Brewer's: Marks in Grammar and Printing

Printers' marks on the first page of a sheet are called Signatures. (See Letters At Foot Of Page.)

Serifs are the strokes which finish off Roman letters, top and bottom. A, B, C, are “block” letters, or “sans serifs.” over the second of two vowels, as aërial, is called “diæresis,” and in French, trema.

' An acute accent. In Greek it indicates a rise in the voice. It was not used till Greek became familiar to the Romans.

` A grave accent. In Greek it indicates a fall of the voice. It was not used till Greek became familiar to the Romans.

over a vowel, as ö, ii, is called in German zwerpunct.

over a vowel, as a, is called in Danish umlauf.

A circumflex over the letter n (as Oñoro, in Spanish, is called a tilde (2 syl.). A circumflex in French indicates that a letter has been abstracted, as être for “estre.”

t between two hyphens in French, as parle-t-il? is called “ t ephelcystic. ” (See N.)

The Tironian sign (q.v.). (See And.)—Hyphen, as horse-guards.

—joining a pronoun to its verb in French, as irai-je, donnait-on, is called le trait d'union. , under the letter c in French, is called a cedilla, and indicates that the letter = s. (See Printers Marks.) A pilcrow, to call attention to a statement.

A blind P, marks a new paragraph indirectly connected with preceding matter. () Called parentheses, and

[] Called brackets, separate some explanatory or collateral matter from the real sequence. is a comma; ; is a semicolon; : is a colon; . is a point or full stop.—or ... in the middle or at the end of a sentence is a break, and shows that something is suppressed.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894

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