Miscellany № 111: do the evolution

As we saw last time round, emoji is young and still changing. And while punctuation may be much older, it, too, is still very much subject to change. Here are a few recent links to bear that out. Google’s Gboard keyboard, as of May 2026, with comma and full stop keys still in place. (Keith Houston) If you use an Android phone, there’s a decent chance you’re also using Google’s “Gboard” keyboard app.* And, to be fair, Gboard is a decent choice. It predicts text well, and it makes it easy to access other features such as emoji, the clipboard, translations, and so on. It’s also customisable, which brings us neatly to the news that, as reported by 9to5Google and many other outlets, Google now lets Gboard users hide the comma and full stop keys. Read more → * Google is an equal-opportunity data hoarder; you can also install Gboard on your favoured Apple device. ↩︎