title: Songhai Empire

text: The upper classes in society converted to Islam while lower classes often continued to follow traditional religions. Sermons emphasized obedience to the king. Timbuktu was the educational capital. Sonni Ali established a system of government under the royal court, later to be expanded by Askia Muhammad, which appointed governors and mayors to preside over local tributary states, situated around the Niger Valley. Local chiefs were still granted authority over their respective domains as long as they did not undermine Songhai policy. Departmental positions existed in the central government. The "hi koy" was the commander of the fleet who performed roles likened to a minister of home affairs. "Fari Mondzo" was the minister of agriculture who administered over the state's agricultural estates. The "Kalisa farma" has been described by historians such as Ki-Zerbo to be the finance minister who supervised the empire's treasury. The "Korey Farma" was also the "minister in charge of White foreigners."


title: Songhai Empire

text: The tax was imposed on peripheral chiefdoms and provinces to ensure the dominance of Songhai, and in return, these provinces were given almost complete autonomy. Songhai rulers only intervened in the affairs of these neighboring states when a situation became volatile, usually an isolated incident. Each town was represented by government officials, holding positions and responsibilities similar to today's central bureaucrats.


title: Songhai Empire

text: Under Askia Muhammad, the Empire saw increased centralization. He encouraged learning in Timbuktu by rewarding its professors with larger pensions as an incentive. He also established an order of precedence and protocol and was noted as a noble man who gave back generously to the poor. Under his policies, Muhammad brought much stability to Songhai and great attestations of this noted organization are still preserved in the works of Maghrebin writers such as Leo Africanus, among others.


title: Songhai Empire

text: The Sonni dynasty practiced Islam while maintaining many aspects of the original Songhai traditions unlike their successors, the Askiyas. Askia Mohammed I oversaw a complete Islamic revival and made a pilgrimage to Mecca.


title: Songhai Empire

text: According to Potholm, the Songhai army was dominated by heavy cavalry of "mounted knights outfitted in chain mail and helmets" similar to medieval European armies. The Infantry included a force made up of mostly freemen and captives. Swords, arrows and copper or leather shields formed part of the arsenal utilized by the Songhai infantry. At the Battle of Tondibi for example, the Songhai army consisted of 30,000 infantry and a 10,000 cavalry force.


title: Songhai Empire

text: Following the death of Emperor Askia Daoud in 1583, a war of succession weakened the Songhai Empire and split it into two feuding fractions, leading Sultan Ahmad I al-Mansur of the Saadi dynasty of Morocco in 1591 to dispatch an invasion force under the eunuch Judar Pasha. (Years earlier, armies from Portugal had attacked Morocco, and failed miserably, but the Moroccan coffers were on the verge of economic depletion and bankruptcy, as they needed to pay for the defenses used to hold off the siege).


title: Songhai Empire

text: Judar Pasha was a Spaniard by birth, but had been captured as an infant and educated at the Saadi court. After a march across the Sahara desert, Judar's forces captured, plundered, and razed the salt mines at Taghaza and moved on to Gao. When Emperor Askia Ishaq II (r. 1588–1591) met Judar at the 1591 Battle of Tondibi, Songhai forces, despite vastly superior numbers, were routed by a cattle stampede triggered by the Saadi's gunpowder weapons.


title: Songhai Empire

text: Judar proceeded to sack Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, destroying the Songhai as a regional power. Governing so vast an empire proved too much for the Saadi dynasty, however, and they soon relinquished control of the region, letting it splinter into dozens of smaller kingdoms.


title: Mass murder

text: Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more people during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the homicides. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others.


title: Mass murder

text: A mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations whereas a spree killing is committed by one or two individuals. Mass murderers differ from spree killers, who kill at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders and are not defined by the number of victims, and serial killers, who may kill people over long periods of time. The incidents of mass shootings are continuing to increase.


title: Mass murder

text: Many terrorist groups in recent times have used the tactic of killing many victims to fulfill their political aims. Such incidents have included:


title: Mass murder

text: Certain cults, especially religious cults, have committed a number of mass killings and mass murder–suicides.


title: Mass murder

text: Mass murderers may be categorized in different categories, including killers of family, of coworkers, of students, and of random strangers. Their motives vary. One motivation for mass murder is revenge, but other motivations are possible, including the need for attention or fame.


title: Mass murder

text: Acting on the orders of Joseph Stalin, Vasili Blokhin's war crime killing of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war, shot over 28 days, was one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record.


title: Mass murder

text: Analysis of the Columbine High School massacre and other incidents where law enforcement officers waited for backup has resulted in changed recommendations regarding what victims, bystanders, and law enforcement officers should do. In the Columbine shooting, the perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were able to murder 13 people, then commit suicide before the first SWAT team even entered the school. Average response time by law enforcement to a mass shooting is typically much longer than the time the shooter is engaged in killing. While immediate action may be extremely dangerous, it could save lives which would be lost if victims and bystanders involved in the situation remain passive, or law enforcement response is delayed until overwhelming force can be deployed. It is recommended that victims and bystanders involved in the incident take active steps to flee, hide, or fight the shooter and that law enforcement officers present or first arriving at the scene attempt immediately to engage the shooter. In many instances, immediate action by victims, bystanders, or law enforcement officers has saved lives. However, law enforcement programs and actions have so far been unable to reduce the total number of incidents. In 2020, a record number of 600 mass shootings occurred.


title: Mass murder

text: Commentators have pointed out that there are a wide variety of ways that homicides with more than several victims might be classified. Such incidents can be, and have been even in recent decades, classified many different ways including "as a "mass shooting"; as a "school shooting"; as "mass murder"; as "workplace violence"...; as "a crime involving an assault rifle"; as "a case of a mentally ill person committing acts of violence"; and so on."


title: Mass murder

text: How such rarely occurring incidents of homicide are classified tends to change significantly with time. "In the 1960s and 1970s... it was understood that the key feature of [a number of such] cases was a high body count. These early discussions of mass murder lumped together [a variety of] cases that varied along what would come to be seen as important dimensions:


title: Mass murder

text: In the late decades of the Twentieth Century and early years of the 2000s, the most popular classifications moved to include method, time and place.


title: Mass murder

text: While such classifications may assist in gaining human meaning, as human-selected categories, they can also carry significant meaning and reflect a particular point of view of the commentator who assigned the descriptor.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Ray Edward Cochran (; October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American rock and roll musician. Cochran's songs, such as "Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", "C'mon Everybody" and "Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desire in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording, distortion techniques, and overdubbing even on his earliest singles. He played the guitar, piano, bass, and drums. His image as a sharply dressed and attractive young man with a rebellious attitude epitomized the stance of the 1950s rocker, and in death he achieved iconic status.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran was involved with music from an early age, playing in the school band and teaching himself to play blues guitar. In 1954, he formed a duet with the guitarist Hank Cochran (no relation). When they split the following year, Eddie began a songwriting career with Jerry Capehart. His first success came when he performed the song "Twenty Flight Rock" in the film "The Girl Can't Help It", starring Jayne Mansfield. Soon afterward, he signed a recording contract with Liberty Records and his first record for the label, "Sittin' in the Balcony", rose to number 18 on the Billboard charts.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran died at the age of 21 in St Martin's Hospital, Bath, Somerset, after a road accident in Chippenham, Wiltshire, at the end of his British tour in April 1960. He had just performed at the Bristol Hippodrome. Though his best-known songs were released during his lifetime, more of his songs were released posthumously. In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His songs have been recorded by a wide variety of recording artists.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran was born on October 3, 1938, in Albert Lea, Minnesota, to Alice and Frank R. Cochran. He was of Scottish descent. His parents were from Oklahoma, and he always said in interviews that his parents had some roots in Oklahoma. He took music lessons in school but quit the band to play drums. Also, rather than taking piano lessons, he began learning guitar, playing country and other music he heard on the radio.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran's family moved to Bell Gardens, California, in 1952. As his guitar playing improved, he formed a band with two friends from his junior high school. He dropped out of Bell Gardens High School in his first year to become a professional musician. During a show featuring many performers at an American Legion hall, he met Hank Cochran, a songwriter. Although they were not related, they recorded as the Cochran Brothers and began performing together. They recorded a few singles for Ekko Records that were fairly successful and helped to establish them as a performing act. Eddie Cochran also worked as a session musician and began writing songs, making a demo with Jerry Capehart, his future manager.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In July 1956, Eddie Cochran's first "solo artist" single was released by Crest Records. It featured "Skinny Jim", now regarded as a rock-and-roll and rockabilly classic. In the spring of 1956, Boris Petroff asked Cochran if he would appear in the musical comedy film "The Girl Can't Help It". Cochran agreed and performed the song "Twenty Flight Rock" in the movie. In 1957 Cochran starred in his second film, "Untamed Youth", and he had yet another hit, "Sittin' in the Balcony", one of the few songs he recorded that was written by other songwriters (in this case John D. Loudermilk). "Twenty Flight Rock" was written by AMI staff writer Ned Fairchild (a pen name—her real name is Nelda Fairchild). Fairchild, who was not a rock and roll performer, merely provided the initial form of the song; the co-writing credit reflects Cochran's major changes and contributions to the final product.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In the Summer of 1957 Liberty Records issued Cochran's only studio album released during his lifetime, "Singin' to My Baby". The album included "Sittin' in the Balcony". There were only a few rockers on this album, and Liberty seemed to want to move Cochran away from Rock and Roll.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In 1958, Cochran seemed to find his stride in the famous teenage anthem "Summertime Blues" (co-written with Jerry Capehart). With this song, Cochran was established as one of the most important influences on rock and roll in the 1950s, both lyrically and musically. The song, released by Liberty recording no. 55144, charted at number 8 in 1958. Cochran's brief career included a few more hits, such as "C'mon, Everybody", "Somethin' Else", "Teenage Heaven", "Three Steps to Heaven", which posthumously topped the charts in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom in 1960. He remained popular in the United States and the United Kingdom through the late 1950s and early 1960s, and more of his records were posthumous hits, such as "My Way", "Weekend", and "Nervous Breakdown".


