Namer dots are useful because they give you a hint that you shouldn’t be trying to read a bit of text for meaning — you’re only trying to figure out what it’s supposed to sound like. English conveys this sort of distinction by capitalizing proper nouns. German, on the other hand, capitalizes all nouns — so you have to use some brainwork to figure out if “Tannenbaum” refers to a Christmas tree or a person’s surname.

Incidentally, the code point used for the namer dot is U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT. In macOS, on any keyboard layout used for English, you can type a namer dot by pressing ⌥⇧9 (option-shift-9).

When to use namer dots

When referring to letters themselves

Many, if not most, Quikscript letters function as one-letter abbreviations. Because of this, you’ll need to use a namer dot to refer to the letter . Otherwise, “” will be read as “it”.

Proper names

It’s easy enough to figure out where dots go for one-word names like ·. The Manual says to use one dot at the beginning for an entire full name as in · .

This rule is easy enough to extend to names with a middle initial as in · . , but opinions are split about what to do with names that start with an initial such as “H. A. Wilcox”. One school of thought says to put one dot before the name as in “·. . ” while another says to put it before the first name that isn’t an initial, as in “. . ·”.

When not to use namer dots

You don’t need a namer dot for the first-person singular pronoun (“I”).