UNUSUAL PUNCTUATION MARKS

I was a proofreader and have always had a fascination with unusual punctuation marks.

Dagger - Also called an Obelisk.  The one on the left and its two-headed friend (on the right), the Double Dagger or Diesis, represents a javelin, which is cutting out extraneous stuff from one's text. Its primary use through the ages has been to mark out superfluous repetitions in translation, though nowadays it mostly just stands in as a kind of footnote.

Caret - Also called a Wedge, an Up-Arrow, and a Hat, which is cute. The word caret is Latin for "it lacks", which is convenient, because the caret is primarily used to indicate something that's missing from the original text.



Solidus - Not to be confused with a slash. The Solidus is also called a Shilling Mark (presumably by old British dudes in top hats) and it is at a much steeper angle than a boring old backslash. Back before decimilization took the world by storm, the Solidus was used to set apart different values of currency from each other.



Asterism - The Asterism has an awesome name, a cool look, and a really lame usage. It's for indicating minor breaks in text. It can also mean "untitled", apparently.






Guillemets - Guillemets means "Little Williams," which is interesting but unhelpful. They're named after a 16th Century French printer. Their primary role is in non-English languages that use them as quotation marks.


Sheffer Stroke - Mainly used for Boolean functions and propositional calculus. Truth tables and items like that.








Because Sign - This one's like the "Therefore" sign, but upside-down, and it means because.







Tomorrow I will have seven more examples.