Miscellany № 11

Conrad Altmann, proprietor of Altmannhaus Creative, has been reinterpreting the visual forms of some familiar shady characters. My interest was piqued by his recently-posted @-symbol (shown below); where the usual typographic approach is to start with the “single storey” ‘a’ commonly found in italic typefaces, Conrad has instead used the “double storey” ‘a’ more usually associated with roman script. I like it!

Conrad Altmann's double-storey @-symbol
Conrad Altmann’s double-storey @-symbol. (Image courtesy of Conrad Altmann at Altmann Creative.)

Conrad has also produced a swirling, knot-like octothorpe that echoes the heraldic St. John’s Arms (⌘), and an elegant, minimal pilcrow. More characters are on the way at Conrad’s Glyphaday blog, and I’ll be watching it with interest.

If the opinion of the US justice system has anything to do with it, the interrobang may have received its most convincing stamp of approval so far. A couple of weeks ago, Eugene Volokh of the law blog The Volokh Conspiracy broke the unusual news that an interrobang had been sighted in a document issued by the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The first paragraph on page eight of the court’s opinion on Robert F. Booth Trust v. Crowley apparently contains an interrobang, but as luck would have it the court’s website is currently down for maintenance. I remain on tenterhooks., and reader porges has dug up a copy of the offending document. Here, then, for your consideration, is the 7th Circuit court’s interrobang in context:

Plaintiffs say that investors still can gain from this suit, because removing interlocking directors from the board will eliminate any chance that the United States will file a §8 suit to remove them. We don’t get it. In order to avoid a risk of antitrust litigation, the company should be put through the litigation wringer (this suit) with certainty‽

Well, it’s a start. Thanks to porges for his detective work!

And lastly, because I enjoyed researching and writing it so much, I can’t resist a little self-promotion by linking to my article on the oldest working Monotype caster in Scotland.

Shiny Characters № 1: Chepman & Myllar Press

It is a cliché to say so, but the prim façade of suburbia hides some remarkable secrets. A month or two back I was researching the hyphenation practices of the closing years of the Victorian era, a period when printing was in the midst of a change from manual to automated composition courtesy of new-fangled machines such as the “Monotype” and “Linotype” systems. In doing so I came across the website of the Chepman & Myllar Press of Edinburgh,1 which claimed ownership of the last working Monotype caster in Scotland. I had never seen a Linotype or Monotype system in person before and I couldn’t resist emailing Harry McIntosh, the proprietor, on the off chance that I might be able to inveigle my way into a visit. He agreed, much to my surprise, and so it was a few weeks later that I made my way out to Edinburgh’s leafy western suburbs to meet Mr McIntosh at his home. Read more →

Miscellany № 10

Shady characters seem to be popping up in the mainstream media more and more regularly these days. Having discussed its signature use of the diaeresis only a few weeks ago, this month the New Yorker turns its attention to the ‘þ’, or ‘thorn’, a medieval consonant used to represent a ‘th’ sound. In a post on the magazine’s book blog, Mary Norris explains how she shepherded a stray thorn through the composition and proofreading processes — and apparently met with very little resistance in doing so. This heartens me as to the prospects for the Shady Characters book; the ‘þ’ is positively prosaic compared to some of the Unicode mining I’ve been engaged in of late.

Next up, The Atlantic’s sister site The Atlantic Wire has a bee in its bonnet over a (perceived) decline in the standards of punctuation in emails. Making the case that in order to fix a problem, you must first recognise it, Rebecca Greenfield enumerates punctuational sins such as overused exclamation marks and the wanton deployment of ellipses. I am apt to agree with the enigmatically-named brian, whose to-the-point response takes pride of place at the top of the comments on Ms Greenfield’s second article:

SLOW NEWS DAY BREAKS OUT!!!!!!!

Lastly, a bit of fun: London design firm to the point recently made an engaging little typography game available. It may be based on a terrible pun, but I Shot the Serif is nevertheless a diverting way to spend five minutes ridding the world of fuddy-duddy seriffed typefaces in favour of sleek sans-serifs.

Miscellany № 9

A very quick post today, but I thought Shady Characters readers might be interested to hear about a recently-aired BBC Radio 4 programme called “Ampers-Fan”. Narrated by the Daily Telegraph’s deputy art critic Alastair Sooke, the programme looks at the history of the ampersand from the Tironian et all the way through to today’s use in websites, delving into the history of type-cutting and typography along the way. It’s still available to listeners in the UK everywhere for another couple of days — have a listen!

Miscellany № 8

Ray Tomlinson, the software engineer who propelled the the @-symbol from obscurity to ubiquity when he chose it for use in email addresses, has been named as one of the inaugural inductees of the Internet Hall of Fame. Mr Tomlinson is in good company: ex-Vice President Al Gore, honoured for his work in promoting Internet access, is among the first round of inductees, as is Vint Cerf, the co-creator of TCP/IP and, by extension, the modern Internet itself. It’s been a long time since Mr Tomlinson first sent an email to himself @ another computer, but I’m sure it’s been worth the wait.

In other @-symbol–related news, I came across this custom-made @-symbol ornament recently. The post in which it is mentioned is a year or so old, but it seemed appropriate to point it out in honour of Ray Tomlinson’s award!

I’ve mentioned the obelus, or division symbol (÷), once before on Shady Characters. Unfortunately, I can’t go into it in much detail (I’m keeping my powder dry for a chapter of the book in which I’ll be looking at the obelus and its partner in crime, the asterisk), but Drew Mackie has taken a look at the word and its associated symbol over on his blog Back of the Cereal Box. His series of posts on “strange and wonderful words” is well worth a look.

The novelist Will Self once declared that “[t]he colon is an umlaut waiting to jump”, and in the most tenuous of links, I’ve decided to use this as an excuse to feature a recent New Yorker blog article on the ‘diaeresis’, the umlaut-like pair of dots used to separate a double vowel into two syllables. The typical word processor will insert a diaeresis into “naïve” but leave “coördinate” sadly bereft, and the average English language computer keyboard is not over-stuffed with keys to reinstate it. The New Yorker, though, is rightly famed for its use of this mark where most other publications (and dictionaries) have long since abandoned it, and I for one hope that one day it can regain its preëminence.