Paul Mathis, a restaurateur from Melbourne who owns a string of dining establishments, has designed the letter "Ћ" – representing the word "the". Now he is lobbying Apple to allow him to promote his app, which features the new character, in its iTunes store.

 

"Is this important?" he said, in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald¹. "No. Is this going to change the world? Not really.

 

"But is it something that might be useful for people? I think so."

 

Mr Mathis, who has opened more than 20 restaurants and hotels across Australia in a career spanning three decades, is known as "Mr Midas" for his ability to create booming venues². He currently owns and runs six restaurants in the city.

 

Yet in a move to branch out（扩展范围） of the food business, the entrepreneur has invested AUS $38,000 (£23,500) in the new app, but has so far been rejected by Apple. He is hoping he can change their mind, pointing out that reducing the word "the" – the most used word in the English language – to one character would be helpful for Twitter and swift typing.

 

"The word 'and' is only the fifth-most used word in English and it has its own symbol – the ampersand," said Mr Mathis. "Isn't it time we accorded the same respect to 'the'?"

 

The top five most commonly used words in the English language are said to be: the, be, to, of, and 'and'. The ampersand has at times been used as the 27th letter of the English alphabet.

 

"The Benedictine monks³ developed the modern version of the ampersand in the Middle Ages, when they were hand-copying religious texts.

 

"I'm not putting myself in the same league, but who knows – maybe in 500 years' time people will be amazed that there was a time when we didn't use 'th'."

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