Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston

Author:Keith Houston [Houston, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-09-23T20:00:00+00:00

The germ of the modern quotation mark lies in a symbol that has lurked in the background throughout this book. Introduced at, yes, the Library of Alexandria, the diple, or “double” (>) was placed alongside a line to indicate some noteworthy text, while its dolled-up sibling, the diple periestigmene (), or “dotted diple,” was used to mark passages where the scholar differed with the reading of other critics.5

Created by the proto-critic Aristarchus in the second century BC along with the asterisk and obelus,* and named for the two pen strokes used to form it, the diple’s pointed shape was at odds with its usage as a comparatively blunt instrument.6 Used to indicate anything from an engaging turn of phrase to some notable historical incident, in some ways Aristarchus’s angular mark was an ancient counterpart to the manicule, that other indicator of generic readerly interest.7 But where a manicule often afforded insight into its creator’s thoughts—a note on a billowing cuff, perhaps, or a few lines of text in the margin—the cryptic diple bore mute witness to whatever lay in the text.8 There is something of interest here, the diple announced, but you must find it for yourself.

Even handicapped by this vague remit, the diple stuck, and though some ancient scribes overlooked it in favor of indenting or outdenting notable lines as they wrote, for centuries the diple remained the preeminent means of calling out important text.9

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