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I've often had situations where I'm unsure of the correct word to be used, either when writing or proofreading. How can this sense be indicated in writing? Someone mentioned adding a question mark just before it to indicate that the writer is unsure of that particular word. For example:
These were not simply sewage treatment workers, but an elite ?cadre of sewage treatment workers
Here the word in question is cadre, and we're trying to indicate that the writer is aware that's not the perfect word to use in the situation.
Is this a generally accepted way of indicating such a thing? I haven't seen it often enough to make me think so, but it feels better than placing the question mark after the word, which might make it read like a question instead.
(4)More posts by @Turnbaugh521
4 Comments
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1) If the ? is for yourself, then use two in row, which would never show up in regular text. That way you can search for them before submitting.
2) If the ? is for the reader, then I'd say never ever do that. It's the writer's job to find the right word or phrase! You don't put a placeholder there with "punctuation" to indicate that it's not right. Yuck!!
Now, having said that, there CAN be situations where the right word to describe something is not what the people in the story would use to describe themselves. (For example, terrorists describing themselves as "freedom fighters," or sewer workers describing themselves as an "elite cadre.") In those situations, you can either let your readers discover the irony themselves, or you can point it out. Example:
These were not simply sewage treatment workers. No, they were an
elite cadre -- or so they told themselves, as they slogged through human waste a foot deep.
Similar to Dale, I'd use square brackets and color the word magenta. The magenta is a crossover from my design job, where anything in magenta is placeholder text. Magenta in a writing context would immediately signal to me "This item needs to be changed or replaced in some fashion."
When I'm writing, I simply mark the word for later review. How I mark it depends on my writing tool: highlight by changing the background or foreground color, insert a note or comment, wrap in [square brackets], some other way.
There isn't a standard syntax for this. I've had the same experience in my own writing, and have even seen a need for formal ambiguity in written text, such as a sci-fi "translation" from an alien language.
The practice I use is parenthesis around the questionable content, which allows for a phrase to be inserted instead of just a single word.
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