Q

"Q" is also a: user

created by Tok
(thing) by ameoba (2.4 y) (print)   (I like it!) 1 C! Thu May 25 2000 at 15:53:28
The Waldorf Q is a 16 part multi timbral virtual analog synthesizer with 16 voices, expandable to a total of 32 voices. In multi mode, up to 4 parts keep their 2 high quality effects, giving a total of 8 effect processors. Each voice offers 3 LFOs, 3 oscillators with all classic shapes plus new algorithms, 2 filters with a sophisticated routing method and all filter types that you expect from a virtual analog synthesizer. Furthermore, the Q offers unique Comb filter types in two flavours. This enables the Q not only to create polyphonic Chorus or Flanger effects but previously unheard athmos or pluck sounds with great life. To top things off, the Waldorf Q has a very powerful arpeggiator and an even more powerful step sequencer. And with 58 endless rotaries, the Waldorf Q easily doubles the number of controls of other synths.

from http://www.waldorf-gmbh.de

Oy.. this is a blatant cut and paste writeup. Somebody should write some original material and have this nuked.
(thing) by mimewars (1.7 y) (print)   (I like it!) Thu Aug 16 2001 at 17:25:39
In a recording studio/on recording equipment (not to be confused with "cue"):

"Q" stands for the bandwidth affected by a particular piece of equipment, usually an EQ unit or synthesizer. In other words, it's the span of frequencies, in octaves, around the central frequency that will be boost or cut. Higher end EQ units will have an adjustable Q.

For example, if you have a graphic EQ, and you boost 4 kHz 6 dB, typically (it could be different for particular units) this boost will effect one octave on either side of the center frequency (4 kHz).

(thing) by Helen4Morrissey (1.1 mon) (print)   (I like it!) Sat Apr 06 2002 at 11:49:44
Q is a British music magazine, published by Emap. The content ranges from modern indie / rock music reviews to features about classic bands and albums. The quality of the writing is usually high, and the styles of music covered wide. Q normally manages a few real scoops a year.

At least once a year the magazine offers a free CD to its readers, containing "the best songs from the best albums" of that year.

(thing) by caknuck (6.2 d) (print)   (I like it!) 7 C!s Mon Mar 01 2004 at 7:47:22

Q the Letter
Q ("kyoo") is the 17th letter and 13th consonant of the alphabet. Despite its position of honor on the QWERTY keyboard, Q is the one of the three least-used letters in the English language (explaining its value of 10 points in SCRABBLE). In the grammar of English and most Romance languages, the rule is that Q is immediately followed by a U, and is pronounced as /kw/. The letter Q derives from the Phoenician qoph, and is both historically and phonetically linked to the letter K. It had achieved its present graphical form by the mid-Latin period.

Aside from the uppercase 'Q' and the lowercase 'q', this letter also can be represented in the following ways:
Morse code: --.-
ASCII: 81 (uppercase), 113 (lowercase)
Semaphore: LH high, RH out
Unicode: Q (uppercase), q (lowercase)
Phonetic alphabet: "Quebec" 

          * *
Braille:  * *
          * .

Q the Movie
In 1982, writer/director Larry Cohen had the perfect formula for a B movie. You have a dragon fly around the Big Apple skyline, stopping only to snack upon window washers and nude sunbathers lounging on their rooftops. What could make this better? Have Shaft and Caine from "Kung Fu" track it down! "Q" (alternately "Q: The Winged Serpent") was the result.

The plot goes something like this: The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl is summoned to modern-day (in 1982, at least) New York City in the form of a winged serpent. It makes a nest at the top of the landmark Chrysler Building, whence it searches for its topless prey. The NYPD assigns Detective Shepard (David Carradine) and Sergeant Powell (Richard Roundtree) to investigate a rash of disappearances. With the aid of a street thug (Michael Moriarty), the cops uncover the lair, kill the creature and finally track down the museum worker who summoned the hungry god.

Although the film was marred by low-grade stop motion special effects (reminiscent of Clash of the Titans), it has a passionate cult following. Moriarty delivers an intense -- if somewhat misplaced -- performance as a junkie career criminal trying to move up in station. The door for a sequel (yet to be made) was left open, as one of Quetzalcoatl's unhatched eggs was left behind in its nest. duh-duh-DUH!

Q the Music
According to The All-Music Guide, five albums titled "Q" have been released. They are:

Additionally, AMG lists five artists named "Q", as well as one "The Q". No biographical information for any of these artists is available, so it is possible that there are duplicate listings. Several artists have recorded songs titled "Q".

