Proposed Punctuation

The Typographic Apocrypha of Hervé Bazin






A TrueType implementation of proposed, non-canonical punctuation marks from Hervé Bazin's 1966 essay Plumons l’Oiseau. Glyphs reside at Unicode block suggested by Mykyta Yevstifeyev and Karl Pentzlin.

⹃

Love Point — U+2E43

Point d'amour

⹄

Certitude Point — U+2E44

Point de certitude

⹅

Authority Point — U+2E45

Point d'autorité

⹆

Irony Point — U+2E46

Point d'ironie

⹇

Acclamation Point — U+2E47

Point d'acclamation

⹈

Doubt Point — U+2E48

Point de doute

Usage

Download the Bazin TrueType font file here.


Define a CSS font-face with the TrueType file

        @font-face {
            font-family: "Bazin";
            src: url("path/to/Bazin.ttf");
        }

Include Bazin as a fallback font in your font-family declaration. CSS will load your primary font for text and fall back to Bazin for the punctuation glyphs, because they are in an unimplemented Unicode block in most other fonts.

        body {
          font-family: 'EB Garamond', 'Bazin', serif;
        }

Use as Unicode literals in strings or HTML entities in pages.

        var s = "You mean the world to me\u2E43";
        <p>You mean the world to me&#x2E43;</p>

Making Meaning

  1. Slip these punctuations into your daily correspondence. Circulate accordingly.
  2. Use the marks how they were meant to be used — to articulate tone precisely, to imbue meaning.
  3. Drop me a line. I'd love to see how far these points will go.

Details

2015 Jonathan Zong, with ⹃