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Another aspect of Cochran's short but brilliant career is his work as backup musician and producer. In 1959 he played lead for Skeets McDonald at Columbia's studios for "You Oughta See Grandma Rock" and "Heart Breaking Mama". In a session for Gene Vincent in March 1958, he contributed his trademark bass voice, as heard on "Summertime Blues". The recordings were issued on the album "A Gene Vincent Record Date".


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In early 1959, two of Cochran's friends, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, along with the Big Bopper, were killed in a plane crash while on tour. Cochran's friends and family later said that he was badly shaken by their deaths, and he developed a morbid premonition that he also would die young. Shortly after their deaths, he recorded a song (written by disc jockey Tommy Dee) in tribute to them, "Three Stars". He was anxious to give up life on the road and spend his time in the studio making music, thereby reducing the chance of suffering a similar fatal accident while touring. Financial responsibilities, however, required that he continue to perform live, and that led to his acceptance of an offer to tour the United Kingdom in 1960.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran was on tour in the United Kingdom from January through April 1960. He and his friend and fellow performing artist Gene Vincent had just finished performing at the last of their scheduled concerts at the Bristol Hippodrome on April 16, a Saturday night. They were traveling along the Bath Road in a taxi (a cream-coloured 1960 model Ford Consul Mark II saloon) from Bristol towards London. In addition to Cochran and Vincent, the other passengers in the vehicle were Sharon Sheeley (a 20-year-old songwriter who was also Cochran's fiancée at the time), Patrick Tompkins (the tour manager, 29 years old), and George Martin (the 19-year-old taxi driver). At about 11:50 p.m. that night, Martin lost control of the vehicle, which crashed into a concrete lamppost at Rowden Hill in Chippenham. At the moment of impact, Cochran (who was seated in the center of the back seat) threw himself over Sheeley to shield her. The force of the collision caused the left rear passenger door to open, and Cochran was ejected from the vehicle, sustaining a massive traumatic brain injury from blunt force trauma to the skull. The road was dry and the weather was good, but the vehicle was later determined to be travelling at an excessive speed. No other vehicle was involved in the incident.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: The occupants of the vehicle were all taken to Chippenham Community Hospital and later transferred to St Martin's Hospital in Bath. Cochran never regained consciousness, and died at 4:10 p.m. the following day – Easter Sunday. Sheeley suffered injuries to her back and thigh, Vincent suffered a fractured collarbone and severe injuries to his legs, and Tompkins sustained facial injuries and a possible fracture of the base of the skull. Martin did not sustain significant injuries.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Vincent and Sheeley returned to the United States after the accident. Cochran's body was flown home, and after a funeral service was buried on April 25, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. Martin was convicted of dangerous driving, fined £50 (and in default of payment six months imprisonment), and disqualified from driving for 15 years. His driving disqualification was lifted on May 7, 1968, after the judge at Bristol Assizes determined that Martin "had suffered considerable financial hardship". The car and other items from the crash were impounded at the local police station until a coroner's inquest could be held. David Harman, a police cadet at the station, who would later become known as Dave Dee of the band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, is said to have played on Cochran's Gretsch 6120 guitar while it was held at the station.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: There is a plaque marking the site of the car crash on Rowden Hill. There is also a memorial stone on the grounds of St Martin's Hospital in Bath, commemorating Cochran's death. The stone was restored in 2010 on the 50th anniversary of his death and can be found in the old chapel grounds at the hospital. A memorial plaque was also placed next to the sundial at the back of the old chapel. The Eddie Cochran Memorial Project spearheaded a fundraising campaign in 2018 to restore the plaque and install a brand new "Three Steps to Heaven" base at the Chippenham crash site.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: A posthumous album, "My Way", was released in 1964. Cochran was a prolific performer, and the British label Rockstar Records has released more of his music posthumously than was released during his life. The company is still looking for unpublished songs. One of his posthumous releases was "Three Stars", a tribute to J.P. Richardson, better known as the Big Bopper, and Cochran's friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, who had all died in a plane crash just one year earlier. Written just hours after the tragedy by disc jockey Tommy Dee, it was recorded by Cochran two days later (Dee recorded his own version several weeks later). His voice broke during the spoken lyrics about Valens and Holly.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His pioneering contribution to the genre of rockabilly has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Several of his songs have been re-released since his death, such as "C'mon Everybody", which was a number 14 hit in 1988 in the UK. "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked him number 84 on its 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Cochran's life is chronicled in several publications, including "Don't Forget Me: The Eddie Cochran Story", by Julie Mundy and Darrel Higham (), and "Three Steps to Heaven", by Bobby Cochran (). "The Very Best of Eddie Cochran" was released by EMI Records on June 2, 2008. On September 27, 2010, the mayor of Bell Gardens, California, declared October 3, 2010, to be "Eddie Cochran Day" to celebrate the famous musician who began his career when living in that city.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: In 1963, pop star Heinz Burt and producer Joe Meek paid tribute to Cochran with the song "Just Like Eddie" which became a top five chart hit.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: Cochran was one of the first rock-and-roll artists to write his own songs and overdub tracks. He is also credited with being one of the first to use an unwound third string to "bend" notes up a whole tone—an innovation (imparted to UK guitarist Joe Brown, who secured much session work as a result) that has since become an essential part of the standard rock guitar vocabulary. Artists such as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, UFO (band), Van Halen, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, T. Rex, Cliff Richard, the Who, Stray Cats, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Rush, Simple Minds, George Thorogood, Guitar Wolf, Paul McCartney, Alan Jackson, Terry Manning, the Move, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Hallyday and U2 have covered his songs.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: It was because Paul McCartney knew the chords and words to "Twenty Flight Rock" that he became a member of the Beatles. John Lennon was so impressed that he invited McCartney to play with his band, the Quarrymen. Jimi Hendrix performed "Summertime Blues" early in his career, and Pete Townshend of the Who was heavily influenced by Cochran's guitar style ("Summertime Blues" was a staple of live performances by the Who for most of their career, until the death of bassist and vocalist John Entwistle in 2002, and is featured on their album "Live at Leeds"). San Francisco Sound band Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues" was their only hit and signature song, and has been described as the first heavy metal song. Terry Manning recorded a live version of "Somethin' Else" at a concert inside Elvis Presley's first house in Memphis.


title: Eddie Cochran

text: The glam rock artist Marc Bolan had his main Gibson Les Paul guitar refinished in a transparent orange to resemble the Gretsch 6120 played by Cochran, who was his music hero. He was also an influence on the guitar player Brian Setzer, of Stray Cats, who plays a 6120 almost like that of Cochran, whom he portrayed in the film "La Bamba".


title: Saracen

text: Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Petraea and Arabia Deserta. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage. During the Early Middle Ages, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia. The oldest known source mentioning "Saracens" in relation to Islam dates back to the 7th century, in the Greek-language Christian tract "Doctrina Jacobi". Among other major events, the tract discusses the Muslim conquest of the Levant, which occurred after the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Roman-Catholic church and European Christian leaders used the term during the Middle Ages to refer to Muslims—usually Arabs, Turks, and Iranians.


title: Saracen

text: By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature. Such an expansion in the meaning of the term had begun centuries earlier among the Byzantine Greeks, as evidenced in documents from the 8th century. Before the 16th century, "Saracen" was commonly used in Western languages to refer to Arab Muslims, and the terms "Muslim" and "Islam" were generally not used, with a few isolated exceptions. The term gradually became obsolete following the Age of Discovery.


title: Saracen

text: The Latin term "Saraceni" is of unknown original meaning. There are claims of it being derived from the Semitic triliteral root "šrq" "east" and "šrkt" "tribe, confederation". Another possible Semitic root is "srq" "to steal, rob, thief", more specifically from the noun "sāriq" (), pl. "sāriqīn" (), which means "thief, marauder". In his "Levantine Diary", covering the years 1699–1740, the Damascene writer Hamad bin Kanan al-Salhi () used the term "sarkan" to mean "travel on a military mission" from the Near East to parts of Southern Europe which were under Ottoman Empire rule, particularly Cyprus and Rhodes.


title: Saracen

text: Ptolemy's 2nd-century work, "Geography", describes "Sarakēnḗ" () as a region in the northern Sinai Peninsula. Ptolemy also mentions a people called the "Sarakēnoí" () living in the northwestern Arabian Peninsula (near neighbor to the Sinai). Eusebius in his "Ecclesiastical history" narrates an account wherein Pope Dionysius of Alexandria mentions Saracens in a letter while describing the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Decius: "Many were, in the Arabian mountain, enslaved by the barbarous 'sarkenoi'." The "Augustan History" also refers to an attack by "Saraceni" on Pescennius Niger's army in Egypt in 193, but provides little information as to identifying them.