Q the Characters
James Bond - In Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, as well as the movies based on them, 007 usually pays a visit to "Q" at least once. Q's job was to oversee the laboratory that developed Bond's trademark spy gadgets (including the watch laser, the pen bomb and the myriad of weapons/devices installed in Bond's fleet of sports cars). Welshman Desmond Llewelyn portrayed Q (revealed to be a Major Boothroyd in Fleming's novels) in seventeen Bond films over the course of 36 years and five Bonds. Only Llewelyn's death in December 1999 ended his streak, with English funnyman John Cleese taking up the mantle of Q for 2002's Die Another Day (and the upcoming Bond feature, set for a 2005 release).

Star Trek - Introduced in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the race of seemingly omnipotent beings known as the Q Continuum -- and especially the recurring character known as "Q" (John deLancie) -- have shown up repeatedly in the Star Trek series. Individually, any member of the Continuum is known as a Q. In total, deLancie's Q appeared in eight episodes of TNG, one of Deep Space 9 and three of Voyager.

Get Smart - The Washington Chief of CONTROL (Maxwell Smart's spy agency in the mid-60s sitcom) also bore the codename "Q". Newer agents had numbered codenames -- like "86" (Smart, played by Don Adams) and "99" (played by Barbara Felton) -- but the Chief's tenure with CONTROL dated to a time when only letters were needed. (From this, we can infer that he was the 17th spy to join the organization.) Usually known as "Chief," he was played for the duration of the series by veteran actor Edward Platt.

K.A.O.S. - In the LARP game K.A.O.S. (Killing as an Organized Sport), the title "Q" is given to the organizer and head official of a "killing round." Q is in charge of setting start and finish times for the round, establishing ground rules, making rulings on problems not covered within the rules, etc. Q, true to the title's roots in spy fiction, is also responsible for weaponry, including approving new weapons and defusing "letter bombs". Most requests must be accompanied by a small bribe, usually sweets like chocolate fish or a can of soda. Q usually appoints a "K", who acts on behalf of Q when he/she is not available.

Q in Mathematics and Applied Science
Q and q are commonly used in mathematical and scientific equations to represent variables, constants and other numbers (or sets of numbers). Here is a brief list:

  • In thermodynamics, capital Q denotes the property of heat. In the First Law of Thermodynamics, it is stated as:

    Q = dE - W

    ...meaning that heat is equal to the total change of energy in a system minus the amount of work done within that system. Or, for those who like the calculus...

    ∮(dQ - dW) = 0

    ...meaning that the differentials of heat and work within a closed, cyclical system are equal.

  • In algebra, the double struck Q (ℚ) represents a set or field of rational numbers.
  • In physics, q is most often used to represent electrical charge.
  • Engineers use Q (or, more correctly, Q-factor) to refer to the factor of magnification (or diminuation) to a signal or power source in order to bring a target to resonance. This is especially important in designing musical instruments and audio equipment.

Q the Nickname
Not many names begin with the letter 'Q', so the usage of "Q" as a nickname is rather limited. Two celebrities that answer to Q are Quincy Jones and Quentin Tarantino.

In the British Army, as well as other armies that follow the British model, "Q" or "The Q" is short for "(the) quartermaster." The quartermaster is the NCO responsible for the issuance and upkeep of military stores. Units usually have either a RQMS (Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant) or a CQMS (Company Quartermaster Sergeant), or both. The character Q from the James Bond novels/films draws his nickname from this usage.

Q the Abbreviation
In addition to the uses outlined in the "Nicknames" section (see above), "Q" is used frequently in the customer support field as an abbreviation for the homophone "queue." "The Q" is the amount of calls waiting on hold for a customer service representative, sometimes displayed on toteboards or call monitoring software.

More frequently, "Q" is used as an abbreviation for "question" in the very common "FAQ" and "Q and A" types of documents. This abbreviation is also employed for transcribing interviews and for printing jokes.

In the worlds of chess and card games, Q is used commonly as the abbreviation for "queen." For instance, the queen of spades is usually recorded in most card games as "Q♠", but bridge notation flip-flops it, writing it as "♠Q". Similarly, a set of moves in chess may be transcribed in Simplified Algebraic Notation much like...

    WHITE       BLACK
                ...
17. Na4?        Qb4+ (Queen moves to square b4, places White in check) 
18. Ke2         Rxf2+ 
19. Bxf2        Qd2+ (Queen to d2, check again)
20. (resigns)

Q is the official NYSE ticker symbol for Qwest Communications.

A puzzling Q-abbreviation is the idiom "Mind your p's and q's." Etymologists have yet to come up with a definitive single source for the phrase, which may have its origins in pub bookkeeping, French dancing or typography. See the node for the phrase for a much more thorough treatment.

One final, and much more recent, usage of the Q-abbreviation is the "-Q" substitution for "...-k You". This produces such recognizable -- to a fifth-grader, at least -- forms as "Ten-Q" and the immortal "Fah-Q".

