Re: VMs: d's (8s) and ampersands (&) was; Nick's Strokes etc

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 20:16 23/02/2004 -0500, Bruce wrote:
> Speaking of trivia, the "hash" (or "pound sign" as it is called in the US 
> but not the UK) is also known as an "octothorp".

Back in the days of the BBC Microcomputer, "!" was called "pling", which 
always amused me. :-)  Luckily, I remain just as easily amused today. :-)

Other people call it "bang" or "shriek": and according to Wikipedia:-
        The symbol is believed to originate from the Latin word io, an
        exclamation of joy. It was formed either as a digraph of the
        letters i and o, or as the letter i (for io) above a full stop.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark

Wikipedia also says (of "?"):-
        The symbol is generally thought to originate from the Latin
        quæstio, meaning question, which was abbreviated to 'Qo',
        which was transformed into the symbol.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark

The "?" is also post-Carolingian (it says here):-
        http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/OLD-WORDS/2001-04/0987063327

In the VMs, perhaps we're missing the point about <qo>: EVA "q" looks a lot 
like some of the 14th century "q"s we've seen, so perhaps <qo> simply codes 
for "?"

Incidentally, chess writers annotate individual moves on what one might 
call a "scale of wonderment" - "??" is a disastrous oversight, "?" is a 
misjudgement, "?!" is a dubious move, "!?" is a speculative move, "!" is a 
powerful & insightful move, and "!!" is an unexpectedly brilliant move. 
There's also occasionally "!!?" for "brilliant but flawed".

Finally, what happens if you overlay a "!" and "?"? You get an 
"interrobang" (no, I'm not making it up):-
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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