CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
"So difficult, isn't it, to draw hard-and-fast lines between what one rationally believes, and what one trusts is true, and what seems to admit of more than one explanation." —E. F. Benson, Trouble For Lucia
Even a squiggle isn’t immune to the corruption inherent in transliteration. Here's our pictorial study of how Laurence Sterne's elegant and eloquent squiggle (d)evolved through various editions of Tristram Shandy. We call it "Lost in Transliteration."
"[There's] only a very fine line between the ability to concentrate intelligently on an objective and an unhealthy obsession." —Amanda Quick, The Perfect Poison (2009)