like traffic signs

driveby #2. blurred.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Punctuation, he said, was like traffic signs, too much of it distracted you from the road on which you travelled, and if you wondered, Wouldn’t writing be rather confusing without it, he would say No, it was like the constant wash and turn of the sea, sounding even more sibilant in Portuguese than in English, or like a journey taken by a traveller, every step linked to the next and every end to a beginning, or like the press of time, no sooner coming than going, never stopping in the present, which consequently never existed.

From the Economists' obituary for José Saramago, Portugal’s Nobel laureate in literature.

a lack of confidence

The little hyphen sat very still.
Originally uploaded by
The Stakhanovite Twins.

People are not confident about using hyphens anymore. They’re not really sure what they’re for.

Oxford English Dictionary editor Angus Stevenson, commenting on how some 16,000 hyphens were eliminated from the sixth edition, published last month. As reported in the New York Times.

That's all well and good -- but I'm going to make a fuss if they start messing with my em dash.

origins of the octothorp

# | Originally uploaded by mag3737.

The odd name for this ancient sign for numbering derives from thorpe, the Old Norse word for a village or farm that is often seen in British placenames. The symbol was originally used in mapmaking, representing a village surrounded by eight fields, so it was named the octothorp.

Courtesy of Neatorama, via Boing Boing.

Knowing it's called an Octothorp, in addition to just plain old "pound sign", has gotta be worth about ten points right off the bat.