Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities

by Keith Houston

Keith Houston's entertaining book, inspired by his popular blog shadycharacters.co.uk, tells the unexpected stories of some unusual, and familiar, typographical marks and reveals a fascinating history of writing.

Every character we write or type is a link to the past, and in today's printed, electronic and scrawled writing their history stares right back at us. This book charts the lives of some of the most intriguing examples, like how the pilcrow went from its noble origins in ancient Greece to near obsolescence, only to be revived again in word processing software. Each character reflects the bust and boom endured by punctuation with each new technological innovation and together they form a rich history of written communication.

Keith Houston is the founder of ShadyCharacters.co.uk, where he writes about the unusual stories behind some well-known - and some rather more outlandish - marks of punctuation.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Language, Writing, Linguistics, Design, Books About Books

353 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 24, 2013

About the author

Keith Houston is the author of Shady Characters, The Book, Empire of the Sum and Face with Tears of Joy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Lapham's Quarterly, BBC Culture, and on Time.com. He lives in Linlithgow, Scotland, with his family.

Reviews

[Dustin Kurtz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impossible to read this one and not find yourself exhausting friendships with a million "did you know ...?" conversations about, say, the manicule or the ampersand. Impossible, that is, if you have friends. Which I don't. At least, not anymore. A good book, is the point.

[K.J. Charles]

Entertaining history of a variety of punctuation marks and how they developed and became standardised (not just eg the dash and exclamation, but also manicule, pilcrow, interrobang). I mean, either you're interested in this stuff or you aren't. I particularly liked the stuff on efforts to create new marks. The author gives a lot of space to the interrobang, which really hasn't caught on, and also has an intriguing essay on the efforts to create a sarcasm mark, which people have been attempting for a couple of hundred years. (In this book written 2013, he mentions the tilde in passing as just one of the failed attempts at a sarcasm mark, which, oh wow what an ~oracle~. /s

AKA, in the nine years since writing, sarcasm punctuation has made remarkable strides. I kind of want an update covering sPoNgEbOb sArCaSm also. And I'm definitely surnaming a character Pilcrow at some point.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was both a joy to read and quite enlightening. Not only was the writing engaging, but it did a wonderful job integrating the story of these various symbols into the context of the wider world of human affairs. While certainly intended for a popular audience, Houston took his task very seriously, drawing upon an enormous range of sources to tell the story of these symbols to the tune of ~67 pages of references. Houston tells the history of these symbols in a very economical way, not falling down any academic rabbit holes. Each chapter, which highlighted one particular symbol, was short enough to consume in one sitting, making it easy to put down and pick up the book as needed.

I think the most insightful thing I gleaned from this book was how much technology has influenced human language. When everything was written down there was little to no uniformity in terms of symbols and their meanings. Typically a center of learning (such as the Library of Alexandria) would introduce some technique that would slowly disperse across the greater Mediterranean area. The advent of the printing press brought a level of standardization to language, but also a winnowing. Printers were limited by the letters and symbols they cut so some things had to go. Symbols were lost, others re-purposed and life went on.

As much as the printing press limited what symbols made it into printed material, it was nothing like the symbol holocaust that was the typewriter. Where a printer could cut some custom pieces as needed, a widespread commercial typewriter solidified what symbols would be carried forward into the brave new world, limiting them to what could fit within the typewriter's limited space. This extended into the computer age, as well, as computer keyboards mimicked those of type writers.

The most interesting winnowing of symbols due to this technological constraint was the dash. There were apparently a whole bunch of different dash lengths used for different effects that have now all been reduced to the simple -. But at the same time the widespread popularity of novels and their writing style necessitated some mark that would denote a character speaking, giving rise to the popularity of the quotation marks; technology and social trends giveth and taketh from our language.

It was also fascinating to see how some symbols have changed over time, both in terms of their use (such as how the # has been from denoting pounds to tweeting) and their form (the quotation marks started existence two thousand years ago looking like >). Humanity has shown remarkable flexibility and innovation when it came to representing some non-textual intention, though sometimes it took a REALLY long time. Heck, just putting spaces between words took quite a while. The development of a line break and indented line effectively killed off the pilcrow and for a while quotation marks were made in the margin of a page.

