Desiderata, rhythmic and mellifluous, its meaning teased out in the subhead above, is an alluring alternative to the trite word conventionally used here. Be aware, however, should you employ its service, desiderata demands a price: whatever is written, whatever is shared, it must read like poetry. A hundred black leeches on your pitiful heart if not.

Editor-Captain

At the helm of this vessel is the editor-rogue, Destry Wion, better known in high society as Captain Roy d’Errata. For years, d’Errata ran content as a commodity around international ports. But he tired of the magnates, the monotony of expository mercantile, and the persistent ‘surveillance capitalism’ inherent of the mainstream trade.¹ Captain d’Errata yearned to sail in more fulfilling and ethical waters. So he abandoned the merchants and crowded trade routes for expeditions into narrative. Now he writes what he pleases, sails where he wants, and edits for those with an equal worry on the world.

Ship’s Heading

This small ship is not a personal blog, captain’s log, or even a magazine, exactly. It is, at the beginning, a private vessel for solo adventure and chasing the moon; to run rummy words and pursue the elusive leviathan. The editor-captain sails this vessel as a periodical, publishing one or more pieces of nonfiction per issue, generally long-form. Days, weeks, or months could pass from one issue to the next. The format allows growth in the future, if that is ever desired, and the irregular schedule fits d’Errata’s constraints and temperament.

The latest issue is always on the homepage. An archive of everything is there too, listing individual pieces by the type they mostly fit. That architecture may change eventually, but for now it should work fine. Mischievous snail creatures will guide lost souls.

Narrative nonfiction is d’Errata’s concerted focus, but not the sole exercise. Narrative voyages are often long trips back in time to places even the captain knows not until he gets there and looks around. One destination is as good as another if it piques d’Errata’s interest. One can expect the editor to trawl nineteenth-century France for an astonishing tail. Less the flowery topics that romantics coo about, and more obscure and gritty stuff lost in time. That’s what billows the sails.

Persuasive pieces are essays, primarily opinions and arguments. These are subjective and challenging voyages through mine-filled waters. Ecology, society, the future, and so forth are subjects potentially navigated. The captain doesn’t count on persuading minds or saving the world, but a certain kind of solace comes from exploring the issues.

Descriptive writing, strictly speaking, is often shorter-length pieces reflecting d’Errata’s own experiences. Vignettes of life, one might say. Alsatian Zingaro is a good example. Description is often a part of the other types too, expectedly.

Expository writing, the inevitable gruel, should at least be restricted, though no guarantees, to the ropes and rigging of the word-monger’s trade, by any sense or topic. These pieces will appeal to those having a similar interest in word craft, be it archaic, traditional, or technological. In that direction, one should also discover the editor’s Notes. They’re brief, informal, and as close to a blog as d’Errata will ever get.

Ship’s Moniker

The name brushed across the hull of this schooner refers to the oldest punctuation mark still used. Aristophanes of Byzantium, a Greek scholar in the Hellenistic age, is largely credited for the invention. He created a three-dot system that helped guide reading verse aloud. The dots and their respective functions were distinguished by their vertical position on a line of text. One of these dots, periodos,² or περῐ́οδος in Aristophanes’s tongue,³ was placed at the top of a line to mark the end of a verse. More specifically, it was placed at the height of a majuscule letter, the only kind of letters used back then. One millennium and three hundred years later on the British Isles, Ælfric of Eynsham, an Anglo-Saxon monk, described the same mark, ‘periodos’, though not the same vertical position, in his historical treatise, Grammar, aptly enough titled.⁴

Today the mark is called ‘period’ or ‘full stop’, depending on where you are, and it’s used on the baseline only. Captain d’Errata likes neither of these contemporary terms, a reflection of his roguish nature, perhaps. He prefers ‘full point’ instead, and thus his vessel was stroked. The infamous lexicographer, Eric Partridge, wrote in 1953 that full point was ‘obsolescent’.⁵ Oxford, maintainer of ‘the definitive record of the English language’, disagrees seventy years on.⁶

Academics aside, d’Errata just likes how The Full Point sounds, like a ship at high sail versus one that’s bloody or dead in the water. And no other publication shares the name either, a tactical advantage. When the well-heeled speak excitedly about ‘that piece’ in the Full Point, they’ll be meaning a fine story here, or d’Errata himself.

