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.

I made a spectacular painting, which you can see here: http://artpad.art.com/?jifaij1gevs0

You can do the same!


Oh, and check out this site to find the answers to some of life's biggest mysteries. That way, I won't have to correct you.

Have a look at this list, find one or more you're guilty of, and then make it a point to change your ways. I found a couple boo-boos I've been making. (Though its authors seem to be English, it takes into account American differences ("mistakes"). We did get our language from them.)


Here's another site with very interesting photographs. It's certainly worth a look.

Go here and make your own Picasso painting.

To learn some handy Latin phrases, go here. You never know when you might need one.

It's time to come home.

Bath & Stonehenge

This is Bath from the bridge that crosses the river.

The King's royal bath. No one bathed in it--well, maybe he did.

The Royal Crescent estates. Every couple pillars, there is a door (entrance to the house). All of them are, by law, white--except one. One of the doors is bright yellow: an act of defiance by... umm... someone important at the time. It's been kept that way since. Rumor has it Johnny Depp has bought a house in this complex.

And now... Stonehenge. Unfortunately, I'm unable to confirm or deny the rumor that it was constructed by aliens because, as I sat in the grass to listen to my audio guide, I put my arm in a thistle weed, and started itching and swelling like nothing I've ever experienced. Fearful that I might be having an extreme allergic reaction causing my throat to close up and whatever other dreadful things happen to people with allergies (--you've heard the horror stories of bees, shellfish, and peanuts--), I quickly made my way to the exit, turned in my audio guide, and hunted down the tour guide at the van. He assured me, though, that I would be fine and the itching and swelling would soon subside. Whew!

Seriously, though... it was an absolutely surreal experience. I still can't believe that I've seen in person this wonder that most people merely read about in books. How lucky am I? Truly.