The Secret Code of Scribes
Before the printing press, scribes used a secret code of symbols and shortcuts to write faster and save precious parchment. This lost art of scribal abbreviations, a kind of medieval…
Tag: ligature
The Character with No Sound
Before it was the linchpin of your email address, the @ symbol was a character without a sound, a silent mark on the page. This is the secret history of…
The Character with a Secret History: How a Roman Scribble Became the Ampersand
The ampersand (&) is more than a simple stand-in for "and"; it's a linguistic fossil with a secret history. This ubiquitous symbol began as a quick ligature by Roman scribes…