The appreciative owner of two sharp eyes will also notice the typographic flourishes book-ending the masthead moniker. At the fore is the archaic ‘yᵉ’, curious shorthand notation meaning ‘the’, and pronounced the same way.⁷ The editor is amused by it. The ‘ᵉ’ in this case is a small E modifier glyph to better mimic the size and position of its hand-written incarnation.

At aft of the moniker is another glyph, an ideographic full stop for ‘pizazz and emphasis’, says d’Errata. The glyph is emblazoned upon the jib as well; a black ring to help spot the Full Point dancing across the waves. When the glyph ends a paragraph in any Full Point story, it signals text the editor’s especially pleased with — a rare occasion indeed。

A monogram compliments the the ship’s name and doubles as an avatar. It’s comprised of a majuscule F and P sharing a common stem, what makes it a monogram. The letters are locked, one could say, with a recognizable ring, symbolizing the point and periodical nature of things. Good Ælfric would call it the ‘prica’.⁸ Another ring, on d’Errata’s dexter hand, bears a sea-green gem with the monogram’s relief.⁹ The glowing stone is used to seal correspondence, enter secret places, and conjure mystical editing magic.

The captain would like it known that he is not concerned with a scurvy dog’s aptitude for precisely writing Yᵉ Full Point。Indeed, when in full editing feather, d’Errata may use any combination of Yᵉ/The . . . Point/Point。Even Full Point without the article is sometimes what the manual requires.¹⁰ If the scribes should follow one unwavering rule only, it is never use ‘TFP’ in place of writing the name out full. Such contemptible slack may earn the lash, or the curse of d’Errata’s green ring of power!

Pomp and Decor

Originally meaning the top of a ship’s main mast, masthead was co-opted in journalism to mean the top of a newspaper’s front page, or that of a magazine’s cover. It’s where information like the publication’s name, acting editor, periodicity, issue number, date, price, and so on are displayed in prominent fashion. The identifying tops of subsequent pages (not called mastheads) in print periodicals are considerably reduced to better accommodate editorial.

To no great surprise, this metaphor transferred to website design too, though much less consistently. It’s especially common in news media circles to hear site owners or web designers talk about the ‘masthead’. The metaphor would imply that only the homepage bears one, but that is where things go astray in web design. A lot of websites use a common banner/navigation system across the entire domain. Fill all the boxes up with advertisements, calls to action, and complimentary widgets and thingamabobs, and the hapless reader is want to find the actual story.

Yᵉ Full Point adopts the masthead metaphor quite literally, modeling its own after those typical of French journals in the late nineteenth century. Not until after the First War did layouts begin to change, gradually, into the concepts we see today.

The banner, as it’s more appropriately called in the rest of the site, like at top of this page, is quite reduced to optimize vertical screen real estate (another web-speak metaphor).

Regarding the imagery used in this periodical, there are two kinds: informative and decorative. The former are strictly figures, like the one above, used in the course of a story. These will always have captions and provide source and rights-of-use information, as necessary. The latter, used strictly to cheer up the crew, is everything else, and could be anywhere except in a story article.

All decorative artwork, and most informative artwork, comes from sources in the public domain, as concerned and defined by the Berne Convention. Attention is given to any local and overriding laws of a signatory country. In situations where informative artwork (including photography, drawings, and so on) are not public-usable, permission is secured from the rights holder and that fact is made clear in the figure’s caption.

For those bedazzled by the decorative art’s ship-shape presentation, each piece is excised from its original digital facsimile with the skill of a cosmetic surgeon. This is d’Errata’s handiwork, and there’s nothing automated about it. It’s a practiced and time-intensive labour that employs an electric eraser with different brush sizes and hardness. The editor claims no right to these decorative images, since they were acquired just as easily, but he did, rather painstakingly, liberate them from backgrounds and bonds with an eye for detail. A cabin boy might keep that in mind if intending to pinch one, and at least give a courteous nod back to the Full Point if they do. Liberating one’s own ‘illuminarians’, as d’Errata fancies calling the motley ensemble, is a sensible step in the advancement of one’s own standing in society.

Honourable Code

On an equally serious matter, Captain d’Errata hopes visitors notice and appreciate that they are not tracked on this vessel. There is no advertising or social-media injection, no analytical monitoring of search terms and movement, or any other hidden or obvious ploy to collect data about visitors and readers of this website. There will never be any of these nasty things.

