(Roughly) Daily

The Ampersand: a scribal abbreviation for “and.”  Derived from the Latin word “et.”

From its biggest fan:

I like the ampersand. I think it is often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all.  This blog is an attempt to give this humble character the respect it deserves..

As we take E.M. Forster’s advice and “only connect,” we might recall that it was on this date that the action in what many believe was the first “true crime story”– Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (often sub-titled as “A Sequel to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”)– transpires…

Marie Rogêt left the residence of her mother, in the Rue Pavée St. Andrée, about nine o’clock in the morning of Sunday June the twenty-second, 18–. In going out, she gave notice to a Monsieur Jacques St. Eustache, and to him only, of her intention to spend the day with an aunt who resided in the Rue des Drômes.

Truman Capote, James Ellroy, Janet Malcolm, eat your hearts out…