MARY GABLE

After learning the ins and outs of professional proofreading over the past few weeks, I started to wonder how all of those funny-looking slashes and curlicues came to be. Some of them seem sensible enough: close-up hooks cinch gaps in a text, double loops for transposition flip one word over another like a catapult.

In a weird kind of way, these marks look like what they do. But how did the freeform, loopy dele come to mean “take it out?”

I did some searching, and found that there’s not much information out there when it comes to the origins of proofreading marks (although Wikipedia tells me the dele’s shape comes from that of an archaic ‘d’). I did, however, stumble across this comic on Geist.com–think any of these will catch on?