Miscellany № 13

After the New York Times’ article “Semicolons: a love story” mentioned here last time, Mary Norris of the New Yorker has weighed in with a rather more measured piece entitled “Semicolons; So Tricky”. Where do Shady Characters’ readers sit on this mark, I wonder? Is use of the semicolon a matter of taste or an essential part of writing?

Also mentioned here recently was Conrad Altmann’s site Glyphaday. Conrad has recently moved his focus from individual characters to the glyph-by-glyph creation of the entire alphabet. It’s a great opportunity to see a new typeface being crafted piece by piece, and there are still some tidbits (such as this assertive asterisk) to be had for punctuation-philes.

The long s, or ‘ſ’, isn’t exactly a mark of punctuation, though I think it still more than qualifies as a Shady Character. It will be making a guest appearance in the book, but until then Andrew West’s exhaustive article “The Long and the Short of the Letter S” is well worth a look. That’s all for now; the 1st September deadline for handing in the Shady Characters manuscript is looming ever larger, so I have to cut things a little short. Wish me luck!

Miscellany № 12

Emoticons are, it turns out, rather older than I had thought. Last month the photo blog Retronaut posted images of an 1881 issue of Puck magazine depicting proto-smileys constructed from parentheses, stops and other typographic marks, just like their modern counterparts.

Emoticons in Puck magazine, 1881
Emoticons in Puck magazine, 1881, as mentioned by Retronaut. (Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

I find “Melancholy” to be almost ineffably sad, though the perky can-do attitude of “Joy” acts as a fortunate counterweight. Perhaps the Victorians were not quite as dour as we imagine them to be.

Kurt Vonnegut may have famously derided semicolons as “transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing”, but the much-maligned mark recently received a veritable love letter from Ben Dolnick, writing in the New York Times. Rather than attempt to summarise Ben’s article, I prefer to quote a single line from it that to me explains precisely why the semicolon is an absolute necessity:

No other piece of punctuation so compactly captures the way in which our thoughts are both liquid and solid, wave and particle.

For a lapsed physicist like myself, and in the wake of the likely discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, this seems most appropriate. The semicolon is a fundamental particle of punctuation: its origins lie in Aristophanes’ ancient points just as surely as do those of the colon, full stop or exclamation mark, and, like Ben, I can only hope that the semicolon will continue to soldier on beside them.

Lastly, I’ve only just discovered an excellent, ongoing series of posters created by Joe Stone at Glyph, a UK-based design studio. Joe has tackled the octothorpe, interrobang, infinity symbol (∞) and more, and I hope that he keeps up the good work.

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.