And don't think that we've reached some end point in the development of the written word. Things are always in flux, and with the advent of cheap and widespread computing power there is no reason to think we aren't on the verge of a symbol revolution. Want an interrobang? You can get that. Want a manicule? Not sure why, but you can do that too. But language can also be a stubborn thing, with new symbols facing an enormous institutional and usage barriers.

In any event, this was a swell reading experience. Houston peppers his accounts with witty insights, humorous anecdotes, and plenty of self awareness ([In a footnote] "In honor of their [asterisk and dagger] role as footnote reference marks, I plan to fill this chapter with numerous lengthy and entirely tangential footnotes so as to take full advantage." ). If you love the written word (which, I would hope most people on this site do), this was a wonderfully illuminating work that will give you a greater appreciation for what we have today.

[Al Bità · Rating 4 out of 5]

The histories of a number of punctuation, symbol and other typographical marks used over the centuries is delightfully written about and beautifully illustrated in Houston’s book. The publishers have added to the pleasure by having the text printed in two colours (black for the text, and a kind of ochre for all the typographic and other indicative marks which pop up all throughout the text).

It might surprise some readers just how ancient some of the most common punctuation marks have been around; and their histories of each are fascinating in their own right. Houston covers this selection of such markings in eleven chapters, the last of which resurrects past suggestions for the use of symbols to denote Irony and Sarcasm, but which so far have not been taken up in any big way. Two which can still be seen today are the manicule (☛) and the pilcrow (¶), while the interrobang (‽) seems to have made some headway. Perhaps some of the more esoteric marks discussed will make a form of comeback in the new digitalised platforms we enjoy today on our computers…

Recommended for anyone interested in typography, punctuation and graphic design. Read and enjoy!

[Anisha Inkspill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulsive purchase that has been on my tbr for 5 years, it was good to finally read this.

I like books, and I’ve come to realise I like books about books even more, this one was on punctuation but not how to use them, how some of them came about.

Keith Houston throws in many facts and trivia of 11 typography symbols, at times this is a touch overwhelming but at the same time fascinating. One of these is how the ampersand used to be the 27th letter of the English alphabet. I’m still grappling with this one.

Houston also includes defunct type symbols. I am left wondering why we no longer use pilcrow or interrobang, the sounds of these words are music, I think for this they should still be in use.

The common punctuation like commas and colon get a passing mention from Houston but quotes, hash and ampersand are given whole chapters. There are also separate chapters covering the historical journey of the dash and hyphen; until now the difference has always baffled me.

At times this was a touch dry but the examples and illustrations included made this an easier, fun read.

[Jayna Baas]

I’m not sure how to rate this book, so I’m not going to. I really, really wish I could give it five stars. And I might if not for two instances of vulgarity that, if encountered in fiction, would make me stop reading. Both instances were in the context of quotes, but the anecdotes that included them were unnecessary to begin with. For those who want to know, these occurrences are on pages 19–20 and the footnote on pages 65–66. There were also a few other instances of profanity or crudity, so consider yourself warned.

Now that that’s out of the way—what a fascinating book. Houston’s dry, wry style makes this an engaging read (well, as engaging as a book on punctuation can be). I knew a little of the information already, but I didn’t even know the names of some of the symbols, much less their history. Pilcrows and octothorpes and interrobangs—it was a fun, tongue-in-cheek experience for any lover of linguistic trivia. ANDIAMSOGLADWEUSEWORDSPACINGNOW. I kept stopping to report captivating details (at least, I thought they were captivating) to the people around me. I appreciated that the book honestly admitted the gaps in knowledge on this subject rather than trying to make theories into fact. The tone Houston took toward early Christianity was not to my taste, but it’s a secular book, so I didn’t really expect anything else, and to be fair, a lot of the “Christianity” he referenced was not all that Christian in nature. With the above caveats, I think most word nerds would be fascinated by this book. It’s just not one I can wholeheartedly recommend.