title: Saracen

text: Both Hippolytus of Rome and Uranius mention three distinct peoples in Arabia during the first half of the third century: the "Taeni", the "Saraceni", and the "Arabes". The "Taeni", later identified with the Arab people called "Tayy", were located around Khaybar (an oasis north of Medina) and also in an area stretching up to the Euphrates. The "Saraceni" were placed north of them. These Saracens, located in the northern Hejaz, were described as people with a certain military ability who were opponents of the Roman Empire and who were classified by the Romans as barbarians.


title: Saracen

text: The Saracens are described as forming the "equites" from Phoenicia and Thamud. In one document, the defeated enemies of Diocletian's campaign in the Syrian Desert are described as Saracens. Other 4th-century military reports make no mention of Arabs, but refer to "Saracen" groups ranging as far east as Mesopotamia who were involved in battles on both the Sasanian and Roman sides. The Saracens were named in the Roman administrative document "Notitia Dignitatum," dating from the time of Theodosius I in the 4th century, as comprising distinctive units in the Roman army. They were distinguished in the document from Arabs.


title: Saracen

text: No later than the early fifth century, Jewish and Christian writers began to equate Saracens with Arabs. Saracens were associated with Ishmaelites (descendants of Abraham's older son Ishmael) in some strands of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic genealogical thinking. The writings of Jerome (d. 420) are the earliest known version of the claim that Ishmaelites chose to be called Saracens in order to identify with Abraham's "free" wife Sarah, rather than as Hagarenes, which would have highlighted their association with Abraham's "slave woman" Hagar. This claim was popular during the Middle Ages, but derives more from Paul's allegory in the New Testament letter to the Galatians than from historical data. The name "Saracen" was not indigenous among the populations so described but was applied to them by Greco-Roman historians based on Greek place names.


title: Saracen

text: As the Middle Ages progressed, usage of the term in the Latin West changed, but its connotation remained associated with opponents of Christianity, and its exact definition is unclear. In an 8th-century polemical work, John of Damascus criticized the Saracens as followers of a false prophet and "forerunner[s] to the Antichrist," and further connected their name to Ishmael and his expulsion.


title: Saracen

text: By the 12th century, Medieval Europeans used the term "Saracen" as both an ethnic and religious marker. In some Medieval literature, Saracens were equated with Muslims in general and described as dark-skinned, while Christians lighter-skinned. An example is in "The King of Tars", a medieval romance. "The Song of Roland", an Old French 11th-century heroic poem, refers to the black skin of Saracens as their only exotic feature.


title: Saracen

text: The term "Saracen" remained in use in the West as a synonym for "Muslim" until the 18th century. When the Age of Discovery commenced, it gradually lost popularity to the newer term "Mohammedan", which came into usage from at least the 16th century. After this point, "Saracen" enjoyed only sporadic usage (for example, in the phrase "Indo-Saracenic architecture") before being outmoded entirely.


title: Saracen

text: In the Wiltshire dialect, the meaning of "Sarsen" (Saracen) was eventually extended to refer to anything regarded as non-Christian, whether Muslim or pagan. From that derived the still current term "Sarsen" (a shortening of "Saracen stone"), denoting the kind of stone used by the builders of Stonehenge, long predating Islam.


title: Saracen

text: The rhyming stories of the Old French "Crusade cycle" were popular with medieval audiences in Northern France, Occitania and Iberia. Beginning in the late 12th century, stories about the sieges of Antioch and Jerusalem gave accounts of battle scenes and suffering, and of Saracen plunder, their silks and gold, and masterfully embroidered and woven tents. From the story of the Frankish knights at the tent of Saracen leader Corbaran:


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography has become routinely used in the diagnosis, management, and follow-up of patients with any suspected or known heart diseases. It is one of the most widely used diagnostic imaging modalities in cardiology. It can provide a wealth of helpful information, including the size and shape of the heart (internal chamber size quantification), pumping capacity, location and extent of any tissue damage, and assessment of valves. An echocardiogram can also give physicians other estimates of heart function, such as a calculation of the cardiac output, ejection fraction, and diastolic function (how well the heart relaxes).


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography is an important tool in assessing wall motion abnormality in patients with suspected cardiac disease. It is a tool which helps in reaching an early diagnosis of myocardial infarction, showing regional wall motion abnormality. Also, it is important in treatment and follow-up in patients with heart failure, by assessing ejection fraction.


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography can help detect cardiomyopathies, such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, and many others. The use of stress echocardiography may also help determine whether any chest pain or associated symptoms are related to heart disease. The biggest advantage of echocardiography is that it is not invasive (does not involve breaking the skin or entering body cavities) and has no known risks or side effects.


title: Echocardiography

text: Not only can an echocardiogram create ultrasound images of heart structures, but it can also produce accurate assessment of the blood flowing through the heart by Doppler echocardiography, using pulsed- or continuous-wave Doppler ultrasound. This allows assessment of both normal and abnormal blood flow through the heart. Color Doppler, as well as spectral Doppler, is used to visualize any abnormal communications between the left and right sides of the heart, any leaking of blood through the valves (valvular regurgitation), and estimate how well the valves open (or do not open in the case of valvular stenosis). The Doppler technique can also be used for tissue motion and velocity measurement, by tissue Doppler echocardiography.


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography was also the first ultrasound subspecialty to use intravenous contrast. Echocardiography is performed by cardiac sonographers, cardiac physiologists (UK), or physicians trained in echocardiography.


title: Echocardiography

text: Recognized as the "Father of Echocardiography", the Swedish physician Inge Edler (1911–2001), a graduate of Lund University, was the first of his profession to apply ultrasonic pulse echo imaging in diagnosing cardiac disease, which the acoustical physicist Floyd Firestone had developed to detect defects in metal castings. In fact, Edler in 1953 produced the first echocardiographs using an industrial Firestone-Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope. In developing echocardiography, Edler worked with the physicist Carl Hellmuth Hertz, the son of the Nobel laureate Gustav Hertz and grandnephew of Heinrich Rudolph Hertz.


title: Echocardiography

text: Health societies recommend the use of echocardiography for initial diagnosis when a change in the patient's clinical status occurs and when new data from an echocardiogram would result in the physician changing the patient's care. Health societies do not recommend routine testing when the patient has no change in clinical status or when a physician is unlikely to change care for the patient based on the results of testing.


title: Echocardiography

text: A common example of overuse of echocardiography when not indicated is the use of routine testing in response to a patient diagnosis of mild valvular heart disease. In this case, patients are often asymptomatic for years before the onset of deterioration and the results of the echocardiogram would not result in a change in care without other change in clinical status.


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography now has a vast role in pediatrics, diagnosing patients with valvular heart disease and other congenital abnormalities. An emerging branch is fetal echocardiography, which involves echocardiography of an unborn fetus.


title: Echocardiography

text: Stress testing utilizes tranthoracic echo in combination with an exercise modality (e.g., a treadmill).


title: Echocardiography

text: Intravascular ultrasound is included below, but is as the name indicates more "ultrasound" than "echocardiography" as it is imaging the walls of a vessel rather than the heart.


title: Echocardiography

text: A standard echocardiogram is also known as a transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) or cardiac ultrasound; and it is used for rapid evaluation of a patient at their bedside. In this case, the echocardiography transducer (or probe) is placed on the chest wall (or thorax) of the subject, and images are taken through the chest wall. This is a non-invasive, highly accurate, and quick assessment of the overall health of the heart.


title: Echocardiography

text: A transesophageal echocardiogram is an alternative way to perform an echocardiogram. A specialized probe containing an ultrasound transducer at its tip is passed into the patient's esophagus, allowing image and Doppler evaluation from a location directly behind the heart. It is most often used when transthoracic images are suboptimal and when a clearer and more precise image is needed for assessment. This test is performed in the presence of a cardiologist, registered nurse, and ultrasound technologist. Conscious sedation and/or localized numbing medication may be used to make the patient more comfortable during the procedure.


title: Echocardiography

text: A stress echocardiogram, also known as a stress echo, uses ultrasound imaging of the heart to assess the wall motion in response to physical stress. First, images of the heart are taken "at rest" to acquire a baseline of the patient's wall motion at a resting heart rate. The patient then walks on a treadmill or uses another exercise modality to increase the heart rate to his or her target heart rate, or 85% of the age-predicted maximum heart rate (220 − patient's age). Finally, images of the heart are taken "at stress" to assess wall motion at the peak heart rate. A stress echo assesses wall motion of the heart; it does not, however, create an image of the coronary arteries directly. Ischemia of one or more coronary arteries could cause a wall motion abnormality, which could indicate coronary artery disease. The gold standard test to directly create an image of the coronary arteries and directly assess for stenosis or occlusion is a cardiac catheterization. A stress echo is not invasive and is performed in the presence of a licensed medical professional, such as a cardiologist, and a cardiac sonographer.


title: Echocardiography

text: Intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) is specialized form of echocardiography that uses catheters to insert the ultrasound probe inside the heart to view structures in 2D.


title: Echocardiography

text: ICE is often used as a part of the cardiac procedure of crossing the interatrial septum with a transseptal puncture to permit catheter access from the right atrium to the left atrium.


