JMPTech
JMPTech
JMPTech by
John M. Pantone
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CC0 1.0
(public domain)
What are these strange characters?
We are surrounded by strange characters in sentences (@#&) and odd spellings of words (South Pointe Road). The stories behind some of these are really interesting.
You’ve, no doubt, seen signs on Pubs, bars, cafes, etc. such as: “Ye olde Inn”; well, there’s actually quite a story behind this confused use of “Y”.
Until the 1800s the letter “ Þ” (thorn), was commonly used for the sound “th” as in “thread, thought, and thing”. The uppercase “Þ” was written as “𐌸”, which was often sloppily, written as “y”.
Printers started to have trouble with this, since commonly used typesets1 didn’t include the “Þ”, but did have “Y”. By the late 1800s the “Þ” had largely been phased out, and we were left with “ye old confusion”. This was, by the way, never pronounced as a “y”, it was understood, until later, that it was pronounced “th”; thus, “Ye olde” was read and spoken out loud as “the old”.
You have, probably, seen the phrase in the original text of the U. S. Declaration of Independence: “life liberty and the perſuit of happineſſ”. You might, also, have asked “what’s with the Fs?, perfuit? Happineff?”
That is one of the several letters which have disappeared from the english alphabet. The “ſ”, specifically, is an old form of the lowercase “s”, called a “long s”. You may also note that it differs from “f” in that it either has no crossbar or only a “bump” on the left.
In the 1800s it went out of general usage. Printers didn’t like having both the “ſ” and “s” type pieces for the same sound, and because of the easy confusion with “f”, they gradually settled on just using “s”.
Interestingly, a version of “ſ” is still used in mathematics, the integral symbol “ʃ “, which was originally based on the latin word “summa”.
The ampersand (&), often appeared as a character at the end of the Latin alphabet. Regarded as the 27th letter, it was taught to children in Great Britain and America4. It was pronounced “et”, the latin word for “and”. As a result, it was common to write “&c”, pronounced “et cetera” (“and the rest”).
Of course, the “&” is still in use, meaning “and”, although it isn’t considered a letter.
The “#” symbol has long been used as "pound sign" (or “number sign”), originally from libra pondo (pound in weight) in Roman times, and is still used as in “we’re #1 (we’re number one).
The use of “#” was proposed for social media use by former Google and Uber developer Chris Messina on August 23, 2007, for use in twitter. The term "hash tag" was invented by blogger Stowe Boyd.
The “at sign - @” has long been used to substitute for the word “at”. It still has wide use as an indicator for unit price, such as “5 widgets @ $.20, total $1.00” (5 widgets at 20cents each for a total of $1.00).
In 1971, Ray Tomlinson chose “@” for use in email; separating a user @(at) a host computer because of its common use as “at” and for its availability on keyboards.
Many of these changes were helped along by Noah Webster. In 1828 he published “An American Dictionary of the English Language”. He felt that English spelling was inconsistent and complex, and proposed replacing (among others) colour with color, center instead of centre, and armor instead of armour. Later printings also used the more modern usages of “Þ/Y” and “&”. This left the common spellings with a trailing, silent, “e” looking “old fashioned”, and is why we now have the nonsense of “olde” and “pointe” being used decoratively.
More of my random thoughts. Thank you for all of your kind comments on my previous essay. I guess this will become a regular thing!
John P.
JMP - 2026-04-16 16:25:51
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