little authorial signatures (the littler the better)

Thinking of things like Brigid Brophy always using the archaic shew instead of show or Lewis Carroll’s extra apostrophe in sha’n’t

on a point of order but that is in fact the right amount of apostrophes in sh'n't tbf

i think there should be even more, give foc's'l'e a run for its money

or f'oc's'l'e as i prefer

b'o's'u'n'

we've already spoiled wins's thread :'(

I don’t really like apostrophes & I’d rather there were fewer

Those freaks who are like ‘round, ‘plane, ‘’’’phone

But the thing is whether Carroll is using the right amount or not he is the only one who does that

And then there's G.B. Shaw, who doesn't use apostrophes iirc.

And the authors who use dashes instead of quotation marks - did that start with Joyce?

there's also the wyndham lewis double dash =

which i think he removed when he later revised & republished his early work in the late twenties

can't remember who it was, but i remember recently reading another 20th century author how did the "shew" thing as well

And the authors who use dashes instead of quotation marks - did that start with Joyce?

Correct usage in Portuguese (and perhaps some other romance languages?)!

up until maybe the 1930s i think it's quite likely that there were publishing houses that favoured "shew" in their house style, from whence they imposed it on their authors -- it was after all still the biblically sanctioned spelling (KJB) and announcing yourself as "quirkily old-fashioned" would be a selling point in a time of modernist turmoil

(the first book i remember encountering it and being puzzled -- i asked my dad -- was t.h.white's "the sword in the stone")

A bit like the first time I encountered gaol.

tom d is innocent

laughing out loud

Drinking game every time Elmore Leonard uses the word “sportcoat”

Shaw is mentioned, 'shew' is mentioned, but it looks like Shaw using shew has not shown up. Shewn up. Shuwn.

shuwn

so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly towards the full new yorker diaeresis

William Shown's New Yorker

wallace shown

ah yes from cluëless

There's Hubert Selby's use of the slash instead of the apostrophe, though this might not be a "little" signature. Also for some reason I remember William Burroughs' spelling of "naborhood" in more than one spot.

Love "gaol" and have always enjoyed spelling it that way whenever possible.
Quite amusing hearing Elden Ring YouTubers trying to get their mouths around "Ever-GOWEL". They are forgiven. But there's no excuse for calling Blaidd "Blade". He literally tells you it's pronounced "Blythe".

I thought of selby and the slash (along with spellings like krist) but yeah on the bigger side

With brophy & shew it’s the fact that she was doing it in the sixties through to the eighties, & doing it consistently in more or less conventional novels, essays & experimental fiction, it’s a minor thing that stands out (she also will always use sc or even scilicet where most will use viz so I kind of assume this is her dying on some pedantic hill)

first thing i thought of was salinger’s “goddam” - i don’t usually see it spelled without the silent N outside of his writing

can't remember who it was, but i remember recently reading another 20th century author how did the "shew" thing as well

IIRC H.P. Lovecraft used shew regularly.

Shew me the meaning of the word

There's no business like shewbusiness.

So let the sideshew begin

H.P. Lovecraft and the word eldritch. As Mark E Smith and Andrew from the Sisters picked up on.

Cormac McCarthy and the word and. Sentence beginner and otherwise.