Talk:2803: Geohydrotypography

100 words per minute seems… fast. 172.69.33.64 04:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, has anyone done the maths on this claim?Thisfox (talk) 09:52, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

The claim is actually "per second"... and given the size of the Atlantic it's actually not thaaat much. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it accurate to say it's a portmaneau of geology, hydrology and typography? Surely the geo- and hydro- could also be considered here to have come from the root words (the same way they have in geology and hydrology) because they're just adding scope to the -ography from typography, or rather specifying that it's typography involving *geo* and *hydro*. 172.70.86.15 06:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

It may see obvious to most, but I'd like to suggest a bit more literal explanation of the mechanics involved. It took me far too many readings, both of the comic and the explanation, to realize that the comic's "expansion of the ocean basin due to plate tectonics" is independent from the characters being "written" on the ocean. The word-wrap effects are just due to the existing rate of expansion due to plate tectonics. I was looking for some kind of typically Randallian closed loop (as in 688: Self-Description). Der57 (talk) 07:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, the number of new words per second is independent of the boundaries of the Ocean. It only depends on the length of the the mid-Atlantic Rift (13 000 km) and the speed at which it separates (40mm/year). So there's 520 000 square meters of new ocean floor per year (roughly) or about 16.5 new square centimeters per second. Let's say 12 points text is about 0.5cm high to be legible. That would be a 33 cm long line of words spawned each second. If one written word is about 3mm long, Randall's calculations would work. Oh, and the font, kernel, and language used all probably have an effect as well, for exemple, languages that make word groupings a single word like German probably have a lower "word per meter" count than other languages. Anyone knows what English's "word per meter count" is? Anyone can check my calculations?

Why geology and hydrology when geography and hydrography are perfectly valid things? If it is a portmanteau, it could clearly be of three different "graphy" words.. 172.71.102.108 09:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

There's a difference between geology and geography. The root "-logy" being of knowledge, "-graphy" that of measurement and recording.

Very roughly, the first I'd consider covers what we know of the underlying plate techtonics/etc, whilst the latter is how people understand/use the surface (not necessarily the land); I think geology applies to the comic more than geography (certainly far from many of its more prominant subfields, such as political geography). Yes, there's overlaps (where physical geography derives from/demonstrates various direct aspect of surface geology), but I think I'd say geology is the prime driver here.

Hydrology vs hydrography, I'd skew the other way as far as relevence to the comic. It's the measure of the extent of the ocean rather than the understood movements of water (which, significantly to the layperson, includes aquifers and rivers and other land-observed watery analyses even more irrelevent to the hypothetical than that of the actual ocean currents which presumably Randall has no problem 'writing' over).

..if only I could think of a reason to choose "typology" over "typography", then I could really go for a more awkward interpretation of what the composite word construction should be rooted in. ;) 141.101.98.119 11:12, 18 July 2023 (UTC)