Cartoon expletives

[insider]

In cartoons characters such as @$#%& are symbols of expetives. Where did these come from and is there a proper way to place the characters so that they become different expletives?

[Dark Lord Davidson]

I think they were just used because you usually don't see those particular symbols in cartoon dialogue. And there's no set pattern for them either.

In other words, @#$%! off.

;)

[Cartooniverse]

Like I'm steering clear of a thread with THIS title? Nah. :D

It's called "masking" in the Internet Chat world. As far as I know, nobody's ever set a pattern down. Which is not to say that we couldn't start. But, we've a bit of a congestions problem these days, so let's not muck up the &%@$#*&^% works, shall we? :p

Cartooniverse

[AWB]

I remember that the video character Q-bert said "@!#?@!" whenever he got bonked in the game, verbatim. What that actually meant is still a mystery.

[Zenster]

I would venture that the practice dates back to hot lead linotype machines. The special characters were the only non-blank symbols available straight off the keyboard to create the appropriately suggestive psuedo-letter groups.

[Stimpy]

For the very best examples of @#&£!?! expletives, read an Asterix comic. You've got skulls, swirly patterns, wounded swirly patterns, woman being chased by a wolf... and as far as I remember the expletives always had different looks for whichever language was being used, i.e. a Roman, a Gaul, a Pirate, and so on would all swear with different symbols.

[RealityChuck]

The symbols actually have specified names (at least, Mort Walker has named them and it seems to be part of the industry):

The balloon is a "maladicta balloon"
The typographic symbols are "jarns."

There are also the "quimp" (looks like the planet Saturn), "nittles" (like asterisks), and "grawlix" (a scrawled and unreadible bit of text).