(And just a week or two after I finished it, I happened into a conversation at church about pilcrows, of all things. What are the odds?)

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book for font/typography/punctuation nerds. The book jumps around through history, trying to pinpoint the origin of various marks. Some chapters succeed better than others. Overall, somewhat interesting, but probably of most interest to those that already have an interest in (or obsession with) typographical marks. Or maybe of interest if you'll be appearing on Jeopardy & need some additional arcane trivia at your fingertips.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: History, punctuated

You don't see books on the history of punctuation marks every day, or at least you don't see people reading them, which may explain why I was able to buy this at the Half Price Books clearance sale for $2. But if you are a word nerd, Houston tells how words, sentences and paragraphs in your favorite books came to have those funny marks. Whole he occasionally gives examples of usage, this isn't a grammar or usage book, so if you are looking for that look elsewhere. And it isn't exhaustive, but looks at some of the more interesting ones that by name alone don't even register as punctuation: pilcrows, octothorpes, and manicules

As it turns out, punctuation history is both important and interesting. Word separation, by spaces, periods, and commas enabled broader literacy, individual study and silent reading, as described in Masters of the Word which I recently read. Houston covers some of the same territory, noting that quotation marks arose from the Christian desire to be as exact and accurate as possible in attributing speech to Jesus. Christianity both drove and benefitted from the innovations in writing, printing, and punctuation in many ways taken for granted.

In fact, so much of the history of punctuation is taken for granted and not documented that Houston often cites some really obscure references and still must resort to speculation or assessment of undocumented statements of origin. Punctuation is so prevalent and seems so fixed that it is treated as just furniture in the house in which words live, and its origins and evolution are assumed or ignored. For example the simple "number sign", "pound sign", or "hash" as it is known in Europe (#). Officially known as the octothorpe, it apparently derives originally from the Latin libra (scales) pondo (to weigh). The two words individually began to be applied to weights, pondo becoming "pounds" in English, and the abbreviation for libra (lb) became the abbreviation for pound. When written rapidly with the then-common tittle, a line just above the letters of an abbreviation to indicate that the abbreviated letters represented a longer word, "lb" gradually took on the now-uniform # shape (try it yourself, and see the example Houston includes from a sample of Isaac Newton's writing, on p. 43). Houston also spends quite some time on the origin of the official name octothorpe for the symbol; another odd punctuation name "pilcrow" is the backwards P that is used by word processing software to represent paragraph spacing.

Introduced into the history of writing throughout various stages of history when writing meant hand writing on paper or parchment it was easy for punctuation marks to be born, evolve and exist above, below, or in the margins of the written material. But with the introduction of mechanical printing with Gutenberg, then the typewriter, then photo-set printing, it became necessary to standardize the shape, location, and usage of punctuation. Houston documents how these shifts changed, established, and in some cases threatened punctuation. His prime example is that of the hypen or dash: he gives seven different lengths of this seemingly most simple mark, each of which at one time had a specific purpose and usage, now replaced in most usages on first typewriters and then computer character sets by just two lengths which are used to create or replace the original seven.

Is our language and printing any poorer for not having seven lengths of hypen? Perhaps not, but Houston shows how the cultural, linguistic, and technical aspects of this seemingly arcane topic play out in our written heritage especially in the digital, internet age. His final chapter is on the history of attempts to establish a punctuation mark to represent irony or sarcasm, all of which failed until overtaken by the ever present emoticons or "smileys" which pepper online communication to carry the body language and nuances of irony lost on Twitter, messaging, and email. Punctuation may be invisible, but it isn't meaningless, and understanding its history makes us better users of the tools of language that make us human.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shady Characters explores the developmental history of a selection of common and obscure glyphs used to indicate punctuation.  Houston takes the reader on a trip to Ancient Greece and Rome, the Library of Alexandria, the invention of the book, along with typography and typesetting, and also, the invention of the telephone and email.  Each chapter focuses on the development and use of a particular glyph/symbol.  The punctuation glyphs covered include: the pilcrow (¶), the interrobang (‽) for those of use who like using exclamation marks followed by question marks, the octothorpe (#) known as the hashtag these days, the ampersand (&), the @ symbol, the asterisk and dagger (* †) used in footnotes, the hyphen (-), the various dashes (—), the manicule (☞), quotation marks ( “ ”), and various irony and sarcasm symbols.  The book is informative, interesting and on occasion rather amusing, all written/read in an engaging style.

