A series of distinctive letters, called "gallows" for their resemblance to a hangman's scaffold, are sometimes conjoined with other letters, or have been embellished with elaborate curlicues by a scribe.
CHIP painted his distinctive letter-based moniker, filled with wild colors and tricked out with spacey patterns and a tribute to the recently-deceased Prince.
In ca. 1550, Francisco de la Parra invented distinctive letters for ejectives in the Mayan languages of Guatemala, the tresillo and cuatrillo (and derivatives).
By then, Mallinckrodt's blue 30-milligram oxycodone tablets had become so popular among drug users and dealers that they had a street name — "M's," for the company's distinctive block-letter logo.
The address on the envelope was written in distinctive block letters and included the misspelled word "Beverley". Less than a year after Berman died, Robert Durst was arrested in connection with the slaying of Morris Black, his elderly neighbor in Galveston, Texas.
For everyone else who misses her mother (whose real name was Esther Lederer and who was known as Eppie) and her distinctive voice, the letters are a time machine to breakfast tables past, where that good-girl advice was delivered with a zing all its own.
Similarly, distinctive lower case letters (i, m, o, v, & w) and uppercase (A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, & Y) are typical in shape and therefore not as likely to be confusing.
The distinctive pronunciation of the letter "o" ("road", for example, is pronounced as "rud") is common in some coastal areas of New England.Other words come from French and Dutch.
While Keller is not alone in his frustration that there are nearly 7,000 people living in San Francisco without homes, his letter is distinctive for its total lack of sympathy for the plight of those in difficult circumstances, focusing instead on the discomfort of the "wealthy": The residents of this amazing city no longer feel safe.
Jonathan Meades occupies a strange, ill-defined yet distinctive position in English letters.
