We . . . go out into the Waste Land of Experts, each knowing so much about so little that he can neither be contradicted nor is worth contradicting. ~Â Victorian England: Portrait of an Age
And with that, I will admit to a few things. I am often intrigued by questions that make others shake their heads. That’s one. The other admission is that the image above is a total bait and switch. This post is indeed about special characters, but it has nothing to do with Mario, Luigi, or Birdo. Oh, there’s a third. I’m about to go down a rabbit hole, but it’s a shallow search. There’s just not that much to learn about special characters.
What's at the top of your keyboard?
If you have thought about the top row at all, it was probably with annoyance. You don’t type those keys frequently and even those of us who type by touch might have to sneak a peek to make sure we don’t select a dollar sign when we need a percentage symbol. I will go out on a limb here and guess that you can’t even accurately give a name to each of the keys who help you show express outrage (!) or your need to save keystrokes (&) or an explanatory footnote (*). I couldn’t do that, either, until I looked it up. So who came up with these extras?
And where did those odd names come from? I searched online, but the yield was less than comprehensive. Here's what I found:
- Typists sometimes call the asterisk “little star” or the star key. The term originated, according to MyFonts Monotype, from Ancient Greek (300 B.C., perhaps?) and late Latin. Scholars used symbols in their process of proofreading to call attention to annotations – just like now.
- Scribendi tells us the ampersand is a much newer symbol, dating back to the first century A.D. It is simply a shortcut for the et, the Latin word for and. The symbol is a combination of the Latin letters e & t. Even today it’s useful when space is tight.
- The pound sign, also called the number sign and now the hashtag, is another one derived from the Latin libra pondo, which means “pound by weight.” The British were the first to call it the “number sign” to distinguish it from the currency type of pound.Â
- There is no fancy name for the @ sign. It is, simply, the at sign. The Smithsonian article relates that the first known use of this abbreviation was in 1536 by Florentine merchants to reflect “at the rate of” or “per each” when referring to large clay jars in which wine was shipped. Back then, they didn’t have keystrokes; they were penstrokes. Using symbols saved time. The design was probably derived from the Italian letter à .
- The percentage sign (no nicknames) was first used in 1684. A manuscript shown in Smith’s History of Mathematics shows an abbreviation for “per cento.” That’s Italian for per hundred, in case you missed the intuitively obvious. Seeing an Italian theme here? There’s more in the article by Shady Characters, but even I can’t find interest in all that minutiae.
Where did all these special characters take me?
Occasionally someone mentions a topic that I had never heard of before, and this was one of those. Greg C. mentioned the origin of the ampersand and I was off and running. Yes, I chase some fairly insignificant details. Here’s the thing, though. After I take an initial stab at a write-up and re-read the results about 10 times, I arrive at a place that was never my destination.Â
In this case, I was curious about symbols, but what I am taking away is that humans at work have not changed significantly. More than 2,000 years after the * appeared on papyrus, we are still using it–for the same reason. This may not astound you the way it does me. Or if so, perhaps not for the same reason.
The fact that humans have remained essentially the same, at least in one regard, for over two millenniums connects us over time and culture. Our tools and our mortality tables have evolved, but perhaps we have not changed as much as we might think. Perhaps we aren’t as advanced as we have given ourselves credit for. And just maybe, despite all our flaws, we’ll carry on for another few millenniums.
I love your conclusion. That’s a subject that could fill a book! 😉
No doubt, but I don’t think I’ll be writing that one. Ha!
I’ve heard the asterisk sometimes referred to as Nathan Hale’s symbol.
Hmm. The only reference I can find to that appears to be a joke. Do you have one that’s otherwise?
Interesting piece though I will continue to use the symbols whenever and however I fill compelled regardless of convention. (like I do) You had a good line line in there about arriving at a place that was not your destination. Perhaps you could come up with an age symbol.
Perhaps I can. I’ll give that some thought.