title: Echocardiography

text: ICE has the benefit over transthoracic echocardiography in that an operator who is performing a sterile procedure can also operate the ICE catheter and ICE is not limited to visibility problems that can arise with transthoracic echo.


title: Echocardiography

text: From the right atrium, visualization of the interatrial septum, all four cardiac chambers, all four valves, and the pericardial space (for an effusion) can be readily visualized.


title: Echocardiography

text: Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a specialized form of echocardiography that uses a catheter to insert the ultrasound probe inside blood vessels. This is commonly used to measure the size of blood vessels and to measure the internal diameter of the blood vessel. For example, this can be used in a coronary angiogram to assess the narrowing of the coronary artery. If the catheter is retraced in a controlled manner, then an internal map can be generated to see the contour of the vessel and its branches.


title: Echocardiography

text: The various modes listed below essentially describe how the ultrasound crystals are used to obtain information.


title: Echocardiography

text: Motion mode is infrequently used in modern echocardiography. It has specific uses and has the benefit of very high temporal fidelity (e.g., measuring LV size at end diastole).


title: Echocardiography

text: Strain rate imaging is an ultrasound method for imaging regional differences in contraction (dyssynergy) in for instance ischemic heart disease or dyssynchrony due to Bundle branch block. Strain rate imaging measures either regional systolic deformation (strain) or the rate of regional deformation (strain rate). The methods used are either tissue Doppler or Speckle tracking echocardiography.


title: Echocardiography

text: Three-dimensional echocardiography (also known as four-dimensional echocardiography when the picture is moving) is now possible, using a matrix array ultrasound probe and an appropriate processing system. It enables detailed anatomical assessment of cardiac pathology, particularly valvular defects, and cardiomyopathies. The ability to slice the virtual heart in infinite planes in an anatomically appropriate manner and to reconstruct three-dimensional images of anatomic structures make it unique for the understanding of the congenitally malformed heart. Real-time three-dimensional echocardiography can be used to guide the location of bioptomes during right ventricular endomyocardial biopsies, placement of catheter-delivered valvular devices, and in many other intraoperative assessments.


title: Echocardiography

text: Three-dimensional echocardiography technology may feature anatomical intelligence, or the use of organ-modeling technology, to automatically identify anatomy based on generic models. All generic models refer to a dataset of anatomical information that uniquely adapts to variability in patient anatomy to perform specific tasks. Built on feature recognition and segmentation algorithms, this technology can provide patient-specific three-dimensional modeling of the heart and other aspects of the anatomy, including the brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, rib cage, and vertebral column.


title: Echocardiography

text: Contrast echocardiography or contrast-enhanced ultrasound is the addition of an ultrasound contrast medium, or imaging agent, to traditional ultrasonography. The ultrasound contrast is made up of tiny microbubbles filled with a gas core and protein shell. This allows the microbubbles to circulate through the cardiovascular system and return the ultrasound waves, creating a highly reflective image. There are multiple applications in which contrast-enhanced ultrasound can be useful. The most commonly used application is in the enhancement of LV endocardial borders for assessment of global and regional systolic function. Contrast may also be used to enhance visualization of wall thickening during stress echocardiography, for the assessment of LV thrombus, or for the assessment of other masses in the heart. Contrast echocardiography has also been used to assess blood perfusion throughout myocardium in the case of coronary artery disease.


title: Echocardiography

text: Echocardiography can at many times be subjective, meaning that the person reading the echo may have personal input that affects the interpretation of the findings, leading to so-called "inter-observer variability", where different echocardiographers might produce different reports when examining the same images. It necessitated the development of accreditation programs around the world. The aim of such programs is to standardize the practice of echocardiography and to ensure that practitioners have the proper training prior to practicing echocardiography which will eventually limit inter-observer variability.


title: Echocardiography

text: At the European level individual and laboratory accreditation is provided by the European Association of Echocardiography (EAE). There are three subspecialties for individual accreditation: Adult Transthoracic Echocardiography (TTE), Adult Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE) and Congenital Heart Disease Echocardiography (CHD).


title: Echocardiography

text: In the UK, accreditation is regulated by the British Society of Echocardiography. Accredited radiographers, sonographers, or other professionals are required to pass a mandatory exam.


title: Echocardiography

text: The "Intersocietal Accreditation Commission for Echocardiography” (IAC) sets standards for echo labs across the US. Cardiologists and sonographers who wish to have their laboratory accredited by IAC must comply with these standards. The purpose of accreditation is to maintain quality and consistency across echocardiography labs in the United States. Accreditation is offered in adult and pediatric transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography, as well as adult stress and fetal echo. Accreditation is a two-part process. Each facility will conduct a detailed self-evaluation, paying close attention to the IAC Standards and Guidelines. The facility will then complete the application and submit actual case studies to the board of directors for review. Once all requirements have been met, the lab will receive certification. IAC certification is a continual process and must be maintained by the facility: it may include audits or site visits by the IAC. There are several states in which Medicare and/or private insurance carriers require accreditation (credentials) of the laboratory and/or sonographer for reimbursement of echocardiograms.


title: Echocardiography

text: There are two credentialing bodies in the United States for sonographers, the "Cardiovascular Credentialing International" (CCI), established in 1968, and the "American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography" (ARDMS), established in 1975. Both CCI and ARDMS have earned the prestigious "ANSI-ISO 17024" accreditation for certifying bodies from the International Organization for Standardization ("ISO"). Accreditation is granted through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Recognition of ARDMS programs in providing credentials has also earned the ARDMS accreditation with the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). The NCCA is the accrediting arm of the National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA).


title: Echocardiography

text: Under both credentialing bodies, sonographers must first document completion of prerequisite requirements, which contain both didactic and hands-on experience in the field of ultrasound. Applicants must then take a comprehensive exam demonstrating knowledge in both the physics of ultrasound and the clinical competency related to their specialty. Credentialed sonographers are then required to maintain competency in their field by obtaining a certain number of Continuing Medical Education credits, or CME's.


title: Echocardiography

text: The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is a professional organization made up of physicians, sonographers, nurses, and scientists involved in the field of echocardiography. One of the most important roles that the ASE plays is providing their recommendations through the ASE Guidelines and Standards, providing resource and educational opportunities for sonographers and physicians in the field.


title: Echocardiography

text: There have been various institutes who are working on use of Artificial intelligence in Echo but they are at a very early stage and still needs full development.


title: Full stop

text: The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). This sentence-ending use, alone, defines the strictest sense of "full stop". Although "full stop" technically applies only when the mark is used to end a sentence, the distinction – drawn since at least 1897 – is not maintained by all modern style guides and dictionaries.


title: Full stop

text: The mark is also used, singly, to indicate omitted characters or, in a series, as an ellipsis (), to indicate omitted words. It may be placed after an initial letter used to stand for a name or after each individual letter in an initialism or acronym (e.g., "U.S.A."). However, the use of full stops after letters in an initialism or acronym is declining, and many of these without punctuation have become accepted norms (e.g., "UK" and "NATO"). This trend has progressed somewhat more slowly in the United States than in other English language dialects.


title: Full stop

text: A full stop is frequently used at the end of word abbreviations – in British usage, primarily truncations like "Rev.", but not after contractions like "Revd" (in American English it is used in both cases).


title: Full stop

text: In the English-speaking world, a punctuation mark identical to the full stop is used as the decimal separator and for other purposes, and may be called a point. In computing, it is called a dot. It is sometimes called a baseline dot to distinguish it from the interpunct (or middle dot).


title: Full stop

text: The full stop symbol derives from the Greek punctuation introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium in the 3rd century . In his system, there were a series of dots whose placement determined their meaning.


title: Full stop

text: The full stop at the end of a completed thought or expression was marked by a high dot ⟨˙⟩, called the "stigmḕ teleía" () or "terminal dot". The "middle dot" ⟨·⟩, the "stigmḕ mésē" (), marked a division in a thought occasioning a longer breath (essentially a semicolon), while the low dot ⟨.⟩, called the "hypostigmḕ" () or "underdot", marked a division in a thought occasioning a shorter breath (essentially a comma).


title: Full stop

text: In practice, scribes mostly employed the terminal dot; the others fell out of use and were later replaced by other symbols. From the 9th century onwards, the full stop began appearing as a low mark (instead of a high one), and by the time printing began in Western Europe, the lower dot was regular and then universal.


title: Full stop

text: The name "period" is first attested (as the Latin loanword ) in Ælfric of Eynsham's Old English treatment on grammar. There, it is distinguished from the full stop (the ), and continues the Greek underdot's earlier function as a comma between phrases. It shifted its meaning, to a dot marking a full stop, in the works of the 16th-century grammarians. In 19th-century texts, both British English and American English were consistent in their usage of the terms "period" and "full stop". The word "period" was used as a name for what printers often called the "full point", the punctuation mark that was a dot on the baseline and used in several situations. The phrase "full stop" was only used to refer to the punctuation mark when it was used to terminate a sentence. This terminological distinction seems to be eroding. For example, the 1998 edition of "Fowler's Modern English Usage" used "full point" for the mark used after an abbreviation, but "full stop" or "full point" when it was employed at the end of a sentence; the 2015 edition, however, treats them as synonymous (and prefers "full stop"), and "New Hart's Rules" does likewise (but prefers "full point"). In 1989, the last edition (1989) of the original "Hart's Rules" (before it became "The Oxford Guide to Style" in 2002) exclusively used "full point".


