mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix
Everyone knows the asterisk, the pound sign and the “at” symbol, but what about their lesser-known cousins? See how well you fare when you try to match up the obscure and semi-obscure punctuation marks with their names.
I got 80%. I confused the Guillemets and the Because sign.
posted by gmsc on 4-22-2008 at 10:47 am
70% for me - I think I’ll make it today’s mini-mission to slip an irony mark into some of my documents. It’s not like I have any shortage of ironies to mark, after all. It would actually make a good bullet point in most inter-departmental memos.
posted by Roger on 4-22-2008 at 10:56 am
80% - I got the section and scheffer stroke confused, I thought the double S might be a good use of context clues… alas.
posted by Adrienne on 4-22-2008 at 11:07 am
5/10
I couldn’t have done worse unless I was MC Hammer on crack.
BTW, I do believe the Pilcrow can also be called an alinea.
posted by anonymous on 4-22-2008 at 11:09 am
5/10
I couldn’t have done worse unless I was MC Hammer on crack.
BTW, I do believe the Pilcrow can also be called an alinea.
posted by Florida on 4-22-2008 at 11:14 am
40%
What is lower than MC Hammer on crack? Me, apparently.
I tried to find the irony mark and the interrobang (best name ever) in Word symbols to no avail. Too bad, they would have been a lot of fun. (Perhaps too tempting though–I’m a technical writer.)
posted by kate on 4-22-2008 at 11:52 am
I’ve never seen the dagger used in chess notation. The plus sign (+) is typically what’s used. Great quiz nonetheless.
posted by Greg on 4-22-2008 at 12:17 pm
10%
Apparently I am MC Hammer on crack…
posted by Pearl on 4-22-2008 at 12:17 pm
@ Kate:
See if you can copy-and-paste these:
؟
‽
Not sure if those will come across or not…
posted by Roger on 4-22-2008 at 12:38 pm
I knew the useage of most of them, but had no idea of the names.
Pfft. 4 out of 10
posted by Karen on 4-22-2008 at 12:41 pm
Wow — I got an 8 out of 10 — which I can only attribute to a prophecy… cuz I suck at punctuation ;-)
posted by ProphetJoe on 4-22-2008 at 1:15 pm
I can’t believe it. I finally scored 100% on a quiz that stumped other people!
Yeah, I got 100% on the “Match the Saturday Night Live Voice with the Cast Member” one, but then so did everyone else! Same with that other one … no, not that one, the other one.
Too bad all my English teachers are deceased now. They’d be so proud.
posted by Marty on 4-22-2008 at 1:24 pm
Chevrons were also a Native American symbol!
posted by Katie D. on 4-22-2008 at 1:26 pm
The only two I didn’t guess at I got right.
posted by Sue on 4-22-2008 at 1:28 pm
I got 100% as well, Marty.
And when are irony symbols ever used for anything? I mean, outside the context of this one quiz, I’ve never seen one in my life.
posted by Delia on 4-22-2008 at 3:32 pm
Pilcrow… thanks for the new bit of useless trivia. :) I use these every day, but everybody I know just calls them paragraph marks.
(Incidentally, because of that little slip, I got an 80.)
posted by MH on 4-22-2008 at 4:22 pm
@ Roger
They did work! Many thanks! :)
posted by kate on 4-22-2008 at 4:56 pm
wow, i really sucked at this one.
3/10
posted by the creature on 4-22-2008 at 5:39 pm
Oooh, an 80! Got the guillemets and the chevron reversed. I vote for the inclusion of the interrobang - it’s obvious we need it, isn’t it‽
posted by Aemi on 4-22-2008 at 7:33 pm
30%
I got the dagger and the carat on my own, and I knew of the interrobang from the mental_floss book What’s the Difference?
posted by S on 4-22-2008 at 8:51 pm
I thought I had done better than 50%, but that’s above the average, so yay, I guess.
posted by Eileen on 4-22-2008 at 8:59 pm
Yay! I knew my French education/bilingualism would come in handy during some quiz! ‘Guillemets’ is how you say ‘quotation marks’ in French. Granted I got most of the rest of them wrong, but I was guessing.
posted by greenstrawberries on 4-22-2008 at 11:20 pm
80%
I confused the chevron and the caret.
posted by Pol x on 4-23-2008 at 7:25 am