By Fred Prout
I hate when I see it. But this column is about dingbats.
An aside: I just left my doctor. His chief whatever mentioned that she had faxed a note to another medical provider. They faxed a reply asking that she resend the note. ” But please type it out as I don’t read cursive ” Honestly there is no way in the world I could make that up.
I guess that the majority of my readers are able to utilize an analog clock. Big hand, Little hand. I specify for any of the younguns who may have stumbled onto this. Much of the upcoming groups have been indoctrinated in digital everything. No hands to go around touching numbers. Or even on some clocks/ watches no numbers at all. Just the position of the hands will show us that it’s now ten forty five. Or quarter to eleven. WOW! Both at the same time. Figure that out on your digital watch.
I mention this because most of you remember Archie Bunker calling his wife a dingbat. Well, in one context Edith was a dingbat. By definition an oddity. Things we might have called a gizmo or a whatchacallit are dingbats. But the ones I am referring to are in plain sight on your phone or computer.
They are magical symbols. One that we used to call a number sign is now a hashtag. Honestly. A hashtag. Who in the world? We use a dingbat to identify the amount of $ we have. A lot shorter than saying money isn’t it? That little * we use is an ampersand. Here you thought it was a star. Get with it. The easiest one to remember is the @ that we use every day. I know it’s hard to believe but that’s called the at sign. Now, we have all kinds of different things in every day usage. + – % / are ones that need absolutely no explanation.
So here is an explanation. Where is this coming from? I recently visited my daughter and son in law for a few days. They have cats. This entire story was born as I watched Jasper and Puppycat walking away from me. Tails up, one was a very distinct ! and the other a ? Any questions? Dingbats indeed.
Fred
