This week, there is one punctuation-related news story that towers above all others. In the world of musical name changes, Prince’s adoption in 1993 of an unpronounceable glyph called only “Love Symbol #2” must surely retain the crown for sheer outlandishness, but Jay-Z’s reported un-hyphenation has nevertheless set the music press and mainstream media ablaze.12 It all started on the 18th of July when Billboard editor Joe Levy tweeted:
Those innovators who have designed new typographic symbols make up an eclectic bunch. Interrobang creator Martin K. Speckter was an ad man by trade and a printer by temperament; Bas Jacobs, designer of the ironieteken, and Choz Cunningham, creator of the snark, are type designers; and Doug and Paul Sak of Sarcasm Inc., responsible for the much-maligned SarcMark©, are an accountant and engineer respectively.
Some housekeeping this week, with lots of links from the past few weeks to get through. As always, if you have something you’d like to see featured here, please drop me a line with the details.
Just before my honeymoon, I was lucky enough to be interviewed for an article in Fast Company’s Co.Design blog. John Brownlee’s article, The Unlikely Evolution Of The @ Symbol, focusing on the symbol’s use as a signifier of digital identity, is now online. Thanks are in order for John for selecting the most coherent parts of my answers!
Readers will, of course, be familiar with the interrobang (‽), that most Madison Avenue of punctuation marks. Its name, like its shape, is equal parts question and exclamation: the Latin interrogatio, for a rhetorical question,1 combines with ‘bang’, a slang term for the exclamation mark. Until I started researching the history of the interrobang I had never come across this use of the word ‘bang’, but a quick check of the Typographic Desk Reference soon dispelled my ignorance: the TDR also lists ‘exclamation point’, ‘screamer’ and the rather risqué ‘dog’s cock’ as alternatives.2
A quiet week! Where has all the punctuation news gone? If you have any tips as to something you’d like to see featured here, please get in touch.
The first of today’s abbreviated items is a tasty punctuational treat: photographer Emily Blincoe’s juxtapositions of complimentary foodstuffs at THIS & THAT, her Tumblr blog, are a feast for the eyes. Each of her pairings — pork & beans, cookies & cream, burger & fries, and many more — is lovingly composed with an edible ampersand at its heart. I thought my love for bacon could ascend no higher, but after seeing Emily’s eggs & bacon, I may have to revise my opinion.