solitude sunday

solitude sunday at the whimsey project. our day to spend time with a book. i am spending time with keith houston's shady characters: the secret life of punctuation, symbols & other typographical marks. today's reading was about the asterick and dagger. the asterick is the oldest punctuation mark in existence, having been first used five millennia ago. the dagger evolved from a strike mark used in editing text. interestingly, in gregorian chants, the asterick and dagger were musical notations for long and short pauses, respectively.