used today. Old people who refuse to change and don't realize their way of writing is actively making fun of themselves still use them this way. These are also the people who watch Fox.

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[–] sfbing@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Quotation marks we're historically used ...

Meh. I am in my late sixties, and that was never proper usage. These people were merely always illiterate.

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[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 point 1 year ago

It's valid usage if you go waaay back, i.e. centuries. You also see it in some late 19th/early 20th century newsprint and ads.

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[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

"Scare quotes" definitely precede Austin Powers, though that may have spurred a rise in popularity of the usage. (Also, "trashy people never saw Austin Powers" is honestly a pretty weird statement, IMO.)

That said, in this case, arguably the quotes are appropriate, because "the github dictionary" isn't something that happened (i.e. a headline), but a thing they've made up.

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[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Scare quotes are used informally, but it's not proper usage like a "news" channel should be doing. Which, fair enough, it's Fox "News." But it's already larger text and all caps - why is more emphasis necessary?

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[+] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Then it should be THE GITHUB "DICTIONARY."

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[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

No, because the thing they are naming is "The Github Dictionary"; they're not applying scare-quotes to the word "dictionary" implying that what they've written is not really a "dictionary".

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[+] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 point 1 year ago

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