My first thought was that we should all be very ashamed of ourselves for not having come up with a witty little keyboard shortcut ourselves.

But then I thought, we are writers after all - it's only natural that we'd do things the "traditional" way. If anything we should be finding new silent "h"s or "ph"s to throw in there, just to give ourselves more to type.

I cannot in good conscience approve. The hammer is too powerful to be represented by such a cutesy symbol.

Wait, none of us thought to copywright "The Hammer"? You mean I could've done it and raked ten cents out of every mention in blog and chat? I'm an idiot. We're all idiots.

Frankly, I wonder what Otis now does with his free time that he found this website!!!

--;

Hmmmm... it doesn't quite seem to capture the true essence that is The HAMMER.

You can't possibly compare --; with

HAMMER!!!

If these nerds and 14 year old girls have their way you won't ever see a full word again.

DLMBM, NALOPKT. H2SYS, LOL... --;

Wow... that website sucks. They've made The Hammer into something totally lame.

Three kicks to the groin for them.

I'm also happy to note that I don't know what any of those symbols, except for the ever-present "lol", mean in Bob's comment.

It does look just like a hammer.

Is it possible to move past the fact it was coined on a lame website?

We'll need Grubby to weigh in on this, of course.

I think everyone is missing the point. What is now lame can be made powerful by us. In the grand spirit of the Internet where ripping things off and making them cool is the norm, I think we should start using --; in the chat window when dropping the hammer on our unwitting opponents.

Bonus points if you do it during a WPBT event.

Dropping the hammer then typing --; just doesn't feel the same as shouting "Hammer Time!!!" Nobody will know wtf --; is. Eff --;!

May small rodents find their way up the pant legs of that website.