You gotta go forward to go back.
You gotta go forwards to go back.        

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Badges? We Ain’t Got No Badges   Ordinary Essay   Rosemary Dunn Dalton: Introduction   WWJD?   The Case of the Missing Parenthesis   When in Rome


Get back to where you once belonged. Reading is fundamental. Go forward. Move ahead.

WWJD?

by Melissa Lórien Michaels

“What the—?!”

“No, not ‘?!’, dude. Dontcha get it‽” Tschich demonstrated.

“I see now,” said Twom, inking the interrobang into his notebook.

“I wonder what Jan would think of this,” Tschich mused.

“Blasphemy.”

Tschich nodded, laughing. “You can always count on Jan to connipt.” After a pause, Tschich added, “But you know, what about his quest to design single characters for multigraphs?”

“That was just because he was lazy and wanted to replace the ‘sch’ in his name with one letter,” Twom joked.

“Yeah, Tschichold lazy. Thatsa good one.”

“Speaking of, where’s Thorow?” Twom asked. “Just because William wasn’t a legitimate designer doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to do any typesetting.”

“Oh, you know, probably out founding another foundry or some such enterprise. Typotrio’s not profitable enough, I guess.”

“My ligatures are burning!”

“Kerning,” Tschich offered.

“Okay, kerning, Miss Punctilious,” snapped Thorow as he passed through the cubicle doors. “What’s on the lightbox today?”

“Interrobangs,” Twom said, concentrating as he rapidographed around his French curve.

“Whaddya think? Jan: for or against the interrobang?” Tschich polled.

“Oh stop obsessing about your namesake. ‘WWJT, WWJS, WWJD?’” Thorow mock-whined.

“You’re just jealous because yours isn’t a real artist,” shot Tschich.

“Yes, yes, we’ve been over this ten dozen times before. I’m the Pascal, you two are the Primos. If anything, I’m the Secondo,” Thorow harrumphed. “I mean, the bank’s about to foreclose, and you two are playing Tschichold Would‽”

“Well-done, Thorow! You used the interrobang!” Twom piped.

“Stop praising the merchant. ‘He’s a businessman, he’s anything he needs to be at any time.’”

“How many times do I have to tell you, think of it as a homonym, not an abbreviation!”

“Oh, yes. Thoreau,” Tschich said, scribbling a sarcasm mark on the chalkboard.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Twom capped the rapidograph and turned toward the bookcase to his left. “Mr. Tschichold, Mr. Tschichold, what do you think of the interrobang?”

“Page 106, from ‘The Beginnings of Paragraphs’: ‘The desire of our time for simplicity is a reaction to the florid and ornate style of our grandfathers, frequently expressed in a morbid search after simplification. Such a confusion of ideas can have grave consequences.’”

“Ah, yes. Morbid. Grave. Confusion. Tschichold knows, he always knows,” Tschich intoned.

“Knows what‽ That simplicity is an overreaction‽ How can the father of The New Typography—”

“Which he later retracted. Stop simplifying, Thorow,” interrupted Tschich.

“But still! He’s a hypocrite.”

“Don’t you be dissin’ my typographer, man.”

“Oh c’mon, Tschich. We all know he’s a prig. Just like Fowler.” Twom interjected.

“Look, we’re not getting into fused participles again,” said Thorow.

“I don’t mind you not wanting to discuss the issue,” joked Twom.

“It’s your, you yokel!” Tschich pounced.

“You are so easy to tighten, Tschich,” Thorow said.

“Go track yourself!”

“Me? You’re defending a couple of anal-retentive word nerds and you’re telling me to go track myself‽”

“Eat lead.”

“That’s it! That’s the answer!” Twom slammed the book closed.

“To what‽” Thorow cracked.

“To that!” Twom pointed to the interrobang hovering in the air. “Grave consequences!”

Tschich and Thorow paused, chanting in unison, “What the—‽”

DJWW?

Get back to where you once belonged. Reading is fundamental. Go forward. Move ahead.
Badges? We Ain’t Got No Badges   Ordinary Essay   Rosemary Dunn Dalton: Introduction   WWJD?   The Case of the Missing Parenthesis   When in Rome

Welcome! Listen Look Watch Read Code Get Give


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