A post from Shady Characters

Miscellany № 2

Grammar.net

This is the second in a series of one hundred five posts on Miscellany. Start at PART 1, continue to PART 3 or view ALL POSTS in the series.


’s competition for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011 has finally, absolutely and completely closed, and Shady Characters has parlayed 8th place into an actual title: “The Best Grammar Blog of 2011 for Punctuation Tips”. Thanks are in order one last time to all those who voted for Shady Characters!

You may remember that Boyd Adamson asked about the origin of the Apple Mac’s ‘⌘’ character in a comment on The Octothorpe, part 2. I wasn’t able to shed a great deal of light on it, but Shady Characters reader Jason Black has since pointed out an excellent article on Susan Kare, the graphic designer who introduced the ‘⌘’ symbol along with much of the rest of the Mac’s now-iconic visual language. Read it here: The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face.

Lastly, if you haven’t already seen it, Jonathan Hoefler’s (of Hoefler & Frere-Jones) excellent presentation of the nuances of web fonts is well worth a look for typophiles and technologists alike. Enjoy!

2 comments on “Miscellany № 2

  1. Comment posted by Jason Black on

    Thanks for the link! And here’s hoping you will be an enabler for my laziness and dig into that whole “castle seen from above” origin for the command-key symbol. :)

    1. Comment posted by Keith Houston on

      Not at all. And the command key symbol is definitely on my list of things to look at, though when I’ll get onto it is another matter entirely!

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