A friend once referred to my daughter’s graduation from university as a “red-letter day.” It’s an unusual, albeit memorable phrase, one that’s origin goes back hundreds of years. Early Roman calendars indicated important dates with red ink. Holidays and religious observances, like Saint’s days or feasts, were highlighted to draw the viewer’s attention to them. To this day, calendars incorporate this graphic device to differentiate, among other dates, weekends or Sundays from the remaining days of the week. But there is more to the story of red-letters.
Before the invention of the printing press, handmade books or illuminated manuscripts were created primarily by scholars and the church to record and share their wisdom. Monks working in monasteries painstakingly hand lettered elaborate manuscripts, complete with detailed illustrations incorporated into the text. While these images were principally decorative, some were representational, depicting individuals or scenes. Prior to the concept of titles or paragraphs, the first letter of a word indicating a new section was coloured red. As with a calendar, the red letters drew the reader’s attention to noteworthy information within a continuous block of text. These areas of emphasis are known as “rubrics”, a word derived from the Latin word rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk. In hindsight, seeing as my daughter graduated with a degree in English literature, the expression “red-letter day” was most appropriate.