Learned Today

Following Mr. Baty’s lead, here’s what I learned today: The little x’s that people put at the end of love notes to signify kisses come from an early European custom in which the illiterate would sign their name as an X and then kiss it to seal an oath that the X was, in fact, a representation of their name.

Centuries later, the names are long forgotten . . . but not the kisses.

For the record, I learned this from David Sack’s highly interesting (and sometimes quite annoying) book Language Visible.