The Kat's Meow

This was the title of my sixth-grade autobiography; honestly, some of my best title ideas have come from then. Anyway, oftentimes I'm going about my day-to-day business and I think of something I want to put on my blog--but that simply is not enough to warrant a full post. So! I had this idea. When I get those flashes of inspiration (a quote, a fact, a book recommendation, etc.) I shall put it up here under the title of "Kat's Meow." Sound good? Awesome. Here's my first:

Do you know what I think about a lot? Punctuation. (Yes, Benjy, "alot of punctuation.") And I wanted to share with you some of my heroes from the punctuation world: if you have even a fraction of a Grammar Nazi in you, if you thrill to the sight of a perfectly-placed semicolon or gnash your teeth at those who unwittingly "lapse into a comma," you will surely love them, too. Their names, dear friends, are Aldus Manutius the Elder (1449-1519) and Aldus Manutius the Younger (grandson of the first.) They, frankly, were amazing. By the end of their combined work at their printing press, they had changed the written world forever--and still almost nobody knows their names! Aldus Manutius and Aldus Manutius invented the italic typeface. They were the first to print a modern-usage semicolon in their text. And they were the first to take the medieval virgule (which looked like today's forward slash), pull it down, and curve it: thereby creating the comma. It's all true. Thank them, O English lovers! For without these two inspired printers, English today would be very, very different.