Black and grey photo of three small black semicolon tattoos on the inner wrists of three arms held together.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three small semicolon tattoos on wrists

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three arms are held close together, each with a small solid black semicolon tattoo on the inner wrist or lower forearm. The linework is simple and crisp, with the dots and comma-shaped mark sharply defined against the skin. The photograph is black and white, and the composition is tightly framed on the wrists with a knitted glove visible at the bottom.

Forearm Semicolon Punctuation Dot Hand Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mags, the new man at the Quay telegraph office has a habit I can't get used to. He stops halfway through a message, lifts his pen, and waits, as if the wire might change its mind. Yesterday he sent the Penmarrow tide times with a neat pair of dots and a little tail in the middle of the line. When I asked why he didn't just full stop it, he said a full stop shuts a door and a semicolon only leaves it ajar.

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Turns out he learned that from the two lads who kept the night key with him before the Harbour Board moved them over to the railway. They had a rule, Tobias says: no wire goes out without a pause in it where the other end can still answer. Pass the pause, and the rest of the sentence belongs to whoever is listening. I thought it was daft sentiment dressed up as grammar, the sort of thing men say over a pint of bitter.

Then last Tuesday the Mary Ellen's skipper wired in from the Lizard. His message ran out at a semicolon and nothing came after it. Tobias didn't wait for the sounder to go quiet. He sat with his fingers on the key, tapping the dots back, one, two, three, the way the lads used to, until the answer came crackling up the line in a voice he knew.

Anyway, the Penmarrow tide times are in the post, and I've enclosed a carbon of the one he wrote. Look at the little tail. It is the most hopeful thing I've seen on a telegraph form in years.