title: Full stop

text: Full stops are the most commonly used punctuation marks; analysis of texts indicate that approximately half of all punctuation marks used are full stops.


title: Full stop

text: It is usual in North American English to use full stops after initials; e.g. A. A. Milne, George W. Bush. British usage is less strict. A few style guides discourage full stops after initials. However, there is a general trend and initiatives to spell out names in full instead of abbreviating them in order to avoid ambiguity.


title: Full stop

text: A full stop is used after some abbreviations. If the abbreviation ends a declaratory sentence there is no additional period immediately following the full stop that ends the abbreviation (e.g. "My name is Gabriel Gama, Jr."). Though two full stops (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending) might be expected, conventionally only one is written. This is an intentional omission, and thus not haplography, which is unintentional omission of a duplicate. In the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence ending with an abbreviation, a question or exclamation mark can still be added (e.g. "Are you Gabriel Gama Jr.?").


title: Full stop

text: According to the "Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation", "If the abbreviation includes both the first and last letter of the abbreviated word, as in 'Mister' ['Mr'] and 'Doctor' ['Dr'], a full stop is not used." This does not include, for example, the standard abbreviations for titles such as "Professor" ("Prof.") or "Reverend" ("Rev."), because they do not end with the last letter of the word they are abbreviating.


title: Full stop

text: In acronyms and initialisms, the modern style is generally to not use full points after each initial (e.g.: "DNA", "UK", "USSR"). The punctuation is somewhat more often used in American English, most commonly with "U.S." and "U.S.A." in particular. However, this depends much upon the house style of a particular writer or publisher. As some examples from American style guides, "The Chicago Manual of Style" (primarily for book and academic-journal publishing) deprecates the use of full points in acronyms, including "U.S.", while "The Associated Press Stylebook" (primarily for journalism) dispenses with full points in acronyms except for certain two-letter cases, including "U.S.", "U.K.", and "U.N.", but not "EU".


title: Full stop

text: The period glyph is used in the presentation of numbers, but in only one of two alternate styles at a time.


title: Full stop

text: In the more prevalent usage in English-speaking countries, the point represents a decimal separator, visually dividing whole numbers from fractional (decimal) parts. The comma is then used to separate the whole-number parts into groups of three digits each, when numbers are sufficiently large.


title: Full stop

text: The more prevalent usage in much of Europe, southern Africa, and Latin America (with the exception of Mexico due to the influence of the United States), reverses the roles of the comma and point, but sometimes substitutes a (thin-)space for a point.


title: Full stop

text: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan follow the Indian numbering system, which utilizes commas and decimals much like the aforementioned system popular in most English-speaking countries, but separates values of one hundred thousand and above differently, into divisions of "lakh" and "crore":


title: Full stop

text: In countries that use the comma as a decimal separator, the point is sometimes found as a multiplication sign; for example, 5,2 . 2 = 10,4; this usage is impractical in cases where the point is used as a decimal separator, hence the use of the interpunct: 5.2 · 2 = 10.4. This notation is also seen when multiplying units in science; for example, 50 km/h could be written as 50 km·h. However, the point is used in all countries to indicate a dot product, i.e. the scalar product of two vectors.


title: Full stop

text: In older literature on mathematical logic, the period glyph used to indicate how expressions should be bracketed (see Glossary of "Principia Mathematica").


title: Full stop

text: In computing, the full point, usually called a "dot" in this context, is often used as a delimiter, such as in DNS lookups, Web addresses, file names and software release versions:


title: Full stop

text: It is used in many programming languages as an important part of the syntax. C uses it as a means of accessing a member of a struct, and this syntax was inherited by C++ as a means of accessing a member of a class or object. Java and Python also follow this convention. Pascal uses it both as a means of accessing a member of a record set (the equivalent of struct in C), a member of an object, and after the "end" construct that defines the body of the program. In APL it is also used for generalised inner product and outer product. In Erlang, Prolog, and Smalltalk, it marks the end of a statement ("sentence"). In a regular expression, it represents a match of any character. In Perl and PHP, the dot is the string concatenation operator. In the Haskell standard library, it is the function composition operator. In COBOL a full stop ends a statement.


title: Full stop

text: In file systems, the dot is commonly used to separate the extension of a file name from the name of the file. RISC OS uses dots to separate levels of the hierarchical file system when writing path names—similar to codice_1 (forward-slash) in Unix-based systems and codice_2 (back-slash) in MS-DOS-based systems and the Windows NT systems that succeeded them.


title: Full stop

text: In Unix-like operating systems, some applications treat files or directories that start with a dot as hidden. This means that they are not displayed or listed to the user by default.


title: Full stop

text: In Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows, the dot character represents the working directory of the file system. Two dots (codice_3) represent the parent directory of the working directory.


title: Full stop

text: Bourne shell-derived command-line interpreters, such as sh, ksh, and bash, use the dot as a command to read a file and execute its content in the running interpreter. (Some of these also offer "source" as a synonym, based on that usage in the C-shell.)


title: Full stop

text: Versions of software are often denoted with the style "x.y.z" (or more), where "x" is a major release, "y" is a mid-cycle enhancement release and "z" is a patch level designation, but actual usage is entirely vendor specific.


title: Full stop

text: The term "STOP" was used in telegrams in place of the full stop. The end of a sentence would be marked by "STOP"; its use "in telegraphic communications was greatly increased during the World War, when the Government employed it widely as a precaution against having messages garbled or misunderstood, as a result of the misplacement or emission of the tiny dot or period."


title: Full stop

text: In British English, the words "full stop" at the end of an utterance strengthen it; they indicate that it admits of no discussion: "I'm not going with you, full stop." In American English the word "period" serves this function.


title: Full stop

text: Another common use in African-American Vernacular English is found in the phrase "And that's on period" which is used to express the strength of the speaker's previous statement, usually to emphasise an opinion.


title: Full stop

text: In British English, whether for the 12-hour clock or sometimes its 24-hour counterpart, the dot is commonly used and some style guides recommend it when telling time, including those from non-BBC public broadcasters in the UK, the academic manual published by Oxford University Press under various titles, as well as the internal house style book for the University of Oxford, and that of "The Economist", "The Guardian" and "The Times" newspapers. American and Canadian English mostly prefers and uses colons (:) (i.e., 11:15 PM/pm/p.m. or 23:15 for AmE/CanE and 11.15 pm or 23.15 for BrE), so does the BBC, but only with 24-hour times, according to its news style guide as updated in August 2020. The point as a time separator is also used in Irish English, particularly by the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), and to a lesser extent in Australian, Cypriot, Maltese, New Zealand, South African and other Commonwealth English varieties outside Canada.


title: Full stop

text: The practice in the United States and Canada is to place full stops and commas inside quotation marks in most styles. In the British system, which is also called "logical quotation", full stops and commas are placed according to grammatical sense: This means that when they are part of the quoted material, they should be placed inside, and otherwise should be outside. For example, they are placed outside in the cases of words-as-words, titles of short-form works, and quoted sentence fragments.


title: Full stop

text: There is some national crossover. American style is common in British fiction writing. British style is sometimes used in American English. For example, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends it for fields where comma placement could affect the meaning of the quoted material, such as linguistics and textual criticism.


title: Full stop

text: Use of placement according to logical or grammatical sense, or "logical convention", now the more common practice in regions other than North America, was advocated in the influential book "The King's English" by Fowler and Fowler, published in 1906. Prior to the influence of this work, the typesetter's or printer's style, or "closed convention", now also called American style, was common throughout the world.


title: Full stop

text: There have been a number of practices relating to the spacing after a full stop. Some examples are listed below:


title: Full stop

text: Although the present Greek full stop (, "teleía") is romanized as a Latin full stop and encoded identically with the full stop in Unicode, the historic full stop in Greek was a "high" dot and the "low" dot functioned as a kind of comma, as noted above. The low dot was increasingly but irregularly used to mark full stops after the 9th century and was fully adapted after the advent of print. The teleia should also be distinguished from the ano teleia mark, which is named ""high" stop" but looks like an interpunct (a "middle" dot) and principally functions as the Greek semicolon.


title: Full stop

text: In Simplified Chinese and Japanese, a small circle is used instead of a solid dot: "。" (U+3002 "Ideographic Full Stop"). Traditional Chinese uses the same symbol centered in the line rather than aligned to the baseline.


title: Full stop

text: Indo-Aryan languages predominantly use Nagari-based scripts. In the Devanagari script used to write languages like Hindi, Maithili, Nepali, etc., a vertical line (U+0964 "Devanagari Danda") is used to mark the end of a sentence. It is known as (full stop). In Sanskrit, an additional symbol (U+0965 "Devanagari Double Danda") is used to mark the end of a poetic verse. However, some languages that are written in Devanagari use the Latin full stop, such as Marathi.


title: Full stop

text: In the Eastern Nagari script used to write languages like Bangla and Assamese, the same vertical line ("।") is used for full-stop, known as in Bengali. Also, languages like Odia and Panjabi (which respectively use Oriya and Gurmukhi scripts) use the same symbol.


title: Full stop

text: Inspired from Indic scripts, the Santali language also uses a similar symbol in Ol Chiki script: (U+1C7E "Ol Chiki Punctuation Mucaad") to mark the end of sentence. Similarly, it also uses (U+1C7F "Ol Chiki Punctuation Double Mucaad") to indicate a major break, like end of section, although rarely used.