Cue the Appendix
Q's Star Trek appearances:

Cue the Sources
Unicode - http://www.unicode.org
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) - http://www.imdb.com
Principles of Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology (1990), Anthony R. Philpotts, 498 pp., Prentice Hall
Georgia State University, HyperPhysics - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html
KAOS - http://kaos.org.nz
startrek.com: Library: Aliens: Q - http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/aliens/article/70700.html
The All-Music Guide - http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll

(thing) by hapax (3.6 hr) (print)   (I like it!) 6 C!s Sun Jan 16 2005 at 2:29:46

Q and the New Testament

The name Q comes from the German word Quelle, meaning "source." Q is a hypothetical document that is an important part of various solutions that have been proposed to the Synoptic Problem -- that is to say, the question of the interrelationships between the first three gospels of the New Testament canon.

Contemporary scholars of the New Testament believe, for a number of reasons, that the gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written. The authors of Matthew and Luke used substantial parts of Mark in compiling their own gospels... but they also seem to have used some other source, since they have a great deal of material in common that does not appear in Mark. This material is called the "double tradition", and the hypothetical document that originally served as its source is called Q.

A sayings gospel?

It is interesting that the double tradition material is made up almost exclusively of Jesus' sayings. Its author seems to have had very little interest in the details of Jesus' life. Q does not contain any account of Jesus' birth, his travels, or his death, and miracle stories are almost completely absent from it. When the existence of Q was first posited at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Johann Griesbach, some of his peers thought it unlikely that anyone would have bothered to write a gospel made up entirely of sayings. After all, isn't salvation what it's all about? How can you have salvation without the Passion, the crucifixion, and the resurrection?

This criticism of the Q theory took a serious blow, however, when the Gospel of Thomas was found in the sands of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Note that the Gospel of Thomas is not Q -- each contains plenty of material that does not exist in the other, their overlaps are relatively few, and their theological orientation radically different. Nevertheless, the existence of Thomas proves that there were indeed groups of Christians in the ancient world who were perfectly satisfied with a bare list of Jesus' teachings.

I said that criticisms of Q took a blow with the discovery of Thomas. I did not say they evaporated completely. Some scholars were quick to point out that Thomas is a true sayings gospel -- it contains no narrative at all. The double tradition, however, does contain snatches of narrative, along with a single miracle: namely, the story of the healing of the centurion's slave (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-9). What is that story doing there? Why would the author of a "sayings gospel" feel compelled to throw in a single miracle, unconnected to anything? Prominent scholars of Q, notably John Kloppenborg, try to explain how the pericope about the centurion was important for the construction of the proto-gospel, but it must be acknowledged that its presence complicates our sense of Q's genre.

The "Minor Agreements"

Another problem with the Q theory arises out of the so-called "minor agreements," that is to say, the points at which Matthew and Luke agree against Mark. This is significant because the more Matthew and Luke agree with one another, the less likely it is that they were written independently, and therefore, the less Q is needed as a solution to the Synoptic Problem. If Luke was based on Matthew, the principle of Occam's razor would forbid us from inventing another hypothetical source.

A great majority of the minor agreements are easily explained without threatening Q. Since Mark's Greek is crude, street-level, and "un-literary" (I have occasionally called it "AOL Greek"), both Matthew and Luke were frequently tempted to clean it up. The fact that they often changed his grammar and vocabulary in the same way doesn't necessarily mean that they were reading one another's work. For example, Mark mistakenly calls Herod a "king" (Greek basileus) in 6:14. The passage's parallels both use the more correct title "tetrarch" (Matthew 14:1 and Luke 9:7). The impulse to correct Mark does not need to have been copied from anybody else. To illustrate with a modern example, if I naively called George W. Bush the King of the United States, numerous people may, completely independently of one another, replace the inappropriate word I chose with "President". (Quiet in the peanut gallery!)

But some of the minor agreements are more problematic than that. Matthew and Luke write an identical sentence, including a very unusual word, in their reports of the mockery of Jesus at the crucifixion. (The passage in question is "Who is the one who struck you?" -- the word used for striking here appears nowhere else in either gospel.) If Q did not contain a crucifixion scene, where did this strange sentence come from?

The Viability of Q

Despite these problems, solving the Synoptic Problem with Q seems much easier than solving it without Q. There are a number of very compelling reasons to believe that Matthew and Luke were independent. Each writer uses the double tradition material in very different ways (Matthew prefers dumping it into his gospel in huge gloms, while Luke prefers splitting it up and scattering it throughout his text). While Mark's general structure is adhered to faithfully by both Matthew and Luke, double-tradition material appears in different order. Sometimes one gospel contains material that would have been very useful to the other, but for some reason it does not appear there. Even the minor agreements, troublesome as they are, have trouble overcoming these issues.

All that being said, it's a shame that we possess no extant copy of Q; not only that, but we possess no references to it in the writings of patristic authors. Some scholars will remain unconvinced that it ever existed unless a hard copy is actually dug up. Stranger things have happened.

