The manicule, , is a
typographic
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
mark with the appearance of a hand with its index finger extending in a
pointing
Pointing is a gesture specifying a direction from a person's body, usually indicating a location, person, event, thing or idea. It typically is formed by extending the arm, hand, and index finger, although it may be functionally similar to other ...
gesture. Originally used for handwritten
marginal note
Marginalia (or apostils) are marks made in the margin (typography), margins of a book or other document. They may be scribbles, comments, gloss (annotation), glosses (annotations), critiques, doodles, drolleries, or illuminated manuscript, ...
s, it later came to be used in printed works to draw the reader's attention to important text. Though once widespread, it is rarely used today, except as an occasional archaic novelty.
Terminology
For most of its history, the mark has been inconsistently referred to by a variety of names. William H. Sherman, in the first dedicated study of the mark, uses the term ''manicule'' (from the Latin root ''manicula'', meaning "little hand"), but also identifies 15 further names which have been used:
* hand
* pointing hand
* hand director
* pointer
* digit
* fist
* mutton fist
* bishop's fist
* index
*
* indicator
* indicule
* maniple
* pilcrow
The last three Sherman labels erroneous, with ''indicule'' and ''maniple'' being mishearings or conflations, and ''
pilcrow
The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P.
The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to ...
'' properly referring to the paragraph mark, .
History
Handwritten manicules
![Manicule hand drawn from 15th century](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Manicule_hand_drawn_from_15th_century.png)
The symbol originates in scribal tradition of the medieval and Renaissance period, appearing in the margin of manuscripts to mark corrections or notes. The earliest book known to include manicules is the 1086
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
, where they are used for marginal annotations alongside other marks such as
daggers
A dagger is a fighting knife with a very sharp point and usually two sharp edges, typically designed or capable of being used as a thrusting or stabbing weapon.State v. Martin, 633 S.W.2d 80 (Mo. 1982): This is the dictionary or popular-use def ...
. The age of the annotations is not known, and they may date to later than the 11th century.
Manicules are first known to appear in the 12th century in handwritten
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s in Spain,
[Geoffrey Ashall Glaister s.v. "digit 2.", ''Encyclopedia of the Book'', 2nd Edition, 2001, p. 141.
"This type ornament has a long history, the printed outline of a hand being used as a paragraph mark by, among other early printers, Huss at Lyons in 1484 in the edition of Paulus Florentinus's 'Breviarum totius juris canonici' he printed with Johannes Schabeler. As with other typographic conventions this was taken from scribal practice, carefully drawn hands pointing
to a new paragraph being found in early 12th century (Spanish) manuscripts. It is also known as a fist, hand, or index."] and became common in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy with some very elaborate with shading and artful cuffs. Some were playful and elaborate, but others were as simple as "two squiggly strokes suggesting the barest sketch of a pointing hand" and thus quick to draw.
After the popularization of the
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...
starting in the 1450s, the handwritten version continued in handwritten form as a means to
annotate
An annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. It can be a note that includes a comment or explanation. Annotations are sometimes presented in the margin of book pages. For anno ...
printed documents, eventually falling out of popularity by the nineteenth century.
In print
![The overthrow of dr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/The_overthrow_of_dr._slop.jpg)
Early printers using a type representing the manicule included
Mathias Huss and Johannes Schabeler in Lyons in their 1484 edition of Paulus Florentinus' ''Breviarum totius juris canonici''.
Writer John Boardley identifies the first appearance of a manicule in a printed book as an earlier 1479 edition of the same work, ''Breviarum totius juris canonici'', printed in Milan by Leonhard Pachel and Ulrich Scinzenzeller.
In contrast with their handwritten use, early printed manicules appeared in the main text, pointing outward toward corresponding printed margin notes. Later, beginning in the sixteenth century, the manicule came to be used as a decorative element on the title pages of books, alongside other so-called "
dingbat
In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...
s" such as the
fleuron ().
The manicule attained a great degree of popularity in the nineteenth century, particularly in advertisements. At this time, they also became more visually diverse, with larger and more complex fists being created.
They were also widely used in signage, with some
fingerpost
A fingerpost (sometimes referred to as a guide post) is a traditional type of sign post primarily used in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, consisting of a post with one or more arms, known as fingers, pointing in the direction o ...
s having relief-printed or even fully three-dimensional physical manifestations of pointing hands.
[Sherman, p. 13] The
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
has also used a pointing hand as a graphical indicator for its "
Return to Sender" stamp.
Its popularity declined toward the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps due to its oversaturation in advertising. By the 1890s, it was rarely used unless for ironic effect.
Sherman (2005) argues that as the symbols became standardized, they were no longer reflective of individuality in comparison to other writing, and this explains their diminished popularity.