title: Full stop

text: In Sinhala, a symbol called "kundaliya": "෴" (U+0DF4 "Sinhala Punctuation Kunddaliya") was used before the colonial era. Periods were later introduced into Sinhalese script after the introduction of paper due to the influence of European languages.


title: Full stop

text: However, in Thai, no symbol corresponding to the full stop is used as "terminal punctuation". A sentence is written without spaces and a space is typically used to mark the end of a clause or sentence.


title: Full stop

text: The Tibetan script uses two different full-stops: "tshig-grub" (U+0F0D "Tibetan Mark Shad") marks end of a section of text; "don-tshan" (U+0F0E "Tibetan Mark Nyis Shad") marks end of a whole topic. The descendants of Tibetic script also use similar symbols: For example, the Róng script of Lepcha language uses (U+1C3B "Lepcha Punctuation Ta-Rol") and (U+1C3C "Lepcha Punctuation Nyet Thyoom Ta-Rol").


title: Full stop

text: However, due to influence of Burmese script, the Meitei script of Manipuri language uses (U+AAF0 "Meetei Mayek Cheikhan") for comma and (U+ABEB "Meetei Mayek Cheikhei") to mark the end of sentence.


title: Full stop

text: For Indo-Aryan languages which are written in Nastaliq, like Kashmiri, Panjabi, Saraiki and Urdu, a symbol called () is used as a full stop at the end of sentences and in abbreviations. It () looks similar to a lowered dash ().


title: Full stop

text: In the Ge'ez script used to write Amharic and several other Ethiopian and Eritrean languages, the equivalent of the full stop following a sentence is the "።"—which means "four dots". The two dots on the right are slightly ascending from the two on the left, with space in between.


title: Full stop

text: Researchers from Binghamton University performed a small study, published in 2016, on young adults and found that text messages that included sentences ended with full stops—as opposed to those with no terminal punctuation—were perceived as insincere, though they stipulated that their results apply only to this particular medium of communication: "Our sense was, is that because [text messages] were informal and had a chatty kind of feeling to them, that a period may have seemed stuffy, too formal, in that context," said head researcher Cecelia Klin. The study did not find handwritten notes to be affected.


title: Full stop

text: A 2016 story by Jeff Guo in "The Washington Post", stated that the line break had become the default method of punctuation in texting, comparable to the use of line breaks in poetry, and that a period at the end of a sentence causes the tone of the message to be perceived as cold, angry or passive-aggressive.


title: Full stop

text: According to Gretchen McCulloch, an internet linguist, using a full stop to end messages is seen as "rude" by more and more people. She said this can be attributed to the way we text and use instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. She added that the default way to break up one's thoughts is to send each thought as an individual message.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Precursors to postmodern literature include Miguel de Cervantes’ "Don Quixote" (1605–1615), Laurence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" (1760–1767), Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" (1833–34), and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (1957), but postmodern literature was particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 21st century, American literature still features a strong current of postmodern writing, like the postironic Dave Eggers’ "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (2000), and Jennifer Egan’s "A Visit from the Goon Squad" (2011). These works, however, also further develop the postmodern form.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Sometimes the term "postmodernism" is used to discuss many different things ranging from architecture to historical theory to philosophy and film. Because of this fact, several people distinguish between several forms of postmodernism and thus suggest that there are three forms of postmodernism: (1) Postmodernity is understood as a historical period from the mid-1960s to the present, which is different from the (2) theoretical postmodernism, which encompasses the theories developed by thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and others. The third category is the “cultural postmodernism,” which includes film, literature, visual arts, etc. that feature postmodern elements. Postmodern literature is, in this sense, part of cultural postmodernism.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Late 19th and early 20th century playwrights whose work influenced the aesthetics of postmodernism include August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello, and Bertolt Brecht. Another precursor to postmodernism was Dadaism, which challenged the authority of the artist and highlighted elements of chance, whim, parody, and irony. Tristan Tzara claimed in "How to Make a Dadaist Poem" that to create a Dadaist poem one had only to put random words in a hat and pull them out one by one. Another way Dadaism influenced postmodern literature was in the development of collage, specifically collages using elements from advertisement or illustrations from popular novels (the collages of Max Ernst, for example). Artists associated with Surrealism, which developed from Dadaism, continued experimentations with chance and parody while celebrating the flow of the subconscious mind. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, suggested that automatism and the description of dreams should play a greater role in the creation of literature. He used automatism to create his novel "Nadja" and used photographs to replace description as a parody of the overly-descriptive novelists he often criticized. Surrealist René Magritte's experiments with signification are used as examples by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Foucault also uses examples from Jorge Luis Borges, an important direct influence on many postmodernist fiction writers. He is occasionally listed as a postmodernist, although he started writing in the 1920s. The influence of his experiments with metafiction and magic realism was not fully realized in the Anglo-American world until the postmodern period. Ultimately, this is seen as the highest stratification of criticism among scholars.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Other early 20th-century novels such as Raymond Roussel's "" (1910) and "Locus Solus" (1914), and Giorgio de Chirico's "Hebdomeros" (1929) have also been identified as important "postmodern precursor[s]".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Postmodern literature represents a break from the 19th century realism. In character development, both modern and postmodern literature explore subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples in the "stream of consciousness" styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, or explorative poems like "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot. In addition, both modern and postmodern literature explore fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction. "The Waste Land" is often cited as a means of distinguishing modern and postmodern literature. The poem is fragmentary and employs pastiche like much postmodern literature, but the speaker in "The Waste Land" says, "these fragments I have shored against my ruins". Modernist literature sees fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict, a problem that must be solved, and the artist is often cited as the one to solve it. Postmodernists, however, often demonstrate that this chaos is insurmountable; the artist is impotent, and the only recourse against "ruin" is to play within the chaos. Playfulness is present in many modernist works (Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" or Woolf's "", for example) and they may seem very similar to postmodern works, but with postmodernism playfulness becomes central and the actual achievement of order and meaning becomes unlikely. Gertrude Stein's playful experiment with metafiction and genre in "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (1933) has been interpreted as postmodern.


title: Postmodern literature

text: As with all stylistic eras, no definite dates exist for the rise and fall of postmodernism's popularity. 1941, the year in which Irish novelist James Joyce and English novelist Virginia Woolf both died, is sometimes used as a rough boundary for postmodernism's start. Irish novelist Flann O'Brien completed "The Third Policeman" in 1939. It was rejected for publication and remained supposedly lost until published posthumously in 1967. A revised version called "The Dalkey Archive" was published before the original in 1964, two years before O'Brien died. Notwithstanding its dilatory appearance, the literary theorist Keith Hopper regards "The Third Policeman" as one of the first of that genre they call the postmodern novel.


title: Postmodern literature

text: The prefix "post", however, does not necessarily imply a new era. Rather, it could also indicate a reaction against modernism in the wake of the Second World War (with its disrespect for human rights, just confirmed in the Geneva Convention, through the rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the Katyn massacre, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, and Japanese American internment). It could also imply a reaction to significant post-war events: the beginning of the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, postcolonialism (Postcolonial literature), and the rise of the personal computer (Cyberpunk and Hypertext fiction).


title: Postmodern literature

text: Some further argue that the beginning of postmodern literature could be marked by significant publications or literary events. For example, some mark the beginning of postmodernism with the first publication of John Hawkes' "The Cannibal" in 1949, the first performance of "En attendant Godot" in 1953 ("Waiting for Godot", 1955), the first publication of "Howl" in 1956 or of "Naked Lunch" in 1959. For others the beginning is marked by moments in critical theory: Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play" lecture in 1966 or as late as Ihab Hassan's usage in "The Dismemberment of Orpheus" in 1971. Brian McHale details his main thesis on this shift, although many postmodern works have developed out of modernism, modernism is characterised by an epistemological dominant while postmodern works are primarily concerned with questions of ontology.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Though postmodernist literature does not include everything written in the postmodern period, several post-war developments in literature (such as the Theatre of the Absurd, the Beat Generation, and magic realism) have significant similarities. These developments are occasionally collectively labeled "postmodern"; more commonly, some key figures (Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez) are cited as significant contributors to the postmodern aesthetic.