(idea) by in10se (13 s) (print)   (I like it!) Mon Jan 31 2005 at 18:14:31

<q> is an HTML tag used for semantic markup to denote a short quotation within a document. Unlike the block element <blockquote> which is used to denote long passages or quotations within a document, the q tag is an inline element used to include a quotation within another element such as a paragraph.

See also: blockquote, cite, kbd, samp, &quot;

The q tag is infrequently used for two reasons:

  1. It is much easier to type out your quotation marks rather than wrapping tags around your quoted text.
  2. Most web browsers provide only partial support (or no support) for the tag.

Reason #1 is hard to argue with. If something is easy, that is how most people will do it. However, there are reasons why you should take the time to use the q tag. First, the double quotation mark (") is not valid to use within an HTML document except when enclosing an HTML attribute. Instead of typing the quotation mark, you should instead use the quote character reference: &quot; (see also HTML Symbol Reference). In addition, use of the q element makes it easier for screen readers and other accessibility clients to do their job. When the screen reader sees the q tag, it is able to tell the user that the section of text is a quote whereas quotation marks can be used for various other things in your document (foot mark, inch mark, citation, etc).

Reason #2 will be discussed under the "Usage" heading below.

Attributes

The q tag does not have any required HTML attributes, however all of the following are valid (valid E2 attributes for this tag are italicized):

Usage

To use the tag, simply place an opening (<q>) and closing (</q>) tag around the text to be quoted. These tags can be nested. For example:

<p>The witness said, <q>I clearly heard the man yell, <q>I'll kill you!</q> before slamming the door.</q></p>

As seen in the example, there is a quote inside a quote. Using (American) English punctuation, this should be rendered as follows:

The witness said, "I clearly heard the man yell, 'I'll kill you!' before slamming the door."

Notice the single quotation marks (') used inside of the double quotation marks ("). However, as stated above, most browsers do not support the q tag, and even fewer still support nested q tags. Below is how your browser renders the example:

The witness said, I clearly heard the man yell, I'll kill you! before slamming the door.

If your browser displayed both examples the same (and you use an English-based browser), count yourself in the lucky minority. People in other countries should see their proper punctuation based on their software settings. Some of these include1:

  • “English”
  • „German”
  • ”Swedish”
  • «French»
  • »Slovenian«
  • »Swedish Books»

E2 Support?

E2 does provide limited support for the this tag. It does not allow the use of any of its HTML attributes with the exception of the cite attribute. Even though E2 does allow its use on the site, keep in mind that most browsers still do not support it. If you would like to use this tag with any of its other attributes, you can do so in your Notelet Nodelet.

Common Browser Implementations

Below is how various browsers display the example from above. Feel free to /msg me with any other examples.

  • Amaya 8.5; Lynx:
    The witness said, "I clearly heard the man yell, 'I'll kill you!' before slamming the door." (perfect)

  • Camino 0.8 (Mac); Mozilla 1.6 (Windows); Mozilla Firefox 1 (Windows); Netscape 7 (Windows); Opera 7 (Windows); Safari 1.2 (Mac):
    The witness said, "I clearly heard the man yell, "I'll kill you!" before slamming the door." (incorrectly places double quotes around both quotes)

  • w3m 0.2:
    The witness said, 'I clearly heard the man yell, 'I'll kill you!' before slamming the door.' (incorrectly places single quotes around both quotes)

  • Links2 2.1:
    The witness said, I clearly heard the man yell, I'll kill you! before slamming the door. (converts quoted text to bold)

  • Elinks 0.9; Internet Explorer 6 (Windows):
    The witness said, I clearly heard the man yell, I'll kill you! before slamming the door. (no visual changes)

Previous HTML Tag: pre
Next HTML Tag: s
See Also: HTML tags and HTML attributes

1 Thanks to avjewe's great writeup in quotation marks.

Also thanks to Wntrmute, Albert Herring, generic-man, and Calast for submitting various browser implementations.

(definition) by Webster 1913 (print) 1 C! Wed Dec 22 1999 at 2:24:34

Q (kue)

, the seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, has but one sound (that of k), and is always followed by u, the two letters together being sounded like kw, except in some words in which the u is silent. See Guide to Pronunciation, § 249. Q is not found in Anglo-Saxon, cw being used instead of qu; as in cwic, quick; cwen, queen. The name (kue) is from the French ku, which is from the Latin name of the same letter; its form is from the Latin, which derived it, through a Greek alphabet, from the Phœnician, the ultimate origin being Egyptian.

Etymologically, q or qu is most nearly related to a (ch, tch), p, q, and wh; as in cud, quid, L. equus, ecus, horse, Gr. , whence E. equine, hippic; L. quod which, E. what; L. aquila, E. eaqle; E. kitchen, OE. kichene, AS. cycene, L. coquina.

 

© Webster 1913.

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