Why spoken punctuation sucks.
Mar 18th, 2007 by Nate
Today at starbucks I was posed the question,
“Did you want that without whip cream?”
I responded
“No, whip cream”.
The girl heard “No whip cream” (without the comma)
So I got no whip cream. But I didn’t want not whipped cream, I wanted whip cream.
Obviously when I added that little upswing phoneme at the end of “no”, it means I was negating her statement, not my desire for whip cream.
I think next time I’m asked that question, I’m going to simply respond.
“Want.”