[Emma Sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this book I was confident in my use of hyphens and en- and em- dashes. Having finished it, I have no idea what to do with the seven (!) current punctuation marks comprising horizontal lines.

[Stefan Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first stumbled upon this book, I thought it may be an answer to one of my deepest hopes – a detailed reference on various obscure punctuation and how to use it. I've always been fascinated about the darker corners of Unicode, and would love to go on an expedition to its seldomly-visited depths.

It turned out to be something different, and much better.

First and foremost, it's a beautifully typeset book. It's worth getting the hard cover and enjoying it as an object, not just as a text. It's one of the greatest-looking books I own, and I do own a few.

Secondly, the writing is amazing. Devilishly clever at times, it reminded me of reading Zinsser. The author appears to be a software developer, and I really wish he'd quit writing code and start writing books full time (although I'm keen to read his code too ;)). I'll absolutely buy every book he publishes, and joyfully rave about it online.

Anyway.

It's a book about a number (let's say "12") of obscure punctuation characters, like the pilcrow (¶), the interrobang (‽) and the octothorpe (#). Each is covered in a separate chapter that tells an amazingly interesting story about its history. It's full of little curious details – ever wondered why paragraphs are indented in books?; why the keyboard has @ and #, but not some others?; where the name of the ampersand came from? – just get the book and read it to find out. The author appears to have done a lot of heavy-lifting to find out the origins of those characters, and there are 69 pages worth of references to back this up. He even takes on the occasional fact-check on Robert Bringhurst, which is a pretty bold move in my book (heh).

If you like typography, writing, text, or just reading a great book, you should absolutely get this one.

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shady Characters was an absolute pleasure to read. People who write about language often fall into certain traps: condescending, arrogant, pedantic, name-dropping, forced humor. Somehow, Keith Houston avoids all of that and finds exactly the right tone in this book. He has great information to share, and he writes it in a fun, engaging, welcoming way.

☞ I highly recommend the book to anyone who loves history, language, and the history of language.

It might seem like writing about punctuation and typographical marks would be a rather narrow topic. But as Houston explains one kind of mark in each chapter, he opens a panorama of history and culture that is dizzyingly fascinating. We go back to the library of Alexandria, graffiti in Rome, medieval scribe annotations, Gutenberg’s obsessive line-justification, the first novels of Richardson and Fielding, Abraham Lincoln, twentieth-century journalism, and the huge influence of Christianity on all aspects of the written word. Each chapter looks at a different mark or symbol, and the stories are concise and always interesting—pilcrow,* interrobang (long one of my favorites; you know what it looks like, right‽), octothorpe,† ampersand, the @ symbol, asterisk and dagger,‡ hyphen, dash, manicule, quotation marks, and irony and sarcasm (of course~).

I loved this book. I will probably read it again and will definitely recommend it to my students and fellow editors.


* The symbol I think of as a paragraph marker.
† Now more commonly known as the “hashtag.”
‡ And the double dagger, and much more.

[Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great Goodreads first reads win!

I think I am rather naive when it comes to history, or I lack imagination. Mostly, I am always taken by surprise to discover that writing in the computer age or the internet age, or whatever age you want to call this, has many strong ties with the past. And by "the past" I mean, like, 5th-century-and-before past. As an editor, I usually write and edit with the "hidden characters" on. My screen is always sprinkled with tiny dots floating in midair between words and pilcrows hanging off of the edges of paragraphs. I never thought these symbols came from long traditions of stone carving, writing, note-taking, nor that they had anything at all to do with the rise of Christianity, the librarians of Alexandria, and ARPANET.

