HOWTO: Flag "penciled-in" events in iCal

As I’ve mentioned before, I like using iCal’s invitations to share appointments with people – especially since this lets them easily respond to let me know whether they 1) will attend, 2) won’t attend, or 3) are just “tentative.” Unfortunately, there’s no analogous tentative flag for the (seemingly endless) number of appointments and events I want to just pencil-in – you know, those times when you want to make sure to block out time for a call or lunch, but are waiting on confirmation from folks who don’t use iCal (or for whom it makes no sense to pester with an invitation). My workaround – yes, like many of these things – is really simple.

When I create the event, I just put a Spanish-language question mark “¿” (hit: OPTION-SHIFT-?) in front of the event’s title. Like so:

So, why’s this work?

• most importantly, I never accidentally book two Canadian actress pancake breakfasts in the same time slot
• if/when the event is finalized, all I have to do is remove the “¿“ flag/character
• if it never gets finalized, but the notification still pops up, I can quickly see that it’s not a “real” appointment, and I can just delete it
• because this hacky “flag” is the first character of the event, it won’t be cut off when viewing events in the crowded week or month views

Like I say, simple little trick, but it’s saved my non-Canadian bacon on a number of occasions.