Slash!
Yesterday’s whimsy about National Punctuation Day prompted a disappointed comment from our loyal reader Bucky that I had neglected to include the virgule. The sentiment is apparently shared at Language Log, which sprang to the defense of this humble slash.
I meant no disrespect. The virgule has a noble pedigree, appearing, for example, in the title of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. We use it to indicate line breaks when poetry is quoted in ordinary text. It has a number of specialized uses, including a function in Web addresses.
But, as yesterday’s post indicated, I was limiting myself to the standard punctuation marks. Had I included the more specialized ones, I would have labored to get in the ampersand (&), dollar sign ($), asterisk (*), octothorpe (#) and others, with predictable consequences for the intelligibility of the post. Editing — self-editing — is always a set of choices about what to include and what to exclude.
Still, I would be the last to deny the virgule its place in the sun.
Comments
Octothorpe. That's what it's called.
Thank you, again, Mr. McIntyre. I will be able to stop calling it "the little tic-tac-toe mark."
Rarely a day goes by that I fail to learn something on this blog. (Why is it called "octothorpe? Doesn't that indicate "eight"? There are nine little boxes...)
Posted by: Bucky | September 25, 2008 11:11 AM
There are various accoutns of the origin of the word. Here's a comprehensive one:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-oct1.htm
Posted by: John McIntyre | September 25, 2008 11:40 AM
There you go...I was counting the boxes; engineers count the points.
This explains so much about my life.
Posted by: Bucky | September 25, 2008 2:54 PM
Octothorpe was new to me also. I find it a little odd that American voice mail systems call it a pound sign because who uses it for pounds? The more common uses are for sharps in music or the word number. Hash sign is the term used in UK voice mails, which is a descriptive rather than a functional term, but if I could have my way, it would be sharp or number sign. I wonder whether the mark was first used in music or somewhere else.
Posted by: Steve T | September 27, 2008 8:03 PM
Aha, according to Wikipedia (caveat lector), both the sharp and the flat derive from the letter b:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_(music)
Posted by: Steve (again) | September 29, 2008 11:51 AM
That's good enough for me. There must have been a Frankish word in the 12th century for the square b that later became the so-called "pound sign."
Posted by: Steve T | September 29, 2008 8:51 PM
Actually, as Copy Editor, you would be the one to deny the virgule its place in The Baltimore Sun.
Posted by: Retired in Elkridge | October 3, 2008 6:01 PM