Part history of writing and typing, part history of reading, thus taking notes, and part detective work in chasing elusive marks from before paper and pencil, Houston's Shady Characters is a fun page turner (for those who find that sort of thing exciting, of course). If you are ignorant about how people wrote and read way back when (what do you mean there were no spaces between words?! where is an interrobang when you need it?!) or merely curious about why the pilcrow is shaped the way it is (is it a reverse P for paragraph? nope!), this book will have many delicious tidbits for you.

Recommended for the naturally curious and grammar lovers.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the plus side, I learned why paragraphs are indented--and what used to occupy that space. On the minus side, the author padded every point with irrelevancies or distractions. Trying to be funny, he often came off as silly.

In sum, I learned a lot. But it's not a great read; certainly nowhere near "Confessions of a Comma Queen."

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plot: A
Writing: A
Vocabulary: A+
Level: Easy
Rating: G
Worldview: descriptive

I expected to be bored if somewhat enlightened about the family tree of punctuation. To my surprise, this engaging rabbit trail through history ended up being one of the best books I've read all year! Author Keith Houston presents scholarly material with a conversational tone accessible even to school-age readers. Along the way he chronicles the history of writing and how technology made an impact. But the real-life anecdotes are the best part! Why is the Bible divided into chapter & verse? What did ancient Pompeians grafiti on their walls? What is the 27th letter of the alphabet? Why is a toilet called the crapper? Read this book to find out!

This copy received for free courtesy of Goodreads Firstreads program, which in no way influenced this review.

[Kristen Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was simply wonderful, but I must add a caveat, it is not a book for the faint of heart. If you love history, learning new information about the world around you, love trivia, and were someone who often wondered what that little paragraph sign was in word documents then you will enjoy this book very much. But I warn you - right from the outset, you will start walking around spouting off tidbits of information and saying words like pilcrow and folks will wonder about you. Keith Houston is witty and his writing style is informative while engaging the reader in a journey into the nether regions of typography. But is so much more than that. I love knowing the why and the where of things and Shady Characters satisfies my curiosity and piques my interest. I highly recommend this easy to read but meaty text.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t even know where to start with how much I loved this book. I haven’t crushed so hard on a writer since my brother-in-law force-lent me A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
With 68 pages of endnotes, his writing brings to mind the journal articles I have to read for grad school, but unlike the dry majority of these offerings, Houston’s scholarly writing is incredibly fun to read.
I smiled so much as I read this. I wish I’d read it on my kindle, because there would have been loads of highlighted passages to share. My comments below have some of my favorite quotations I noted as I progressed through the book.
Without Houston’s clever, friendly style, this still would have been a fascinating book, using specific symbols and marks to trace the evolution of the written word. His writing made it a delight.

[Justyna Nowacka · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Niniejsza książka nie opowiada tylko o niezwykłych znakach interpunkcyjnych ani nawet o interpunkcji w ogóle. Śledząc w czasie przeplatające się wątki i osnowy poszczególnych znaków, pozwala dostrzec współtworzoną przez nie tkaninę pisma jako takiego. A w dzisiejszym piśmie, w drukowanych i wyświetlanych znakach, które czytamy na co dzień, a także odręcznych bazgrołach zajmujących coraz mniej miejsca miedzy monitorami komputerów oraz ekranami tabletów i smartfonów, historia ta jest ciagle obecna.”
Spodziewałam się historii znaków, a dostałam pasjonująca i pełną humoru(!) książkę nie tylko o znakach ale tez o powstawaniu internetu, poczty elektronicznej, TeXa, bibliotece aleksandryjskiej, różnych wybitnych jednostkach swoich czasów, oczywiście historii książek i druku.
Gorąco polecam!

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written with humour, examples, and many illustrations, this is a book for those who like typography and are keen to know the history of symbols used (now and in the past) in print materials. Houston has a nice way with words and seems to know his material; in that old phrase, he does wear his learning lightly, and goes from ancient greece to digitized manuscripts held by the british Library.