title: Postmodern literature

text: The work of Alfred Jarry, the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud, Luigi Pirandello and so on also influenced the work of playwrights from the Theatre of the Absurd. The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin to describe a tendency in theatre in the 1950s; he related it to Albert Camus's concept of the absurd. The plays of the Theatre of the Absurd parallel postmodern fiction in many ways. For example, "The Bald Soprano" by Eugène Ionesco is essentially a series of clichés taken from a language textbook. One of the most important figures to be categorized as both Absurdist and Postmodern is Samuel Beckett. The work of Beckett is often seen as marking the shift from modernism to postmodernism in literature. He had close ties with modernism because of his friendship with James Joyce; however, his work helped shape the development of literature away from modernism. Joyce, one of the exemplars of modernism, celebrated the possibility of language; Beckett had a revelation in 1945 that, in order to escape the shadow of Joyce, he must focus on the poverty of language and man as a failure. His later work, likewise, featured characters stuck in inescapable situations attempting impotently to communicate whose only recourse is to play, to make the best of what they have. As Hans-Peter Wagner says:


title: Postmodern literature

text: The "Beat Generation" was the youth of America during the materialistic 1950s; Jack Kerouac, who coined the term, developed ideas of automatism into what he called "spontaneous prose" to create a maximalistic, multi-novel epic called the Duluoz Legend in the mold of Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". More broadly, "Beat Generation" often includes several groups of post-war American writers from the Black Mountain poets, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance, and so on. These writers have occasionally also been referred to as the "Postmoderns" (see especially references by Charles Olson and the Grove anthologies edited by Donald Allen). Though this is now a less common usage of "postmodern", references to these writers as "postmodernists" still appear and many writers associated with this group (John Ashbery, Richard Brautigan, Gilbert Sorrentino, and so on) appear often on lists of postmodern writers. One writer associated with the Beat Generation who appears most often on lists of postmodern writers is William S. Burroughs. Burroughs published "Naked Lunch" in Paris in 1959 and in America in 1961; this is considered by some the first truly postmodern novel because it is fragmentary, with no central narrative arc; it employs pastiche to fold in elements from popular genres such as detective fiction and science fiction; it's full of parody, paradox, and playfulness; and, according to some accounts, friends Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg edited the book guided by chance. He is also noted, along with Brion Gysin, for the creation of the "cut-up" technique, a technique (similar to Tzara's "Dadaist Poem") in which words and phrases are cut from a newspaper or other publication and rearranged to form a new message. This is the technique he used to create novels such as "Nova Express" and "The Ticket That Exploded".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Magic Realism is a technique popular among Latin American writers (and can also be considered its own genre) in which supernatural elements are treated as mundane (a famous example being the practical-minded and ultimately dismissive treatment of an apparently angelic figure in Gabriel García Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"). Though the technique has its roots in traditional storytelling, it was a center piece of the Latin American "boom", a movement coterminous with postmodernism. Some of the major figures of the "Boom" and practitioners of Magic Realism (Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar etc.) are sometimes listed as postmodernists. This labeling, however, is not without its problems. In Spanish-speaking Latin America, "modernismo" and "posmodernismo" refer to early 20th-century literary movements that have no direct relationship to "modernism" and "postmodernism" in English. Finding it anachronistic, Octavio Paz has argued that postmodernism is an imported grand récit that is incompatible with the cultural production of Latin America.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Along with Beckett and Borges, a commonly cited transitional figure is Vladimir Nabokov; like Beckett and Borges, Nabokov started publishing before the beginning of postmodernity (1926 in Russian, 1941 in English). Though his most famous novel, "Lolita" (1955), could be considered a modernist or a postmodernist novel, his later work (specifically "Pale Fire" in 1962 and "" in 1969) are more clearly postmodern.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Some of the earliest examples of postmodern literature are from the 1950s: William Gaddis' "The Recognitions" (1955), Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" (1955), and William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" (1959). It then rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" in 1961, John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" in 1968, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" in 1969, and many others. Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel "Gravity's Rainbow" is "often considered as postmodern novel, redefining both postmodernism and the novel in general."


title: Postmodern literature

text: The 1980s, however, also saw several key works of postmodern literature. Don DeLillo's "White Noise", Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" and this is also the era when literary critics wrote some of the classic works of literary history, charting American postmodern literature: works by Brian McHale, Linda Hutcheon, and Paul Maltby who argues that it was not until the 1980s that the term "postmodern" caught on as the label for this style of writing.


title: Postmodern literature

text: A new generation of writers—such as David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, Chuck Palahniuk, Jennifer Egan, Neil Gaiman, Carole Maso, Richard Powers, Jonathan Lethem—and publications such as "McSweeney's", "The Believer", and the fiction pages of "The New Yorker", herald either a new chapter of postmodernism or possibly post-postmodernism. Many of these authors emphasize a strong urge for sincerity in literature.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Several themes and techniques are indicative of writing in the postmodern era. These themes and techniques are often used together. For example, metafiction and pastiche are often used for irony. These are not used by all postmodernists, nor is this an exclusive list of features.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Linda Hutcheon claimed postmodern fiction as a whole could be characterized by the ironic quote marks, that much of it can be taken as tongue-in-cheek. This irony, along with black humor and the general concept of "play" (related to Derrida's concept or the ideas advocated by Roland Barthes in "The Pleasure of the Text") are among the most recognizable aspects of postmodernism. Though the idea of employing these in literature did not start with the postmodernists (the modernists were often playful and ironic), they became central features in many postmodern works. In fact, several novelists later to be labeled postmodern were first collectively labeled black humorists: John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman, etc. It is common for postmodernists to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way: for example, the way Heller and Vonnegut address the events of World War II. The central concept of Heller's "Catch-22" is the irony of the now-idiomatic "catch-22", and the narrative is structured around a long series of similar ironies. Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" in particular provides prime examples of playfulness, often including silly wordplay, within a serious context. For example, it contains characters named Mike Fallopian and Stanley Koteks and a radio station called KCUF, while the novel as a whole has a serious subject and a complex structure.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Since postmodernism represents a decentred concept of the universe in which individual works are not isolated creations, much of the focus in the study of postmodern literature is on intertextuality: the relationship between one text (a novel for example) and another or one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history. Intertextuality in postmodern literature can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a work, or the adoption of a style. In postmodern literature this commonly manifests as references to fairy tales—as in works by Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, and many others—or in references to popular genres such as sci-fi and detective fiction. Often intertextuality is more complicated than a single reference to another text. Robert Coover's "Pinocchio in Venice", for example, links Pinocchio to Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice". Also, Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" takes on the form of a detective novel and makes references to authors such as Aristotle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Borges. An early 20th century example of intertextuality which influenced later postmodernists is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Jorge Luis Borges, a story with significant references to "Don Quixote" which is also a good example of intertextuality with its references to Medieval romances. "Don Quixote" is a common reference with postmodernists, for example Kathy Acker's novel "Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream". References to "Don Quixote" can also be seen in Paul Auster's post-modern detective story, "City of Glass". Another example of intertextuality in postmodernism is John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor" which deals with Ebenezer Cooke's poem of the same name.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Related to postmodern intertextuality, pastiche means to combine, or "paste" together, multiple elements. In Postmodernist literature this can be a homage to or a parody of past styles. It can be seen as a representation of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society. It can be a combination of multiple genres to create a unique narrative or to comment on situations in postmodernity: for example, William S. Burroughs uses science fiction, detective fiction, westerns; Margaret Atwood uses science fiction and fairy tales; Umberto Eco uses detective fiction, fairy tales, and science fiction, and so on. Though commonly involves the mixing of genres, many other elements are also included (metafiction and temporal distortion are common in the broader pastiche of the postmodern novel). In Robert Coover's 1977 novel "The Public Burning", Coover mixes historically inaccurate accounts of Richard Nixon interacting with historical figures and fictional characters such as Uncle Sam and Betty Crocker. Pastiche can instead involve a compositional technique, for example the cut-up technique employed by Burroughs. Another example is B. S. Johnson's 1969 novel "The Unfortunates"; it was released in a box with no binding so that readers could assemble it however they chose.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Metafiction is essentially writing about writing or "foregrounding the apparatus", as it's typical of deconstructionist approaches, making the artificiality of art or the fictionality of fiction apparent to the reader and generally disregards the necessity for "willing suspension of disbelief." For example, postmodern sensibility and metafiction dictate that works of parody should parody the idea of parody itself.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Metafiction is often employed to undermine the authority of the author, for unexpected narrative shifts, to advance a story in a unique way, for emotional distance, or to comment on the act of storytelling. For example, Italo Calvino's 1979 novel "If on a winter's night a traveler" is about a reader attempting to read a novel of the same name. Kurt Vonnegut also commonly used this technique: the first chapter of his 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" is about the process of writing the novel and calls attention to his own presence throughout the novel. Though much of the novel has to do with Vonnegut's own experiences during the firebombing of Dresden, Vonnegut continually points out the artificiality of the central narrative arc which contains obviously fictional elements such as aliens and time travel. Similarly, Tim O'Brien's 1990 short story cycle "The Things They Carried", about one platoon's experiences during the Vietnam War, features a character named Tim O'Brien; though O'Brien was a Vietnam veteran, the book is a work of fiction and O'Brien calls into question the fictionality of the characters and incidents throughout the book. One story in the book, "How to Tell a True War Story", questions the nature of telling stories. Factual retellings of war stories, the narrator says, would be unbelievable, and heroic, moral war stories don't capture the truth. David Foster Wallace in "The Pale King" writes that the copyright page claims it is fiction only for legal purposes, and that everything within the novel is non-fiction. He employs a character in the novel named David Foster Wallace. Giannina Braschi also has a namesake character and uses metafiction and pastiche in her novels "Yo-Yo Boing!" and "United States of Banana" about the collapse of the American empire.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Fabulation is a term sometimes used interchangeably with metafiction and relates to pastiche and Magic Realism. It is a rejection of realism which embraces the notion that literature is a created work and not bound by notions of mimesis and verisimilitude. Thus, fabulation challenges some traditional notions of literature—the traditional structure of a novel or role of the narrator, for example—and integrates other traditional notions of storytelling, including fantastical elements, such as magic and myth, or elements from popular genres such as science fiction. By some accounts, the term was coined by Robert Scholes in his book "The Fabulators". Strong examples of fabulation in contemporary literature are found in Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Poioumenon (plural: poioumena; from , "product") is a term coined by Alastair Fowler to refer to a specific type of metafiction in which the story is about the process of creation. According to Fowler, "the poioumenon is calculated to offer opportunities to explore the boundaries of fiction and reality—the limits of narrative truth." In many cases, the book will be about the process of creating the book or includes a central metaphor for this process. Common examples of this are Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus", and Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy", which is about the narrator's frustrated attempt to tell his own story. A significant postmodern example is Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire" (1962), in which the narrator, Kinbote, claims he is writing an analysis of John Shade's long poem "Pale Fire", but the narrative of the relationship between Shade and Kinbote is presented in what is ostensibly the footnotes to the poem. Similarly, the self-conscious narrator in Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" parallels the creation of his book to the creation of chutney and the creation of independent India. "Anagrams" (1970), by David R. Slavitt, describes a week in the life of a poet and his creation of a poem which, by the last couple of pages, proves remarkably prophetic. In "The Comforters", Muriel Spark's protagonist hears the sound of a typewriter and voices that later may transform into the novel itself. Jan Křesadlo purports to be merely the translator of a "chrononaut's" handed down Homeric Greek science fiction epic, the "Astronautilia". Other postmodern examples of poioumena include Samuel Beckett's trilogy ("Molloy", "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable"); Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook"; John Fowles's "Mantissa"; William Golding's "The Paper Men"; Gilbert Sorrentino's "Mulligan Stew"; and S. D. Chrostowska's "Permission".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Linda Hutcheon coined the term "historiographic metafiction" to refer to works that fictionalize actual historical events or figures; notable examples include "The General in His Labyrinth" by Gabriel García Márquez (about Simón Bolívar), "Flaubert's Parrot" by Julian Barnes (about Gustave Flaubert), "Ragtime" by E. L. Doctorow (which features such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Booker T. Washington, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung), and Rabih Alameddine's "" which makes references to the Lebanese Civil War and various real life political figures. Thomas Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" also employs this concept; for example, a scene featuring George Washington smoking marijuana is included. John Fowles deals similarly with the Victorian period in "The French Lieutenant's Woman". Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" has been said to feature a metafictional, "Janus-headed" outlook in the way the novel seeks to represent both from World War II while, at the same time, the very notion of doing exactly that.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Temporal distortion is a common technique in modernist fiction: fragmentation and nonlinear narratives are central features in both modern and postmodern literature. Temporal distortion in postmodern fiction is used in a variety of ways, often for the sake of irony. Historiographic metafiction is an example of this. Distortions in time are central features in many of Kurt Vonnegut's nonlinear novels, the most famous of which is perhaps Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five" becoming "unstuck in time". In "Flight to Canada", Ishmael Reed deals playfully with anachronisms, Abraham Lincoln using a telephone for example. Time may also overlap, repeat, or bifurcate into multiple possibilities. For example, in Robert Coover's "The Babysitter" from "Pricksongs & Descants", the author presents multiple possible events occurring simultaneously—in one section the babysitter is murdered while in another section nothing happens and so on—yet no version of the story is favored as the correct version.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Magic realism may be literary work marked by the use of still, sharply defined, smoothly painted images of figures and objects depicted in a surrealistic manner. The themes and subjects are often imaginary, somewhat outlandish and fantastic and with a certain dream-like quality. Some of the characteristic features of this kind of fiction are the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or bizarre, skillful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots, miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the element of surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the inexplicable. It has been applied, for instance, to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, author of "Historia universal de la infamia" (1935) is considered a bridge between modernism and postmodernism in world literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez is also regarded as a notable exponent of this kind of fiction—especially his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude". The Cuban Alejo Carpentier ("The Kingdom of This World", 1949) is another described as a "magic realist". Postmodernists such as Italo Calvino ("The Baron in the Trees", 1957), and Salman Rushdie ("The Ground Beneath Her Feet", 1999), commonly use magic realism in their work. A fusion of fabulism with magic realism is apparent in such early 21st-century American short stories as Kevin Brockmeier's "The Ceiling", Dan Chaon's "Big Me", Jacob M. Appel's "Exposure", and Elizabeth Graver's "The Mourning Door".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Fredric Jameson called postmodernism the "cultural logic of late capitalism". "Late capitalism" implies that society has moved past the industrial age and into the information age. Likewise, Jean Baudrillard claimed postmodernity was defined by a shift into hyperreality in which simulations have replaced the real. In postmodernity people are inundated with information, technology has become a central focus in many lives, and one's understanding of the real is mediated by simulations of the real. Many works of fiction have dealt with this aspect of postmodernity with characteristic irony and pastiche. For example, the virtual reality of "empathy boxes" in Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" in which a new technology-based religion called Mercerism arises. Another example is Don DeLillo's "White Noise" presents characters who are bombarded with a "white noise" of television, product brand names, and clichés. The cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and many others use science fiction techniques to address this postmodern, hyperreal information bombardment.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Perhaps demonstrated most famously and effectively in Heller's "Catch-22", the sense of paranoia, the belief that there's an ordering system behind the chaos of the world is another recurring postmodern theme. For the postmodernist, no ordering is extremely dependent upon the subject, so paranoia often straddles the line between delusion and brilliant insight. Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", long-considered a prototype of postmodern literature, presents a situation which may be "coincidence or conspiracy – or a cruel joke". This often coincides with the theme of technoculture and hyperreality. For example, in "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut, the character Dwayne Hoover becomes violent when he's convinced that everyone else in the world is a robot and he is the only human. This theme is likewise present in the satirical dystopian science-fiction tabletop role-playing game "Paranoia".


