It’s Really Spelled “Hallowe’en”

(TO BE CLEAR, IT’S ACTUALLY a slight abbreviation of the phrase “All Hallow’s Evening,” AKA “All Hallow’s Even,” AKA “Hallows E’en.”)

There’s something to be said about archaic or alternate spellings / renderings. For example, a beloved English teacher once opined that the spelling “grey” instead of “gray” made the word look and feel, well, “greyer.”

Different fonts make the words we read sound different in our minds. Italics (at least for me) convey a more choral mindfeel than does plain text; bold is like a quiet sit-up-and-pay-attention monotone; ALL CAPS evokes shouting; deletion lines are like mumbled static. Put them all together, and one has CONTROLLED CHAOS.

This blog’s limitations prevent the display of such famous (or infamous) fonts such as Poor Richard, Comic Sans, Papyrus, or anything other than Times New Roman and Arial. (Except in our dozens of header images, of course.) But all of these also carry their own respective accents and mindsounds. Perhaps their creators were going for that effect; perhaps it’s just an unintended consequence. Either way, there it is — innerly-audial typography is here to stay.

But back to archaisms. As avid fans of late 19th century / early 20th century literary fantasy, we at The Metaphorager try to use as many archaisms as possible, simply because we love them. One favorite is following an exclamation mark with a lowercase word or phrase! a la Edgar Alan Poe or Mark Twain. Does it work for question marks too? you tell me.

Of course, there’s a risk of it coming off as affectation, but we reject that. As Frasier Crane once said, “We’ve decided to find it charming.” I hope you do too.

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