He asked his father to divide his wealth, and once he’d asked the question, Mark got his request. He hung up his working clothes (the ones in which he’d often tilde the soil) on some square brackets and took his fraction, wrapped in a handkerchief and tied with a ligature.
His expectation for the amount of fun he could have with the money was close to infinity, greater than the reality. He went to a local bar with all sorts of party people, including one girl, a screamer, who loved, to a degree, to receive any kind of flower, (but particularly liked receiving an Aster). Risk followed gamble several times; his cash came to a full stop. He was left with neither jot nor tittle.
He tended hogs, and in his parietal lobe lusted after filling his belly (including his colon) with the hash the pigs were eating. Many of the hogs had a scar on their flanks...
He came to his senses like a bullet, pointed at a target, and this speech marks the moment he realized: ‘I, er, have been an, um, lout. I am less than worthy to be called a son, so I’ll ask to be a servant. Then we will be all square. Roots are a vital factor. I zealously desire to be home.’
But while he was still a long way off (beyond the intersection), signs were showing that his father saw him coming and went to greet him at a dash; he threw his curly brackets around him and the way he kissed him with his (yes, motivated by love’s compel) lips, is the stuff of legend.
He gave him a ring and a coat, plus shoes and killed the calf. So he really did dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Father, standing at an angle, quotes in his upper-class accent ‘My son was deuced ill and now he’s well!’
Then he added, as if in parentheses ‘He was in the grave, but now his life is acute!’
divide /
question mark ?
tilde ~
square brackets. [ ]
fraction eg ½, ¾
infinity ∞
greater than >
degree as in 100°
asterisk *
times x
full stop .
jot above i or j
tittle through t
obelus (formal divide sign: colon centred vertically and horizonally on a minus sign; unicode character 61624)
colon :
hash #
caron [4] ˘ as in ř
curly brackets { }
ellipsis [5] …
ring as in å
plus +
dot i’s, cross t’s i,t
angle quotes [6] « »
bullet point •
speech marks “
umlout ¨ as in ü
less than <
square root √
factorize !
section sign §
at @
dash en – em —
accent eg ´ `
cedilla as in ç
parentheses ( )
grave ` as in è
acute ´ as in é
[1] joining two letters (originally for typographical neatness)
[2] general term for any diacritial mark - horizontal, diagonal or vertical
[3] newspaper editorial slang for an exclamation mark
[4] eg the Hungarian composer Antonín Dvořák
[5] indicates an omission (or in dialogue, an interruption)
[6] indicating speech in, eg French & Catalan text; also called guillemets
