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Shady Characters

The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks

by Keith Houston

Narrator Elliot Fitzpatrick

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Length 7 hours 9 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Have you ever questioned what’s printed on the page? Not whether something is written well, but literally the symbols you’re looking at and how they ended up in front of you? Keith Houston takes the reader across space and history to find the sources and stories for the periods, commas, and more esoteric symbols that create meaning and communication. Funny and endearing, you will be surprised by all you didn’t know, and at how fascinating it can be.”
— Jocelyn • Bookshop Santa Cruz

Summary

A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography.

Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)—which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible—or 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. 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.

Ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

Art