What are those symbols cartoonists use in place of profanity? They’re called grawlixes — good to know for the next time you play a game we just invented called “Comic Strip Jargon or Pokemon?” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Comic Cursing Symbols”
So Mort Walker’s got this glossary of terms used in comics and cartooning, right? Yeah, it describes the conventions of the business, the little things that they do only in that universe.
Right, my favorite, and we’ve talked about this on the show before, but it deserves another airing, is grawlexes.
Grawlix.
G-R-A-W-L-I-X-E-S.
Grawlixes.
And these are the typographic-looking symbols that represent profanity.
Right.
The top of your computer keyboard.
Yeah, yeah.
So the hat symbol and the hash mark and an exclamation mark and a question mark.
And it just means, you know, the four-letter words and things we can’t say on the air.
I’m bleeping you.
We’ll talk about some more of those in a minute, but we’d love to take your calls.
