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From Ampersands to Interrobangs

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From Ampersands to Interrobangs 0408EP_40.psELECTRONIC 8/2/04 11:07 AM Page 40 A Previous Page Contents Zoom In Zoom Out Front Cover Search Issue Next Page F M PUBLISHING BE aGS FRANK TALK FRANK J. ROMANO From ampersands to interrobangs he ampersand is a corruption of “and (&) per se exclamation mark is called a screamer or bang. Some and,” which literally means “(the character) & by brands use it, such as “Yahoo!” The town of “Westward itself (is the word) and.”The symbol (or glyph) & Ho!” in England, from the novel by Charles Kingsley, is Tis derived from the ligature of ET or et, which is the only place name in the world that officially contains the Latin (and French) word for “and.” One of the first an exclamation mark. The symbol is said to originate examples of an ampersand appears on a piece of papyrus from the Latin word io, an exclamation of joy. It was from about 45 A.D. Written in an early Roman capital formed either as a digraph of the letters i and o, or as the cursive (the handwriting of the time), it shows the liga- letter i (for io) above a period. ture ET. A sample of Pompeian graffiti from 79 A.D. also A question mark is also a punctuation mark or a tone shows a combination of the capitals E and T, and is again mark. It is a full stop used in interrogatory sentences. It is written in early Roman script. The ampersand is general- also called a query. The symbol is said to originate from ly interchangeable with and. This is why “etc.” can some- the Latin quæstio, meaning question. Over time, ‘Qo’ was times be seen written as “&c.” simplified into the curlicue and underdot of today. Depending on the writing speed or the calligrapher’s The interrobang combines the function and look of handwriting style, from the 8th century on, the combina- both question mark and exclamation point. The concept tion of the letters E and T was a ligature, which was first of the interrobang was adopted with the invention of printing in the early 15th introduced by Mar- century. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs tin K. Speckter in when two or more letterforms are written or printed as 1962 in an article one unit. Generally, ligatures replace characters that occur in TYPEtalks mag- next to each other when they overlap. One of the most azine. It was cre- common ligatures is “fi.”Because the dot of the i interferes ated to allow the with the loop of the lowercase f, when they are printed punctuation of next to each other, the two letters are combined into a sin- rhetorical state- gle glyph with the dot absorbed into the f, or eliminated. ments, where nei- Ligatures were originally used by medieval scribes to ther the question increase writing speed. A 14th century manuscript includ- nor exclamation ed hundreds of ligatures and early typefaces used ligatures marks alone served to emulate the appearance of hand-lettered manuscripts. the purpose, and together Gutenberg’s font had 292 glyphs—most of them 2- and 3- looked weird. Mr. Speckter called his mark an letter ligatures to fool Bible buyers into thinking it was interrobang from the Latin for query and the proof- handwritten. Most ligatures fell out of common use except reader’s term for exclamation. In an April 1962 editorial, for the five f-ligtures (fi, ff, fl, ffi, ffl), and the two dipthongs The Wall Street Journal endorsed its use with an example: in upper- and lowercase (Æ and Œ). Only recently has “Who forgot to put gas in the car!?” computer-based typesetting had automated ligatures. In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders The Poetica typeface family, designed by Robert Slim- designed Americana, the first typeface that included the bach of Adobe and based on Cancelleresca, has 58 amper- interrobang as one of its glyphs. In 1968, an interrobang sands (one more than Heinz catsup). Some typefaces key was available on some Remington typewriters. The have especially beautiful ampersands—the italic amper- word interrobang started to appear in dictionaries, and sands for Garamond, Minion, Janson, Meridien, the new punctuation mark was the subject of several Baskerville, and Caslon are gorgeous. With the appear- news articles. You can find an interrobang in Microsoft ance of slab serif and sans serif typefaces in the 19th cen- Word’s Wingdings 2. It is also present in Lucida Sans Uni- tury, typefounders preferred the roman version of the code and Arial Unicode MS. Although the interrobang ampersand in italic as well as roman styles. Ampersand was in vogue for much of the 1960s, it never caught on. It usage varies from language to language. has not faded away completely; some typefaces still fea- ture an interrobang, and it is included in the Unicode Emotional punctuation character set. Why is it still around? Who knows!? An exclamation mark (or point) is a punctuation mark or a tone mark. It is a full stop, like a period, but used in Frank Romano is Professor Emeritus, Rochester Institute of exclamatory or emphatic sentences. In typesetting, the Technology, and founder of this publication 28 years ago. 40 August 2004 www.electronic-publishing.com ELECTRONIC A Previous Page Contents Zoom In Zoom Out Front Cover Search Issue Next Page F M PUBLISHING BE aGS.
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