Manaňa, Tilde

[maven10]

Manaňa, Tilde

~

Ruth Rosenquist recently met up with Tilde, the symbolic diva of all marks for a lively tête-à-tête over happy hour in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. What follows is a condensed version of Tilde’s richly punctuated history.

While other punctuation marks are designed to keep the order, Tilde tickles the fancy. She elevates the ordinary ‘n’ to a more lyrical en-ya.

This saucy Latina thinks doubling up on consonants is just…ennui. One dash of her superscript adds a syllabic swagger to every consonant she touches. Her serpentine stroke puts the ‘yuh’ in Espaňa and the ‘yo’ into each aňo.

Back in the 12th Century, Tilde was invented by monks as a space-saving mechanism. But she was not meant to be contained within monastery walls. Spanning one consonant at a time, Tilde soon rose above her reputation as a mere squiggle. Refusing to be type-cast, she cavorted with the most flamboyant characters in town. But while the other accents danced the night away, Tilde’s ever-present smile concealed the pain inside. Tilde swallowed her pride whenever a common keyboard or cell phone touch pad excluded her. She rolled her eyes at typographical omissions, and internalized the insult of Mac’s Alt + n command, which implied that she might just be an afterthought, after all.

Tilde has been largely ignored of late, due to her Alt key leanings. Even happy-go-lucky double command colon + right parens : ) earns respect, while Tilde watches her popularity plunge into a cultural divide of Tilde-less tweets and news feed updates.

The narcissistic Exclamation Point loiters nearby, exaggerating claims of her early demise. But the fiery Tilde is not a quitter. No seňor. Her swish remains on the tip of the tongue, hinting of double tequila shots, and sultry syllabic liaisons yet to happen in the dark.

Carry on, my curvy queen of complexity. Do not go gently into that cyber-night!