Anybody else love the various symbols used in writing? One of my favorites is the graceful §.

I do.
Eastern languages have very beautiful symbols.
The sanskrit Aum comes to mind. (no way I can reproduce it here.)
I also like the Egyption symbol The Ankh.

(Aenigma likes Ankles)

I have long liked both the symbol, ß, and its name , which I can't spell, but which is "ess tset". My first German teacher would become very irate at anyone who called it beta. I now use ß all the time in my own private shorthand, wherever I need "ss"

During the spelling reform debates in Germany there was raging controversy about this unique 'mono-cased' character. Now they've managed to pass their dubious law which states:

"For the sharp (voiceless) [s] after a long vowel or diphthong one writes ß, as long as no other consonant follows in the word stem.". Which means that the famous 'daß' now becomes 'dass', but 'groß' stays that way.
I think it would be really sad to see it go, but Switzerland has paved the way and it is probably just a matter of time now.

§ - In German this is called a 'Paragraph' Zeichen (section;article). Just reminds me of law and politics :-(

cµ

§ - In German this is called a 'Paragraph' Zeichen

and I love the name pilcrow ¶ which makes a pair with the section symbol.
(Does any one know how to compose Unicode to display on this forum?)

rod

Anybody else love the various symbols used in writing? Yup. You betcha. One of my favorites is the graceful §. Me too. Also, the ampersand &&&&&&&&&, the percent %%%%%%%% and the at @@@@@@@@@@. I like writing them more than typing them; something about the way you loop the pen when you write them, I guess.

I also like the paragraph symbol (I never knew there was a word for it!). Though I tend to think of myself as rather anti-materialist, I really like unique currency symbols. The Pound and Yen in particular. I think the Euro symbol carries on the tradition nicely, and I wish I had a key for it on my computer (though I don't have any use for it...)

I think the Euro symbol carries on the tradition nicely, and I wish I had a key for it on my computer (though I don't have any use for it...)
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Have not seen it yet! Is it used like a $ sign ?
Anyone able to produce an example?

the euro symbol:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/euro.asp

The symbol was also used in last week's wordpic, "pecuniary."

http://wordsmith.org/words/pecuniary.gif

For PC folks anyway. Dunno bout Mac p€opl€.

I'm sure that on new Mac keyboards it's something *easy, like option + E.

(and, yes, Faldage, all I see are stars)

Depending on how recent your PC is or how up to date with fixes you are, you can use Alt Gr (the right hand Alt) and 4 to get the Euro symbol €. I like the International Currency symbol that looks like a Sputnik ¤.

R¤d