Enhance everyday speech by utilizing additional finger-signed punctuation for sake of clarity and nouveau-hipness. The applications of visual parentheses, slash (solidus) and hyphen are numerous. Invoke air-brackets when changing pronouns or tense within a spoken "quote". Three jabs of the forefinger represent the ellipse, denoting an unfinished statement for the benefit of the listener otherwise left in suspense...
-- The Military, Jul 19 2001

Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation [Real Audio] http://www.kor.dk/borge/puncsyst.ram
Along the same lines, and fully baked (not to mention funny)... [MrWrong, Jul 19 2001]

The gestured quotes are obviously "baked", and the rest - verging on genius.
-- angel, Jul 19 2001


Do you mean sarcasm and humour, or "sarcasm" and "humour"?

What do you do when playing air guitar and the song you're singing (obviously in 3rd person conditional... etc. etc. etc.) requires the use of air quotes?
-- hippo, Jul 19 2001


"Finger-signed" quotation marks really irritate me. I won't fishbone the idea, though, since my irritation is personal and irrational. I did enjoy Borge's verbal punctuation, though, and I also suspect Rods' routine would be funny.
-- beauxeault, Jul 19 2001


If someone doesn't get what I am saying or recognize natural body language, they obviously are not worth the time of talking to. Deafness is the only excuse I would want to communicate with my hands. As far as hip shaking, well that only means one thing to me and it isn't a question.
-- Vavon, Jul 19 2001


My grandmother used to say only one sentence each day - but that sentence lasted all day. She would talk constantly. The first word of the morning was Capitalized, and the last word of the evening was followed by a period. I enjoyed listening to her, and imagined having "pocket punctuation" - little fridge-magnet sized apostrophes, commas, parentheses, brackets, dashes, ellipses, etc., that I could physically manipulate during her day-long utterance, to give it structure (at least in my mind). Would have been nice to throw the period at her once in a while.
-- quarterbaker, Jul 19 2001


What gesture would indicate a passage to be spoken as TPPCPPC? (okay, that's lame 'cause it wouldn't require punctuation but I couldn't think of anything else and I wanted to annotate this)
-- bristolz, Oct 17 2002


I like this idea a lot. Actually, I already do "air parentheses," an awkward little gesture consisting of a cupped hand held up on either side of my face. I love visible spoken punctuation.
-- Hog, Dec 23 2008


I got in trouble doing air asterisks with a lady present.
-- Bootbuckles, Aug 10 2010


Also, how the heck does one do an air smiley-face?
-- Bootbuckles, Aug 10 2010


//Also, how the heck does one do an air smiley-face?// Tip of right index finger at right corner of mouth. Tip of left index finger at left corner of mouth. Lift upward. There's a no- hands version, too, for those too busy texting to do the gesture.
-- mouseposture, Aug 11 2010



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