The Origin of Everyday Punctuation Marks

The following article is from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader. Here are the origins of several symbols we use in everyday life.


Question Mark

Origin: When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would place the word questio - meaning "question" - at the end of a sentence to indicate a query. To conserve valuable space, writing it was soon shortened to qo, which caused another problem - readers might mistake it for the ending of a word. So they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercased q on top of an o. Over time the o shrank to a dot and the q to a squiggle, giving us our current question mark.

Exclamation Point

Origin: Like the question mark, the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters. The mark comes from the Latin word io, meaning "exclamation of joy." Written vertically, with the i above the o, it forms the exclamation point we use today.

Equal Sign

Origin: Invented by English mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557, with this rationale: "I will settle as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gmowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus : , bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle." His equal signs were about five times as long as the current ones, and it took more than a century for his sign to be accepted over its rival: a strange curly symbol invented by Descartes.

Ampersand

Origin: This symbol is stylized et, Latin for "and." Although it was invented by the Roman scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro in the first century B.C., it didn't get its strange name until centuries later. In the early 1800s, schoolchildren learned this symbol as the 27th letter of the alphabet: X, Y, Z, &. But the symbol had no name. So, they ended their ABCs with "and, per se, and" meaning "&, which means 'and.'" This phrase was slurred into one garbled word that eventually caught on with everyone: ampersand.

Octothorp

Origin: 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.

Dollar Sign

Origin: When the U.S. government begin issuing its own money in 1794, it used the common world currency - the peso - also called the Spanish dollar. The first American silver dollars were identical to Spanish pesos in weight and value, so they took the same written abbreviations: Ps. That evolved into a P with an s written right on top of it, and when people began to omit the circular part of the p, the sign simply became an S with a vertical line through it.

Olympic Rings

Origin: Designed in 1913 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the five rings represent the five regions of the world that participated in the Olympics: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. While the individual rings do not symbolize any single continent, the five colors - red, blue, green, yellow, and black - were chosen because at least one of them is found on the flag of every nation. The plain white background is symbolic of peace.

"The Symbol"

Origin: Okay, so we're running out of symbols, but this is a great pop culture story: In 1993, Prince's dissatisfaction with his record label, Warner Bros., finally reached its peak. Despite his superstar status and $100 million contract, the Purple One didn't feel he had enough creative control over his music. So "in protest," Prince announced that Prince would never perform for Warner Bros. again - this unpronounceable symbol would instead. The symbol for the Artist Formerly Known as Prince combined three ancient symbols: the male symbol, the female symbol, and the alchemy symbol for soapstone, which was supposed to reflect his artistic genius. Prince retired the symbol when his contract with Warner Bros. ran out in 2000. Today, he is again Prince.
The article above, titled What the #!&%?, is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

In my elementary school days in the 30s, the dollar sign had two vertical parallel lines rather than one line. It was the combination of the vertical parts of the letter U and the bottom of the letter S
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Robert Recorde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Recorde (c. 1510 – 1558) was a Welsh physician and mathematician. ... with the rule of equation; and the workes of Surde Nombers (London, 1557). ...

Biography - Publications - See also - Notes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Recorde - Cached - Similar
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Let's also not forget the spanish ˜ (tilde symbol). According to an old Linguistics professor of mine, Castillian monks who transcribed latin took double n's, (as in "anno domini") and started writing them on top of one another, like so:

N
N

eventually, the top N got squished, and became the ñ that we all know and love so well. One can test this correspondence and note that any word in latin that has "nn" in it will have ñ for its spanish equivalent. Granted, other things like consonant lenition happened over the centuries, but the n's are a good place to start.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
@Runa, there is no confirmed etymology for "octothorp", but the village does make sense. The symbol represents eight estates or farms surrounding the central common. Eight thorps, comprising one wick.

Whether it's unlikely that English cartographers combined Old English and Latin, I can't judge.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.




Email This Post to a Friend
"The Origin of Everyday Punctuation Marks"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More