Close-up of a small black semicolon tattoo in fine line style on the ankle, with a tan suede shoe below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small semicolon tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black semicolon sits on the side of a pale ankle, with the dot above and the comma-shaped tail below. The linework is clean and simple, with no shading, and the ink is a single dark tone. The shoe and wooden floor fill the lower edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

Keep reading

You asked me on Sunday why I keep the little brass punch in the drawer with the spare quoins, the one nobody else was allowed to touch. It is a semicolon, love. Ted Hollis cut it for the Gazette the spring your mother was born, because Mr Pargeter wanted a stop that didn't close a thing off altogether. Most of the compositors thought it fussy. Mr Pargeter called it the hedge-sitter's mark.

I set my first one at fifteen, a notice for the Methodist harvest supper, and I got it wrong twice. Two clauses that needed to lean on each other, not drop apart. You can't hurry that. The line has to hold its breath. Mr Pargeter stood over my case with his pipe going out and said, "A full stop is a door shutting. A semicolon is a door left ajar so the draught tells you someone's still in the room."

The shop closed in 1961 when the Gazette moved out to the new works at Kirkby, and the punch went into my coat pocket, where it has lived ever since. I have never used it for anything but turning it over while I think, the way you'd worry a smooth stone in your palm.

So keep it, Ruth, if you want it. Pick a sentence that isn't finished yet and leave the door open a crack. Your loving grandad, Frank.

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