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Though '>' remains the standard inclusion leader, '|' is occasionally used for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses '|>'). One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of '>' for everyone, another (the most common) is '>>>>', '>>>', etc. (or '>>>>', '>>>', etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say '>', ':', "|', '}' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet another style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster. |
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Occasionally one sees a '#' leader used for quotations from authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged super-user). |
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Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser. |
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This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom. |
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It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done so much programming that distinguishes between |
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if (going) |
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if (!going) |
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