Two small fine line tattoos on a wrist: a red semicolon and an outlined square with a tick mark.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Semicolon and square on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows the underside of a wrist and forearm with two small tattoos. On the left is a semicolon in red ink, and on the right is a small outlined square with a tick mark extending from its upper right corner. The linework is thin and even, the ink is a single reddish tone on pale skin, and the plain background keeps the focus on the wrist.

Fine line Forearm Semicolon Square

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sentence had sat on the proof sheet since Tuesday, and nobody on the night desk could agree where it ended. Harold wanted a full stop after the boats came in. The editor wanted a dash, which he said was modern. I wanted neither, because the second half of the sentence belonged to the girl on the harbour wall, and a full stop would have sent her home before the tide turned.

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Every galley at the Gazette went through my hands with a checklist clipped to its corner. Spelling, names, column widths, dates. At the bottom of each sheet was a small square, and when a job was right I drew a tick in it, leaning the pencil so the line rose out of the corner like a gull lifting off. Harold said I was the only proofreader in Caldmouth who still did it by hand. He said it as a compliment, mostly.

On Thursday the apprentice, a boy called Tobias with ink up to his elbows, leaned over my shoulder and frowned at the margin. 'That's not a full stop,' he said. 'It's a semicolon. Nobody uses those.' I told him they were for sentences that had more to say but needed a breath first. He thought about it, then asked whether the square still got ticked. 'Only when the breath is finished,' I said, 'and this one is nearly there.'

I put the semicolon in, then the tick, and sent the page down to the press. The machines started at four, and the paper landed on the doorsteps of Caldmouth before the gulls were up, the girl's line intact, the sentence still open, waiting for the next morning's page to carry it on.