Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities

This book is any language nerd's dream...a whole book dedicated to lesser known, forgotten, and unusual punctuation! Houston is obviously passionate about his subject and it shows through his informal and jaunty tone throughout Shady Characters.The reader is taken from the Ancient World, Medieval England, the advertising boom of the 1960's, and the dawn of the email in the 1970's. There are many surprises and amusing facts - such as the large variety of dashes, and how many of these ornate marks are due to scribes being lazy. As you might expect, Shady Characters has images scattered across the text, all with helpful, manicule directed, captions underneath! I loved these images and it really brought the topic to life.This book really does give you a new respect for punctuation and how simple it is. I loved seeing quotation marks from different countries, as well as the different drafts of the Interrobang and the various attempts at creating an irony mark.My favourite chapter would have to be the Manicule one, as it's the only piece of punctuation that was for the reader and not the writer. The story of the demise of the Manicule and many of the other punctuation in this book are just as interesting as their creation. The podcast 99% Invisible has an episode featuring Keith Houston talking about this book, which is definitely worth a listen if you enjoyed Shady Characters! The episode is called "314 - Interrobang"My one criticism were the many footnotes that appear mid-sentence. I found it a little jarring and it took me a while to start reading them after reaching the end of the sentence! The chapter on the hyphen was a little dry in parts, and I was never quite able to picture montype/linotype. However, overall, this book was a wonderful journey through history and language

This is such an interesting book. It's written in a fairly light-hearted way, which disguises the incredible amount of research that has gone into producing it. I heard about this book on a Radio4 program presented by Michael Rosen, and the very next morning ordered a copy. It's absolutely packed with intriguing, historical facts about all the dots and squiggles that are sprinkled on every written page in the English language. This book is perfect for someone who loves the kind of book that you can put down. It's great for dipping into or reading slowly over quite a long time. I really recommend it for people who love finding out little, interesting facts gleaned from over 2,000 years of the history of typography.

This is a quite esoteric book! It takes the reader into the detailed depths of punctuation (sometimes it seems a bit too deep!) It is well researched and has lots of illustrations and notes. I would recommend this for anyone who wants to know more about punctuation and textual marks. A treat.

This is a fascinating walk through obscure punctuation evolution. The author keeps it light and funny.

Bought as a present, the recipient was delighted