After looking all through the character map for Arial Narrow in Windows, and various other fonts on my Linux boxes, I realised that several fonts are missing an incredibly vital syllogistic symbol! The therefore symbol, which looks like a triangle of three dots ( &there4 ) can’t be found within many popular font maps. To top it off, there really isn’t a universally accepted ASCII code for it either.

You may be asking yourself “when the hell would I actually use this thing?” That’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked… well you really didn’t ask, but I asked for you. 🙂

The “therefore” symbol is often used in philosophical debate shorthand, specifically when syllogisms are being utilized. A syllogism is simply an Aristotelian form of logical flow in which there is a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion from the synthesis of those two premises. For instance:

A: Timmy is taller than Jonathan.
B: Jonathan is taller than Eric.

Following these two premises, one could offer a concluding statement like “Therefore, Timmy is taller than Eric.” That would be an example of a syllogism. As you can see, I used the word “therefore.” That would be a perfect time to use the shorthand symbol!

In essence, the syllogism would then look something like this:

A: Timmy is taller than Jonathan.
B: Jonathan is taller than Eric.
&there4 Timmy is taller than Eric.

See how much more concise (and not to mention stylish) the latter is over the former? 🙂

|:| Zach |:|