1. Punctuation as art
Full Stop Slipstream, Fiona Banner
Ahh, the full stop. It’s taken a lot of stick lately for being aggressive – making most of us drop it from the end of instant messages.
But thanks to Fiona Banner’s sculpture series in More London, here’s a very concrete (well, bronze) reminder of this simple punctuation mark in all its glory.
This one’s in an italicised font called Slipstream. (But I took a terrible photo, so you can see it looking much nicer, and facing the right way on Fiona’s Instagram page.)
2. Forgotten punctuation
The interrobang
Interrobang. I loved this word for the ?! combo the moment I heard it. But I hadn’t realised it originally came with its own symbol, too (which I’ve attempted to draw).
Martin Speckter suggested creating the single punctuation mark as a symbol of incredulity back in 1963, but by the 1970s it had fallen out of fashion. And it’s not the only new punctuation people have suggested.
According to Mental Floss, printers, authors and philosophers have championed punctuation marks for irony, rhetorical questions and even love.
Although those new punctuation marks didn’t take off either, I reckon they paved the way for today’s emojis, which pretty much cover every emotion from 😂 to 😡. I even found a romantic exclamation ❣️ (or the lovebang, if you will).
3. Only the punctuation
Just-the-punctuation.glitch.me
Since a friend shared the link to this word-stripping website, I’ve become slightly obsessed with it. Type in whatever you’re working on to see how your WIP would look without any words.
Here’s the first half of my upcoming debut, Small! With exclamation marks and full stops galore (although no true interrobangs, sadly) you can probably guess the reading age just by looking at it.
And for all my wafflings about the end of full stops and the rise of emojis, good old-fashioned punctuation will be welcome in my stories any day.
Hannah Moffatt, word wrangler 