Upper & lower case, next exit…

A piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, describes (and illustrates brilliantly) the process by which a new typeface, Clearview, has become positioned to replace Highway Gothic as the specified standard for highway signs.

Erik Spiekermann has recently released a typeface, FF Mt, through Fontshop, which was specifically designed for traffic control. It is already being used by the German government.

Yo, bang, it’s a screamer!

The etymology of the exclamation mark, according to the brilliant, amateur classicists, Alexander & Nicholas Humez in their book ABC et Cetera goes like this:

“…the exclamation point—a.k.a., ‘screamer’ or ‘bang’— is derived either from an abbreviation of Latin interiectiō (interjection) or else from the interjection Iō! (‘Hey!’).”

The morphology of the exclamation, as with the question mark, appears to boil down to the convenience of abbreviation. Medieval scribes stacked the i above the o, the o became a point, and thus evolved this indispensable, energetic punctuation mark.

Note: Avoid overuse.

Quaestio non disputata…

What is the etymology of the question mark ? It’s hard to imagine life without it, but, of course, there was a time when this useful punctuation was not available. Medieval scribes indicated a question by adding the interrogative quaestio to the end of what otherwise would have been a declarative sentence. It is widely believed that before the Renaissance invention of the upper and lower case, the repetitive writing of quaestio led to an abbreviated Qo, which then led to a stylized Q with a dot underneath.