title: Postmodern literature

text: Dubbed maximalism by some critics, the sprawling canvas and fragmented narrative of such writers as Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace has generated controversy on the "purpose" of a novel as narrative and the standards by which it should be judged. The postmodern position is that the style of a novel must be appropriate to what it depicts and represents, and points back to such examples in previous ages as "Gargantua" by François Rabelais and the "Odyssey" of Homer, which Nancy Felson hails as the exemplar of the polytropic audience and its engagement with a work.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Many modernist critics, notably B.R. Myers in his polemic "A Reader's Manifesto", attack the maximalist novel as being disorganized, sterile and filled with language play for its own sake, empty of emotional commitment—and therefore empty of value as a novel. Yet there are counter-examples, such as Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" and David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" where postmodern narrative coexists with emotional commitment.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Literary minimalism can be characterized as a focus on a surface description where readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional. Generally, the short stories are "slice of life" stories. Minimalism, the opposite of maximalism, is a representation of only the most basic and necessary pieces, specific by economy with words. Minimalist authors hesitate to use adjectives, adverbs, or meaningless details. Instead of providing every minute detail, the author provides a general context and then allows the reader's imagination to shape the story. Among those categorized as postmodernist, literary minimalism is most commonly associated with Jon Fosse and especially Samuel Beckett.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Fragmentation is another important aspect of postmodern literature. Various elements, concerning plot, characters, themes, imagery and factual references are fragmented and dispersed throughout the entire work. In general, there is an interrupted sequence of events, character development and action which can at first glance look modern. Fragmentation purports, however, to depict a metaphysically unfounded, chaotic universe. It can occur in language, sentence structure or grammar. In "", a fictional diary by Greek writer Dimitris Lyacos, one of the major exponents of fragmentation in postmodern literature, an almost telegraphic style is adopted, devoid, in most part, of articles and conjunctions. The text is interspersed with lacunae and everyday language combines with poetry and biblical references leading up to syntax disruption and distortion of grammar. A sense of alienation of character and world is created by a language medium invented to form a kind of intermittent syntax structure which complements the illustration of the main character's subconscious fears and paranoia in the course of his exploration of a seemingly chaotic world.


title: Postmodern literature

text: Patricia Lockwood's 2021 Booker-shortlisted novel, No One Is Talking About This is a recent example of fragmentation, employing the technique to consider the effects of internet usage on quality of life and the creative process.


title: Postmodern literature

text: John Barth, a postmodernist novelist who talks often about the label "postmodern", wrote an influential essay in 1967 called "The Literature of Exhaustion" and in 1980 published "The Literature of Replenishment" in order to clarify the earlier essay. "The Literature of Exhaustion" was about the need for a new era in literature after modernism had exhausted itself. In "The Literature of Replenishment" Barth says:


title: Postmodern literature

text: Many of the well-known postmodern novels deal with World War II, one of the most famous of which being Joseph Heller's "Catch-22". Heller claimed his novel and many of the other American novels of the time had more to do with the state of the country after the war:


title: Postmodern literature

text: In his "Reflections on 'The Name of the Rose", the novelist and theorist Umberto Eco explains his idea of postmodernism as a kind of double-coding, and as a transhistorical phenomenon:


title: Postmodern literature

text: Novelist David Foster Wallace in his 1990 essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" makes the connection between the rise of postmodernism and the rise of television with its tendency toward self-reference and the ironic juxtaposition of what's seen and what's said. This, he claims, explains the preponderance of pop culture references in postmodern literature:


title: Top of the Lake

text: Top of the Lake is a mystery drama television series created and written by Jane Campion and Gerard Lee, and directed by Campion and Garth Davis. It aired in 2013, and the sequel, entitled "Top of the Lake: China Girl", in 2017. It marks Campion's first work for television since "An Angel at My Table" in 1990.