The @-symbol, part 1 of 2

Like the ampersand, the ‘@’ symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word ‘at’. Even so, it is as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon or exclamation mark, punctuating email addresses and announcing Twitter usernames. Unlike the ampersand, though, whose journey to the top took two millennia of steady perseverance, the at symbol’s current fame is quite accidental. It can, in fact, be traced to the single stroke of a key made almost exactly four decades ago. Read more →

The Ampersand, part 2 of 2

From its ignoble beginnings a century after Tiro’s scholarly et, the ampersand assumed its now-familiar ‘&’ form with remarkable speed even as the Tironian et stayed rigidly immutable.

The symbol’s visual development is perhaps best documented in a formidable piece of typographical detective work carried out by one Jan Tschichold, a graphic designer born in Leipzig in 1902.1 Famed as an iconoclastic rule-maker and breaker, Tschichold swung from extreme to extreme in a career which rewrote the rules of book design and typography. His 1928 manifesto Die neue Typographie2 called for the abandonment of traditional rules of typesetting in favour of rigorous Modernism. Then, arrested by the Nazis in 1933 as a ‘cultural Bolshevik’,3 Tschichold reacted strongly to his ill-treatment at the hands of the Third Reich and repudiated his earlier work, seeing ‘fascist’ elements in the strictures of Modernism. In the process, he earned the ire of his contemporaries as a betrayer of his own principles.4 Despite this, his work remains influential even today. Read more →

The Ampersand, part 1 of 2

In contrast to some of the other symbols explored here, the ampersand seems at first sight to be entirely unexceptional. Another of those things the Romans did for us, the symbol started life as the Latin word et, for ‘and’, and its meaning has stayed true to its origins since then. Even the word ‘ampersand’ itself manages to quietly hint at the character’s meaning, unlike, say, the conspicuously opaque naming of the pilcrow or octothorpe. Dependable and ubiquitous, the ampersand is a steady character among a gallery of flamboyant rogues.

Things were not always thus, however. Today’s ampersand might take pride of place in the elevated names of Fortnum & Mason and Moët & Chandon, but its Roman ancestor was a different beast entirely. Born in distinctly ignoble circumstances and dogged by a rival character of weighty provenance, the ampersand would spend a thousand years of uneasy coexistence with its opponent before finally claiming victory. The ampersand’s is a true underdog story. Read more →

The Octothorpe: addenda

After I posted The Octothorpe, part 2 of 2 last weekend, New Scientist magazine’s online editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury got in touch to say:

I was surprised and delighted to discover that you had cited us in part 1 of your piece on the octothorpe (via the OED) and thought you might be interested in reading the original reference, which I have now liberated from our paywall[.]

The article is now available on the New Scientist website. It takes the form of a letter from one Kay Dekker,1 who quotes the answer to a Frequently Asked Question from the alt.usage.english newsgroup:

“Finally, in a failed attempt to avoid the naming problem by creating a new name, the term ‘octothorp(e)’ (which MWCD10 dates 1971) was invented for ‘#’, allegedly by Bell Labs engineers when touch-tone telephones were introduced in the mid-1960s. ‘Octo-‘ means eight, and ‘thorp’ was an Old English word for village: apparently the sign was playfully construed as eight fields surrounding a village. Another story has it that a Bell Labs supervisor named Don MacPherson coined the word from the number of endpoints and from the surname of US athlete James Francis Thorpe.”2

‘MWCD10’ is Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition and the dictionary’s online edition does indeed date ‘octothorpe’ to 1971.3 To summarise, then, in tracing the etymology of the word ‘octothorpe’ the Oxford English Dictionary cites a letter to New Scientist which quotes from the alt.usage.english FAQ, which ultimately cites Merriam-Webster’s own definition. The history of the octothorpe is nothing if not tortuous.

I can’t thanks Sumit Paul-Choudhury enough for making this article available online — it’s great to be able to fill in another small piece of the puzzle of the octothorpe’s name.

I’m away this coming week, so look out for The Ampersand, part 1 in two weeks’ time, on Sunday 12th June. Thanks again for all the comments!

1.
Dekker, Kay. “Letters: Internet Hash”. New Scientist.

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2.
“Names of "&", "@", and ‘#’”.

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3.
“Octothorpe”. In Merriam-Webster Online. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, May 2011.

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