Okay, Matthew!
And let me second your remarks on the fascination of such shoptalk in
general and of the typography discussion in particular. On the former,
every once in awhile I go out for drinks or lunch with other copy
editors from Duke Press, and we invariably begin happily arguing over
punctuation from the get-go, not least because we're prohibited from
even mentioning it at get-togethers with our colleagues from design,
production, and marketing.
On the latter, let me use this post to thank John Tranter for his (au
contraire) helpful and--yes, to me at least--fascinating series of
"dingbat" usages, graphic, linguistic, and cinematic alike. In fact,
their variety, yet in such uniformly popular culture contexts, makes
me wonder if the notion of the dingbat hasn't evolved in the opposite
direction from that of the octothorp (which is not to say that either
one has _devolved_, as far as I'm concerned). But the cartographic
symbol seems to have derived from a very basic 8-fields-and-a-band-
concert image of "the village," while "dingbat" apparently originated
as an alternative, pejorative term for typographic ornaments among
those who detested such things in print and was only later parlayed
into cartoon characters and so forth. Any thoughts on this, Matthew or
John (or anyone else who'd like to clique on this thread, she added
innocently)?
For my part, I'd like to see posts on the use of dingbats, ampersands,
and other analphabetics as the "rhetorical devices" that chris cheek
has reminded us they are. I think such exemplifications would show
that--with apologies to Deborah Bird Rose (and compliments to whoever
the listee was who suggested that "dingbat" could be etymologically
traced to "dingo" and "wombat"!)--dingbat makes us human.
Candice
At 12:00 PM 7/15/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Candice writes
>>
>>
>I hope I'm not the only one who's looking forward to a sequel entitled "The
>Ornamental Dingbat").
>>
>>
>You may get one. I found the typography discussion fascinating, exactly the
>kind of thing I most value this list for. Somehow one only has that kind of
>discussion with other poets. I found myself sitting next to the late Gavin
>Ewart in a pub once. We'd never met, but we skipped the smalltalk and went
>straight into a discussion of Christmas decorations. And the same with John
>Fuller and sheep. (That's enough name-dropping. Ed.)
>
>Best wishes,
>
>
>Matthew
>
>
>
>
>
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