On the Dot The Speck That Changed the World

by Humez, Alexander; Humez, Nicholas

• ISBN13: 9780195324990
• ISBN10: 0195324994
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Despite the humble origins of its name (Anglo Saxon for "the speck at the head of a boil"), the dot has been one of the most versatile players in the history of written communication, to the point that it has become virtually indispensable. Now, in On the Dot, Alexander and Nicholas Humezoffer a wide ranging, entertaining account of this much overlooked and miniscule linguistic sign. The Humez brothers shed light on the dot in all its various forms. As a mark of punctuation, they show, it plays many roles - as sentence stopper, a constituent of the colon (a clause stopper), and the ellipsis (dot dot dot). In musical notation, it denotes "and a half." In computerese, it hasseveral different functions (as in dot com, the marker between a file name and its extension, and in some slightly more arcane uses in programming languages). The dot also plays a number of roles in mathematics, including the notation of world currency (such as dollars dot cents), in Morse code(dots and dashes), and in the raised dots of Braille. And as the authors connect all these dots, they take readers on an engaging tour of the highways and byways of language, ranging from the history of the question mark and its lesser known offshoots the point d'ironie and the interrobang, toacronyms and backronyms, power point bullets and asterisks, emoticons and the "at-sign." Playful, wide-ranging, and delightfully informative, On the Dot reveals how thoroughly the dot is embedded in our everyday world of words and ideas, acquiring a power inversely proportional to its diminutive size.

Author Biography

Alexander Humez has authored or co-authored ten trade and reference books, including collaborations with his brother such as Latin for People, Alpha to Omega, A B C Et Cetera, and Zero to Lazy Eight (also with J. Maguire). He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Nicholas Humez is a freelance writer and silversmith. In addition to the above collaborations, he is the author of Silversmithing: A Basic Manual, plus four poetry chapbooks. He lives outside Cleveland, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Time and Chance: Punctuality and the Coin Toss	p. 3
Dit Dah: Codes to Sigh For	p. 13
With a Bullet: Checklists and Dingbats	p. 29
... And a Half: Musical Dots	p. 43
For Short: Mr., Sr., et al.	p. 55
Dot Dot Dot: Ellipses, Lacunae, and Missing Links	p. 69
Stet: Emendations of Immortality	p. 83
Ninety-Eight Point Six: Decimals and Determinings	p. 97
Dot Com: Computation Punctuation	p. 111
Bang! The Dot Meets the Family	p. 133
Period: The End Point	p. 149
Afterword and Acknowledgments	p. 161
Notes	p. 165
Bibliography	p. 215
Index	p. 225
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