Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.34 (939 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393349721 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-06-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
2-color; 75 illustrations. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (?) and as divisive as the dash (). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life. Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bibleor the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. “An absolutely fascinating blend of history, design, sociology, and cultural poeticshighly recommended.”Maria Popova, Brain Pickings A charming and in
. He lives in London. Keith Houston is the author of Shady Characters and the founder of shadycharacters
"Don't buy this book for Kindle" according to Amazon Customer. The nonstandard characters used in the book render as microscopic; I can't find a fix for this, and it happens both on the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Android app. The parts of the book that I can read are interesting, but I'm missing a lot with the rendering deficiency. Frankly I'm a bit shocked that a publisher would let this go to market in this condition. Perhaps the paper version is more legi. Lots of sunshine on a shady history C. Ebeling Not that long ago, I was reading an edition of a Shakespeare play that retained the original formatting. I stared at the punctuation and thought how very modern it was, and just as I was reminded that I've often wondered where we get these marks we use every day, along came Keith Houston with this ray of sunshine called Shady Characters. I ordered it instantly and had no idea what to expect. Fortunatel. A fascinating survey of pilcrows, interrobangs, octothorpes, and other esoterica of typography R. M. Peterson Most of us, when reading and writing, use and mentally process a multitude of typographical symbols without thinking about them, even though we probably do not know the names for many of those marks nor how they came about. That's the arcane and overlooked, even "shady", world that Keith Houston explores in surprisingly lively and engaging fashion in SHADY CHARACTERS.The mark "@" is ubiquitous, at leas
Scarbrough, New Criterion“Fascinating.” - Rob Kyff, The Courant. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore“Funny, surprising, and, of course, geeky.” - Michael D. Shady Characters is an authoritative, witty, and fascinating tour of the history and rationale behind such lesser known marks as the ampersand, manicule, the pilcrow, and the interrobang. With zeal and rigor, Keith Houston cracks open the &, the #, the † and moreall the little