Usage examples
The typical use of the pointing hand is as a
bullet
A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and co ...
-like symbol to direct the reader's attention to important text, having roughly the same meaning as the word "attention" or "
note
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
". It is used this way both by annotators and printers. Even in the first few centuries of use, it can be seen used to draw attention to specific text, such as a title (in some cases in the form of a row of manicules), inserted text, noteworthy passage, or
sententiae
''Sententiae'', the nominative plural of the Latin word ''sententia'', are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. ''Sententia' ...
. In some cases,
flower marks and
asterisks
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
were used for similar purposes. Less commonly, in earlier centuries the pointing hand acted as a
section divider
In books and documents, a section is a subdivision, especially of a chapter.
Sections are visually separated from each other with a section break, typically consisting of extra space between the sections, and sometimes also by a section headin ...
with a
pilcrow
The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P.
The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to ...
as paragraph divider; or more rarely as the paragraph divider itself.
Some encyclopedias use it in articles to
cross-reference
The term cross-reference (abbreviation: xref) can refer to either:
* An instance within a document which refers to related information elsewhere in the same document. In both printed and online dictionaries cross-references are important because ...
, as in
☞ other articles.
It occasionally sees use in magazines and comic books to indicate to the reader that a story on the right-hand page continues onto the next.
In modern printing, it was used as a standard typographical symbol marking notes. The American ''Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking'' (1894) treats it as the seventh in the standard sequence of footnote markers, following the paragraph sign (
pilcrow
The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P.
The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to ...
).
In linguistics, the symbol is used in
optimality theory
In linguistics, Optimality Theory (frequently abbreviated OT) is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the optimal satisfaction of conflicting constraints. OT differs from other approaches to phonological ...
tableaux to identify the optimal output in a candidate of generated possibilities from a given input.
American science fiction writer
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...
used the symbol as a form of margin on the first line of every paragraph in his novel ''
Breakfast of Champions
''Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday'' is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midl ...
''. The literary effect of this was to create separation between each paragraph, reinforcing the
stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver (physician), Daniel Ol ...
style of the text.
American essayist and cultural critic
H.L. Mencken
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...
, often credited with having first coined the aphorism, "When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you," is also reported to have used this symbol to convey this sentiment in shorthand, seen first in his telegrams as early as the 1920s.
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
parodies this punctuation mark in his novel ''
Gravity's Rainbow
''Gravity's Rainbow'' is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, ...
'' by depicting a
middle finger
The middle finger, long finger, second finger, third finger, toll finger or tall man is the third digit of the human hand, located between the index finger and the ring finger. It is typically the longest digit. In anatomy, it is also called ...
, rather than an index finger, pointing at a line of text.
[
]
Computer cursor
An upward pointing hand is often used in the mouse
cursor
Cursor may refer to:
* Cursor (user interface), an indicator used to show the current position for user interaction on a computer monitor or other display device
* Cursor (databases), a control structure that enables traversal over the records in ...
in
graphical user interfaces
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
(such as those in
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (forme ...
and
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...
) to indicate an object that can be manipulated.
The first is believed to be the
Xerox Star
The Xerox Star workstation, officially named Xerox 8010 Information System, is the first commercial personal computer to incorporate technologies that have since become standard in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window-based ...
.
[ Many web browsers use an upward pointing hand cursor to indicate a clickable ]hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...
. CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
2.0 allows the "cursor" property to be set to "hand" or "pointer" to intentionally change the mouse cursor to this symbol when hovering over an object; "move" may produce a closed fisted hand.
Many video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
made in the 1980s and '90s, primarily text-based adventure games
An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based me ...
, also used these cursors.
Unicode
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
(version 1.0, 1991) introduced six "pointing index" characters in the Miscellaneous Symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
block:
*
*
*
* (☝︎ in non-emoji form using Variant Selector 15)
*
*
Unicode 6.0 (2010) included several emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...
pointing hands:
*
*
*
*
Unicode 7.0 (2014) incorporated several more indices, sourced from the Wingdings 2
Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Cert ...
font:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Unicode 13.0 (2020) added a three-part index (🯁🯂🯃), for compatibility with legacy computing character sets:
*
*
*
See also
* V sign
The ''V sign'' is a hand gesture in which the index and middle fingers are raised and parted to make a V shape while the other fingers are clenched. It has various meanings, depending on the circumstances and how it is presented.
When display ...
* Obelus
An obelus (plural: obeluses or obeli) is a term in typography that refers to a historical mark which has resolved to three modern meanings:
* Division sign
* Dagger
* Commercial minus sign (limited geographical area of use)
The word "obelus ...
(historic text pointer)
*
References
Sources
*
*
* (also )
*
External links
Collection of photographs of manicules on Flickr
{{navbox punctuation
Palaeography
Typographical symbols