r7ly5 (pronounced EarthLing) formatting
.here's a quick overview of r7ly5 formatting
.i've been studying the relationships between language and
thinking/problem-solving/intelligence/creativity/
"spirituality"/etc. for many years
.you could say i'm obsessed with the subject
.you can see a list of books that have been important in
my development here
.that may explain something... i'm not sure
.anyway, one of my projects is developing r7ly5
(pronounced Earthling), a debugged subset of wild
english designed for clear thinking and accurate
communication...
english minus the 5 stupidites
.this page uses r7ly5 formatting
.the objective is to make the structure of thought as
visually obvious as possible
.thus, every sentence begins on a new line
.reverse indention helps identify the beginnings
of utterances
.i don't use CAPS unless i see a good reason for it
.punctuation precedes the utterance... no need to wait
until the end to know what kind of thought we're
dealing with
.there are three types of puncuation so far...
. assertion -- .i write in r7ly5
? question -- ?what did you do last night
(requires a verbal response)
* direction -- *read "Science And Sanity"
.i'm considering others but haven't settled on
anything yet
.r7ly5 actually uses different symbols but when
restricted to ascii, i've settled on the above
characters
.r7ly5 is a work in progress
.when looking at a long paragraph in old-style formatting,
it's not obvious to the eye whether it is composed
of a few long and complicated sentences or many
short simple ones
.starting every utterance on a new line makes it
immediately obvious
.i've been writing in my lab book/journal this way for
years and find it helpful in organizing complex ideas
.i offer it as a sign of respect to do what i can to
make the structure of my thinking as transparent
as possible
.if you have any ideas on improving r7ly5, i'll be
happy to hear from you
.if you want to debate its merits sincerely, i welcome it
thanks