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.
For what this means, see (or course) our very own One-Letter Words: A Dictionary (and though the hardcover is out of print, the e-version remains "out there"). Our illustration is from The Galaxy magazine, 1866.
The caption to this figure identifies the three w's as being written by a monkey. The other squiggle is unidentified, but we can now reveal it to be a translation of a Sapphic fragment defined by its decline into silence. From The Evolution of Animal Intelligence by Samuel J. Holmes, 1911.
Here's who is minding your P's while you're minding your Q's. From St. Nicholas magazine, 1900. And note that Mr. Punch graces one of those rare drop capitals sporting a quotation mark.