Right on Q – Paul Clements on a capital letter

One hundred and fifty years ago the now familiar Qwerty keyboard was patented by the American politician and inventor Christopher Sholes. He worked in a machine shop in Milwaukee for several years before his model for the world’s first commercial typewriter was introduced for mass production in the summer of 1874. Effectively a non-word, the term is taken from the first six letters from the left on the top row of English-language typewriter keys: Q, W, E, R, T, and Y. The rest cover the remaining 20 letters of the modern alphabet, but the 17th – the letter Q – remains one of the least used.

Many years ago as a cub reporter on a weekly newspaper, I became curious about how the Q on my venerable Imperial 66 typewriter never had a finger-shine. It caused me to try to weave words into my copy such as quandary, quibble, quixotic or quadruplets, and on one occasion use the word quisquilious (meaning worthless or trivial) but the editor’s prickly antennae quickly quashed it, fearing that quizzical readers would query it.

Throughout Ireland many placenames feature the letter Q. The Irish townlands website lists an inventory of more than 60 places starting with the letter, and cropping up in most counties. For example: Quigley’s Point in Inishowen, Quin and Quilty in Clare, Quitchery Cross Roads in Wexford, Quarrytown in Co Antrim, while Quiggy Upper and Quiggy Lower are found in the Sperrin Mountains. The Quiggery Water flows through Fintona in Tyrone, the Quoile River runs into Strangford Lough in Co Down, and Quivvy Lough is in Fermanagh.

In his Origin and History of Irish Names of Places (Volume III, 1920) PW Joyce lists a total of 11 townlands starting with Q, including five in Sligo: Quiggabar, Quiggaboy, Quignalecka, Quignalegan and Quignashee.

Arms and the woman – Frank McNally on Irish-American writer Kathleen Norris’s controversial salute

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Them Too? – Frank McNally on the Joyce studies scandal

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Right on Q – Paul Clements on a capital letter

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A pioneering role in Irish women’s education – Brian Maye on Agnes O’Farrelly

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Occasionally, in new books, the distinctive long-tailed Latin-style capital letter Q is modelled on ancient Roman square capitals. With the advent of Open Type fonts, a format for scalable computer fonts, it has made a comeback, lending an extended decorative flourish in serif typefaces such as Garamond and making it noteworthy in the world of typography.

The letter Q crops up in the fictional world. In the James Bond films Q is the name of the quartermaster responsible for the development of Bond’s customized cars and other gadgets. In 2023 the novelist Louis de Bernières produced a satire Light Over Liskeard which featured Arthur, or Q, a middle-aged quantum cryptographer employed by the British government to manage technological disasters.

Whilst most writers today type on the standard Qwerty keyboard, a few still prefer using Quink – a word merging “quick” and “ink” – and a general-purpose ink for fountain pens developed in the 1930s. It was said to derive from an old name for a goose (possibly Brent goose) whose quills were used for writing.

Travel writers are notorious for going on quests. Bruce Chatwin headed off to Patagonia in search of the story behind a piece of brontosaurus skin that he had found in his grandmother’s curiosity cabinet; others have pursued a rare bird, a delicate orchid, the highest mountains, or tried to find places beginning with Q.

Several years ago the author Jeremy Cameron walked around the Qs of England for his book Quite Quintessential, his journey taking him from Cornwall to Co Durham. He ticked off at least 45 quaint hamlets, villages, and towns such as Quabbs, Quatford, Quendon and Quidhampton, before reaching Quaking Houses in Durham, which may have been settled by Quakers.

Authors who introduce humour in their work are known as “quiplash” writers, and in his lyrical travel book Roads to Quoz (2008) the American writer and historian William Least Heat-Moon explored the subject with a mix of idiosyncrasy and playfulness. He describes a Quoz as anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar such as a queeve, which in the US is a twist in the road. Q is a leitmotif in his book, and although he believes the letter is alphabetically superfluous, he still regards part of its mystery as having a dark side, producing words such as queasy, quagmire, quarrel, quackery and quicksand.

Earlier this year, the Canadian writer Sheila Heti, brought out Alphabetical Diaries based on a record of her thoughts over a 10-year period. She arranged her sentences chronologically from A to Z, consisting of 25 chapters (there is no sentence beginning with an X). As she threaded her away through the alphabet each sentence started with an individual letter. Unsurprisingly, the shortest chapter in her assemblage is the one featuring Q with a single sentence: “Quiet days, not seeing people, feeling fine.”

While on the Q topic it would be remiss not to mention that many years ago the quick-witted writers of An Irishman’s Diary included Patrick Campbell, Brian Inglis and Seamus Kelly. The last word in their column was the pseudonym “Quidnunc”, meaning someone who is always asking “What now?” or “What’s new?” and is defined as a busybody or newsmonger, eager to learn gossip or anything quirky.