If you want to know the difference between the purpose of the many kinds of dashes and the hyphen, question how quotation marks arose, are curious about the manicule's past, want to learn the difference in uses for the Maltese cross versus the dagger, or wonder what's behind the pilcrow, the diple and the guillemet, this is only book needed. There are photos of old texts that use the precursors to what we have now and, for the most part, they are reproduced well enough, but some less successfully than others. All in all, an enjoyable book.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes a look at certain symbols used in punctuation and their typographical uses. It is by no means an exhaustive account of all such symbols. It concentrates on a small selection in comparison with all the symbols currently in use. I feel he selected his “shady characters” based on what he found to be the most interesting as far as their invention, history, and uses.

Some of the characters were: the pilcrow (¶) which today is mainly found in word processor programs when you click on the non-printing characters symbol which in LibreOffice is the pilcrow; the octothorpe or now days the hash tag (#), the asterisk (*) and dagger (†) of footnote fame, the ampersand (&), and the interesting manicule (☛,☞, a pointing hand which LibreOffice does not seem to have).

I only have a couple of comments. Page numbers are in brackets [] using Kindle pagination.

[9] “The emergence of Christianity a scant few decades after Jesus’s death would change the face of written language on a grand scale . . .” This is probably because it became almost the only form of book writing for centuries.

[19] Referring to the English sculptor Eric Gill with some rather risque work “calculated to bait the prurience of his day” I found these quite funny (at least to me) lines: “While working on the Stations [of the Cross] in the [Westminster] cathedral, a woman approached Gill to tell him that she did not think they were nice carvings; he responded, in characteristic form, that it was not a nice subject.”

I found the book intriguing and quite entertaining. Keith Houston wrote a very clever and enjoyable book. The most enjoyable book I have read for a couple of months.

If you are interested in or curious about how certain punctuation marks have come about and have been used through history, you probably should enjoy this book. It could also be of interested to those that like interesting things histories.

[Neven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I virtually never say this of anything, but this book was too short! Houston is a good writer—efficient, well organized, witty without becoming annoying—and I’d happily read another few hundred pages by him on more characters, or further typographic matters.

[Oleh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite thing abouth the book is how the author uses the actual characters he's explaining in his own text, like pilcrow-ing paragraphs or dagger-ing words for footnotes.

[Emmapeel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typographers have always been considered the working class' aristocracy, and reading this book you will understand why. A passionate and erudite essay about glyphs, those damn little interpunction marks you never find on your laptop keyboard. The different nuances between them ('Should I use dash ‒ – — ―?' Well, it also depends if you're French or British and you're writing about Athos or Elizabeth Bennet), the etymology, the up and down along centuries or the renaissance due to ASCII code and other digital programming languages. You will discover Interrobang was invented in 1966 by a Donald Draper of the Mad Men Era, while the mysterious Octothorpe dates since Isaac Newtons's sketches, and the Ampersand can be traced back to the 1st century A.D. The 'At' sign it's called 'snail' in Italy, 'dog'in Russian and 'monkey' in German, while in Hebrew it's a 'Strudel' and in Kazakh a poetic 'Moon's ear' (I was probably always wrong supposing France as The Romantic Country, you know: they call it 'Arobase', quelle horreur!).

[Dorota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lata spędzone na polonistyce napawają mnie sentymentem do ludzi, którzy są wkręceni w interpunkcję. Ta książka jest zdecydowanie dla takich osób! Świetnie zbadany temat, opowiedziany z pasją i frajdą, w bardzo przystępny sposób. Jedyny minus taki, że czasami oczy mi się zamykały czytając o dywizach i etkach, mimo całej mojej sympatii ;)

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad by any means but halfway through I felt that I'd learned as much as I was ever likely to want to know about the subject and decided to end it there. So I will never find out the history of the maniscule.

[Grayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great! From Cicero to ARPAnet and more, Houston covers the history of punctuation with knowledge and humor. Definitely recommended.

