And you thought it was a tiny, sleepy "s" resting on a large, comfortable "n".

Remarkable: The "tilde" sign (~) was originally used as a diacritic mark (i.e. to indicate a change in pronunciation), or as a sign for contraction ("nn" abbreviated to "ñ"), and still features large in languages with a Latin origin, e.g. French and Spanish. The Spanish people in fact so identify with this little squiggle that loads of Spanish institutes and companies have incorporated the tilde in their logo, come hell or high water.















The Instituto Cervantes, too, could not resist (see above), and I've heard that a German-Spanish translation institute has combined a character typical for the German language, the "ß"(the "eszett" or "sharp s") and the "tilde". So forget branding the nation with boring old flags and colours, squiggles are where it's at! (but whether the squiggle is in any way connected to Nike's swoosh has not yet been thoroughly investigated...)

Apropos branding - has anyone lately noticed the "branding" of the UK border? Not only have they used a dark blue, thus clearly disregarding the fact that the most omnipresent colour in the UK is indeed purple, but it has also chosen not to use what I call a "sausage" font (a heavy and ill-shaped font that leads you to associate it with hot dogs). "Sausage" fonts, due to their equally high omnipresence in the UK, may have represented the country better than the über-neutral typeface that now welcomes the EU "immigrants". I therefore assume it is merely a clever trick in order to not deter the Swiss, who will only later, in the supermarket, realize their big mistake.