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.

Name that mark: the “approval curl”

The unnamed "approval curl" as used to mark homework or exams
The unnamed “approval curl”, as used to mark homework or exams. (Image courtesy of Bas Jacobs.)

Bas Jacobs of the European type foundry Underware wrote to Shady Characters with a question: what is this character? It is used to mark correct exam answers in the same way as a tick or check mark, but beyond that its name or derivation is not clear. Bas is no stranger to unusual symbols, being the creator of Underware’s lightning-bolt irony mark, but both he and I are stumped. Here are his thoughts thus far:

The approval curl was first used in the 19th century. With a growing bureaucracy, higher governments were approving documents for lower governments using this curl to notify that a document had been read. During the last decades the curl is mostly used in education, when teachers approve their students work. This happens from primary schools up to universities.

The geographic usage is very scattered. The curl is used on a daily basis in Holland, as well as Portugal, but in Belgium or France the sign is unknown. Probably there are more countries where the curl is being used, I would be curious to know which ones.

Historians don’t agree on its genesis. Most Dutch historians think the approval curl is a speedily written ‘G’ (from Goed or Gezien), while the Portuguese think it stands for a ‘C’ (from Correcto). But a look at the stroke of the pen tells me that both explanations are not very likely.

There’s hardly any documentation in old dictionaries or historical books on the genesis and history of the approval curl, probably because it’s a very practical character. It’s used without too much awareness and there is no extra symbolic value attached to it.

The approval curl doesn’t have a Unicode, which is very strange. Its usage can be compared to a ‘check mark’, with this difference that a check mark can also mean that something has just been seen, while the curl always means that something is approved. It currently even’t doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, just nothing.

For me, the only thing that rings a bell is the Japanese marujirushi, or “O mark”, where a circle is used instead of a check or tick. I can imagine that a hastily-drawn circle could morph into the “approval curl”, but that’s only speculation. What do you think? Can any Shady Characters readers shed some light on this mark?

Update: Bas has pointed out another image of the “approval curl”, this time from the 1970s.

Update: Thanks for all your responses! There have been suggestions that the “approval curl” is a Norwegian or German ‘r’ for rett or richtig; that it’s a sloppily-drawn ‘X’, with a corresponding obelus (÷) or zero (0) symbol for ‘incorrect’; and that it’s a German or Dutch shorthand symbol. It seems to me that there’s an academic study of marking symbols just waiting to be undertaken!

Miscellany № 7

The interrobang is still enjoying its 50th birthday — it was, after all, published in the March-April edition of Type Talks — and as such I’m sure you’ll forgive me for pointing out one final article on the subject. Nora Maynard’s interview with Penny Speckter for The Millions is brilliant: Lynne Truss is set to rights, Mad Men rubber-stamped, and the Speckters’ dedicated ‘Bodoni apartment’ explained.

Turning away from the interrobang for the moment, Lauren of Superlinguo, a Melbourne-based language blog and radio feature, laments the prosaic naming of the @-symbol. I would have to agree: ‘commercial at’ doesn’t hold a candle to ‘rose’, ‘rollmop herring’ or ‘worm’, but Shady Characters readers have already weighed in on this subject and perhaps ‘atra’, ‘aterra’ or ‘astatine’ — my personal favourite because of the chemistry pun — will catch on.

Finally, the Daily Telegraph sponsors a short but engaging video on the production of books. The contrast between the relative automation of different parts of the process is surprising; printing and binding are briskly efficient in their use of well-oiled, cast-iron machinery while a hand-made and applied hardback cover brings everything together with a deft human touch.

Miscellany № 6

As mentioned in Miscellany № 5, the interrobang is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of the occasion Amy Freeborn of The Freeborn Times has published an article on the subject which brings together information both from here and from Alex Jay’s excellent biography of its creator. Not only that, but no less an organisation than the BBC dropped a passing reference to the interrobang into the end of a recent news item on history of punctuation, driven, surely by the character’s ongoing birthday celebrations. It’s only a shame that they couldn’t have been more complimentary about it!

Ugmonk's excellent aluminium ampersand. Yours for a mere $54.00.
Ugmonk’s excellent aluminium ampersand. Yours for a mere $54.00. (Image courtesy of Ugmonk.)

The excellent aluminium ampersand on the left is a product of Ugmonk, Inc. (as mentioned recently by I Love Typography) and I must say that one of these would be winging its way to my letterbox already had I not recently made the jump from gainful employment to starving writer. My garret would be much improved by its presence.

Lastly, my friend Jeff Sanders writes with a link to a marketer’s (or possibly grammarian’s) nightmare. Pity the poor apostrophe. It is sadly ill-used.

Miscellany № 5

Of late I’ve been doing some research for the upcoming Shady Characters book, and as such I’ve been investigating the histories of some characters other than those already covered here. In particular, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the hyphen, or ‘-’: this simple bar has, through its role in hyphenation and justification, exerted a stubbornly persistent influence on typesetting and printing ever since Gutenberg’s famed 42-line bible was published in the late 1450s. I will, of course, go into much more detail in the book, but if you’re interested in the subject of printing I’d heartily recommend John Man’s excellent, readable history of Gutenberg and his invention.

Also related to printing, and especially its venerable, hand-set form, Danny Cooke’s short but sweet video on the subject — named “Upside Down, Left to Right” for the appearance of typeset letters bound in their forme, ready to be printed — is more than worth a few minutes of your time. And, as a bonus, the pilcrow makes a guest appearance around 4:58.

The interrobang is fifty years old this year, as noted by Alex Jay of the blog Tenth Letter of the Alphabet, and in honour of this anniversary Alex delves into the life and times of its creator, Martin K. Speckter. Along with some contemporary newspaper articles reporting the character’s creation, Alex has unearthed some incredible images of the interrobang as drawn by Richard Isbell for inclusion in his Americana typeface, providing an intimate look at the character as it wound its way from conception to moveable type.