Most website owners have the gall to suggest, through pop-up windows and overlays, that they offer a rich and personalized experience through their use of cookies. Cookies, as many readers may know, are small but persistent tracking files that website owners slip into one’s browser like a mickey. They’re used to track and learn various things about the innocent web traveler, even when the tracking is unwelcome. In fact, mickey is a better word than cookie, since getting screwed is the end result either way.

Website owners knowingly sweet-talk a rotten deal when they make cookies sound like a benefit. But no matter how much they try to sugar-coat the turd, cookies only benefit website owners, and their prime motivation is to make money off the people they’re tracking. Unless one needs an account to use a website — to manage one’s financial excesses, say — then said website should not be slipping mickeys. The European Union, with its GDPR, tends to agree. But the problem is difficult to regulate; the grifters are many and the greed of John Company is vast.¹¹

Captain d’Errata offers more respect. A fast, usable, surveillance-free website is the most ethical and pleasurable voyage a publication can offer, and better for the ecology. Let the Full Point sail as a shining example of a ship to trust and return to. Let d’Errata’s plume and wit be the reason one does.

Comments and Correspondence

Enthusiastic readers may soon recognize the lack of commenting functionality, for which consideration was made, to be sure. There are pros and cons for allowing reader comments, all can agree. But d’Errata takes the position that not having comments is the better tack in this case: it lightens the digital footprint, heightens security, and simplifies overall design.

‘But the conversation,’ one might counter. ‘The community, sir. Where’s the humanity‽’ To which the captain would nod understandingly but without a change of heart. The editor is working on borrowed time to research, write, and edit stories, then dress them up for online consumption. When it comes to the scales, it’s a lopsided affair between producer and consumer of free creativity, especially when consumers are not tracked and funneled for money in other ways. It’s an affair the editor is willing to indulge, to a certain prica, but not to everyone’s expectation, perhaps. Moderation is no small task if one cares to do it sincerely and well. For that d’Errata has no time, nor a bosun at the ready with a cat-o’-nine. The Full Point sails for the adventure of writing stories. Poseidon can take the rest. ♆

Nevertheless, the hardiest and most-impassioned readers are at liberty to express their positions, and there is only one way for it, by message in a bottle. Bottled messages are read and prioritized according to their bumping into the hull. General enquiries of a sincere nature should fair well enough.

After some nautical miles, the captain may cast the bones and read the clouds to gauge the merit of adding a commenting system. Of his many concerns in the world, however, that one is least of all.

Privacy Not Piracy

The captain does not hate the pirates of old. Their plundering of Her Majesty’s jewels is trivial against The Crown stealing somebody’s country. And d’Errata can understand the fire of resistance, the thrill of freedom, and the romantic call of the wild. But modern-day piracy of one’s manifest creativity, often produced at great sacrifice, is a different story.

The editor respects privacy, the intellectual rights of others, and the laws that govern both. He therefore expects the same things in turn. While the matter of privacy is still a greased piglet, legally speaking, copyright infringement is a bigger hog tied, and magistrates are happy to collect from malefactors on behalf of the intellectual.

When the editor’s not at sea, his desk is in France, a signatory country of the Berne Convention. This periodical, therefore, is an ‘intellectual work’, or œuvre de l’esprit, protected by the French copyright law, droit d’auteur (right of author). Should d’Errata have to track, shackle, and drag an infringing hog to court, the legalities will be handled by the court of France, not that of the perpetrator’s home or its laws. A costly skewering when all done.

If for any unfathomable reason one would like permission to use the editor’s hard-earned intellectual ramblings beyond what French law allows, they should cork a bottle with a ‘Legal matter’ heading. That does not guarantee the granting of such license, but it’s the only way it may happen.

Patronage and Support

Free or not, production of quality long-form nonfiction is a non-trivial endeavor. Research takes time and occasional travel. Structuring a story can take just as long. The drafting, revising, and formatting follows… The editor’s self-criticism is notorious.

When the captain’s hunting something big, a story may grow beyond what is practical for a single web document. In that case an e-book would result — perhaps at a reasonable cost, depending on subject and sensitivity — and the preface or a chapter is published here instead.

If an upstanding citizen is moved by the shape of this ship and its livory, and would help keep the spice flowing with a kind donation from their treasury, the editor-captain would greatly appreciate the gesture. Greatly. A means for such donations will come when d’Errata feels like he has earned it. For now the ship’s ready to sail and the editor’s proverbial inkwell is full.

𝓕in