#HashtagsAreAllTheRage. Oddly, that # character isn't called a hash—not in America, anyway. We call it the pound sign, or (with pinky raised) the octothorpe. (The geniuses at Bell Laboratories gave that fancy name when they added it to the telephone keypad, because...
When I first saw print ads featuring a prime when they meant to use an apostrophe, I considered it the sign of another amateur who got his first computer. When a similar gaffe appeared in a Time Magazine ad—the ad must have cost $30,000—I could imagine how my parents...
So I was thinking… how fast can I introduce the improper use of the ellipsis? Not bad, eh? Just three words in. It's not curing cancer. But I'm a print book designer for independent authors. When your book goes out into the world, there are thousands of picky people...
So you have a train of thought—you get siderailed—then you get back on track. That's a good time to use a dash. To make it you just type two hyphens-- Oh, no you dun't! A hyphen is a hyphen. Find it between the 0 and the = on your keyboard. It's used to...
"Mick" is Michael Campbell, a book designer, graphic artist and writer. His humor column, The Dumpster, closes every issue of Food & Spirits Magazine. Author of Are You Going To Eat That?, and the new 2017 book of seventy hilarious all new essays, Of Mice and Me.