sdfsdf

I don’t think that qwertyuiop has made it into the dictionary yet, as it’s one of those very few recognisable strings of characters that has no semantic meaning.

Or does it?

Leaving aside the fact that the string has appeared in at least one book title (Homage to Qwert Yuiop and Other Writings by Anthony Burgess), surely there’s a case to be made that ‘qwertyuiop’ is a form of performative expression; that by writing it, you indicate that you are typing. Thus, ‘qwertyuiop’ means ‘I am now typing’.

I’ve been spotting more and more frequently another of these rare birds I’d also like to add to the dictionary.

‘sdfsdf ‘means, I would argue, ‘I am testing’, or even more specifically, ‘I am now testing what can be seen’. It’s another performative expression because there is no semantic distance between typing this string and doing what it says, in the same way that there is no semantic distance between saying ‘I do’ in your marriage vows and actually performing your marriage vows. Saying is doing.

In a time when saying seems very much unrelated to doing (and, I fear, vice versa) it’s encouraging to feel that there are a few more of these performatives around.