i love inventors. and inventions.
there is a story (which i can't back up) of the first ever british man to make a million going to Lion - a company producing safety matches telling them he had an invention which would save the company millions every year. He asked for £1mil for the idea which was a lot of money for - when shall we place it? The 1960s. Lion umm'ed and ahh'ed for a while but eventually decided to give it go. Having already done the amateur patent (posting his idea in an enveloped to himself, postmarked and kept sealed on receipt) he revealed his eureka moment. only putting the striking pad on one side of the match box. annoyingly simple but with a patent, the deal was sealed.
so, it was with great excitement the other day that i discovered it is possible to patent new punctuation marks!!! imagine the goldmine one could be sitting on.
the most recent application for new punctuation was in 04 with the invention of the Question Comma and the Exclamation Comma. The application read...
Using two new punctuation marks, the question comma and the exclamation comma: and respectively, inquisitiveness and exclamation may be expressed within a written sentence structure, so that thoughts may be more easily and clearly conveyed to readers. The new punctuation marks are for use within a written sentence between words as a comma, but with more feeling or inquisitiveness. This affords an author greater choice of method of punctuating, e.g., to reflect spoken language more closely. Moreover, the new punctuation fits rather neatly into the scheme of things, simply filling a gap, with a little or no explanation needed
i am not convinced of the necessity of these two new punctuation marks. they seem to reflect the only level of inventiveness everyone in the 2000s is capable of; a lazy amalgamating of that which already exists...
so, on that note i leave you with the promise that should i come up with anything better, after it has been signed, sealed and sent myself, any shattering ..., ---, *?! or """/""" i can come up with which may add to the clarity of expressing the written word will be revealed here.
(that is the most obscure and to my mind most uninteresting opening point i could think to make in my first post. its not gonna get any better. nor, more succinct.) [there might be better pictures though].
