

The secret life of punctuation - ¶ (The Pilcrow) - dogonwheels
http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/02/the-pilcrow-part-1/

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Jun8
Excellent article! The technical details and references are impeccable and
your example images are great.

While talking about Dionysius Thrax you might add that the term _obelisk_ as
an editorial mark (used to denote parts of the text that were deemed to be
added later) is mentioned in the scholia of this work, while discussing the
legend of Peisistratus.

OK, I can't resist, I'll paste an excerpt myself:

"At some time the poiemata of Homer were destroyed, either by fire or by
earthquake [...] But Peisistratus, the strategos of Athens, wishing to acquire
for himself a reputation and to revive the works of Homer, devised this course
of action. He announced throughout the whole of Greece that anyone in
possession of Homeric lines should bring them to him for a fixed premium per
single line. [...] and after gathering together all the lines, they summoned
72 experts (grammatikoi) to assemble the works of Homer, each one in private,
in whatever manner he might consider the assemblage would be best. He
[Peisistratus] summoned them for a premium that was fitting for intellectual
men and _kritai poiemata_ , and to each was given all the lines in isolation,
as many as had been gathered together."

This, AFAIK, is the first mention of editors/scholars performing style
analysis for authorship determination.

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ShadyCharacters
Thanks for the positive comments! There are two more articles on the pilcrow
coming soon, and after that I'm moving on to the interrobang. I hope the new
entries live up to the first one!

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kolektiv
I'll echo the other positives - very interesting and enjoyable read, looking
forward to the next parts. If there was enough for a book at any point, I can
think of several friends that would also enjoy it.

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haribilalic
It's too bad that it's in multiple parts and the other part(s?) aren't
available! It's a surprisingly well written and researched article. I'm
looking forward to more entries.

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tjmaxal
Tease! You started out by saying you would get to the name and shape of the
Pilcrow in this article, but you never quite got there. Oh well I guess I will
have to wait for part II.

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DanielBMarkham
Thanks for saying that.

I loved the style of the piece, the flow of the writing, the look of the page.

He just never got to the dang point! Perhaps this is all part of an elaborate
plot to keep us interested. I hope so. Looking forward to more work from this
author.

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ajarmoniuk
I guess he was heading in the right direction - as the Pilcrow is clearly what
Kaput et al was for.

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lusis
Wow. That was an amazing post. Having a penchant for ancient greek due to
misplaced enthusiasm for seminary, I was seriously enthralled. I didn't
realize I might have a latent typography fetish.

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psykotic
Wonderful writing!

He should collect these essays into book form to counterbalance the influence
of pseudo-erudite pedants like Lynne Truss.

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dot
Fantastic name for a blog about typographical marks.

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StavrosK
I always find it surprising how little the Greek language has changed. As a
modern Greek, I can easily understand the text from the Codex Sinaiticus image
(apart from the damn wordsbeingwrittenlikethis)...

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RocketCart
That's partially attributable to the legacy of Katharevousa, which was
basically Ancient Greek with simplified grammare. During the two centuries of
Katharevousa's official use, a LOT of heavily Ancient Greek-inspired
vocabulary migrated in to the vernacular.

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nitrogen
Firefox 3.6.13 on Ubuntu massacres the typography (at least with my
DPI/hinting/smoothing settings). The lowercase letters are not uniform in
height. Chrome looks much better.

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JacobAldridge
Now I know why Homer's writing is so awesome - _The Iliad_ and _The Odyssey_
weren't just written to be read aloud, they were written TO BE FREAKIN'
SHOUTED.

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crux
I like the pilcrow so much, I've got a big ol' pilcrow tattoo on my arm.

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cristoperb
Do you have any photos you can link to?

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crux
Here's one I took for another purpose, a couple days ago:
<http://i.imgur.com/I3478.jpg>

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squeed
Slick article, and really dope wordpress theme. Anyone have the source?

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ajarmoniuk
Thanks for the article. Too bad there's no such finds on Reddit anymore.

