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The proper pronunciation for angle-bracket characters

The following poem appeared in INFOCUS magazine. The original authors were Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminary of Grand Rapids, MI.

A poll conducted among INFOCUS readers had established "waka" as the proper pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters <> and, though some readers held out resolutely for "norkies."
The text of the poem follows:

< > ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ #4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

5 comments on “The proper pronunciation for angle-bracket characters”

  1. It's completely geeky!

    Geeky stuff that had turned into silly stuff once I was abble to read it out loud from the punctuation version.

    But it didn't sounded like Bjork at all! LOL

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