[Graham Stull · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, non-fiction is just fiction written by authors who are too lazy to think up a good story.
Sure, it's a way of getting a lot of 'facts' down on a page - some of those facts might even be interesting - but you can do that in fiction too; oftentimes much better. Think of how much historical context is written into Thackeray's Vanity Fair; how much social history around the early 19th Century, all effortlessly woven in to a cracking good yarn. Without the constraints of a good story, non-fiction authors often give in to the temptation to dump an enormous amount of information in an unstructured, unsorted way that leaves the reader overwhelmed, confused or just plain bored. This is why I don't read a lot of non-fiction.
For Keith Houston's 'Shady Characters', I made an exception. This was partially because the subject matter - the origin stories of punctuation symbols, weird and common - seemed sufficient quirky and yes, so incredibly nerdy, that it seemed bound to read a little differently, even for non-fiction. It was also because the book fell into my hands at a moment when I had nothing else to read.
In all, the book was not a complete disappointment. I learned some wonderfully useless things about punctuation marks I never knew existed, like the interrobang - a short-lived 20th Century hybrid of the question mark and the exclamation point, which looks like this: ‽
More usefully, the twisted road to modern typography takes you past some genuinely interesting historical waypoints. I was particularly fascinated by the detailed description of the typesetting used by Johannes Gutenberg for his 42 line bible, which was, after all, the 'Star Wars: A New Hope' of books. It blows my mind to think that with all the algorithmic typesetting we have today, the line spacing used to justify the first ever printed book is so perfect that it remains, to this day, the best typeset book in the history of print.
Another plus point (see what I did there?) was Houston's clever use of the punctuation, fonts and even writing styles he was describing in that respective chapter.
All that said, 'Shady Characters' succumbs to the original sin of all non-fiction books, allowing its author to indulge in detours and asides that made certain paragraphs seem like we would never get to the next ¶ (which is called a 'pilcrow', in case you never knew).
Even more irksome is the New York Times-reading, smug intellectualism of the author. Just as the nouveau-riche indulge in conspicuous displays of wealth like no truly wealthy person would, American intellectuals like Houston always try too hard to be literate and clever, made desperate by their transatlantic cultural inferiority complex. In doing so, they sacrifice something of the message in pursuit of their ostentatious displays of learning. Bad writing is when you can hear the keys as the author types just by reading. In reading this book, there were moments when the sound of Houston's ego echoed with every keystroke.
With fiction, the story acts to curb the author's ego, because he or she is bound by the fictional characters, who - once defined - begin to tell their own stories. In non-fiction there are no characters to whom the author must stay true.
At least not in the figurative sense.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this via via audio, which I'm told is a mistake. It's the only option I had. That being said it was an interesting read. It tended to get lost a bit as a good history book does, but overall a very interesting overview over not only certain characters but how writing has been formalized.

[Steve]

One in a long series of books about minuscule topics - and I seem to be a sucker for them. A lot of history in here, about writing, printing, typography, and computer text processing.

[Róży Wójt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jest to niesamowicie solidna rzecz, która mnie nie porwała.

Trzeba pochwalić 80 stron przypisów, listy źródeł i indeksu [który bardzo ułatwiał sprawdzenie, kim był ten konkretny Imię Nazwisko wspomniany wcześniej], to zawsze dobrze świadczy o nonfiku. Dodatkowo książka jest napisana ciekawie, z przykładami znaków interpunkcyjnych, o których mowa, bezpośrednio w tekście, co urozmaica czytanie. Język nie jest ani sztywny i suchy, ani przesadnie "fajny". Na plus ilustracje przedstawiające teksty sprzed wielu stuleci wykorzystujące dane zabiegi typograficzne. Jest to po prostu książka zrobiona w najlepszy możliwy sposób, biorąc pod uwagę temat.

Winny jestem więc ja, że sięgnąłem po książkę o czymś, co mnie niezbyt ciekawi i w efekcie dostałem lekturę, która również mnie niezbyt ciekawi. Miałem jednocześnie wrażenie, że to wszystko mogłoby być artykułem na Wikipedii, jak i że przydałoby się bardziej rozwinąć temat. Dowiedziałem się sporo nowych rzeczy, ale raczej szybko o nich zapomnę [again, moja wina].

Więc choć wielkiej miłości między nami nie ma, nie żałuję przeczytania i nie mogę dać mniej niż 4/5, bo książka niczym tu nie zawiniła i robiła co mogła.