Shady characters
by Keith Houston · first published 2013
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2015–2023first – last mentioned
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In Shady Characters, Keith Houston weaves a fascinating trail through the nooks and crannies of typographical history, from the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs. Whether investigating the annotating duo of asterisk (\) and dagger (†); the plucky pilcrow (¶) and humble ampersand (&); or the at sign (@) and octothorpe (\#), both newly reinvigorated by the Internet, Shady Characters will delight all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.
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Although it does not have a chapter on the semicolon, check out the book "Shady Characters". https://amazon.com/dp/0393064425
on “The Silently Shifting Semicolon [pdf]” ↗> Is this symbol also fascinating to you ! How about this one . or this one ? Yes, they've got interesting histories, and, for example, Shady characters (https://wwnorton.com/books/shady-characters/) has some fascinating things to say about them.
This appears to be a lightly summarised excerpt of Houston's (fascinating) book "Shady Characters". As mentioned briefly at the end of the article, he has an interesting blog where he discusses more: http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk .
on “The mysterious origins of punctuation” ↗Might I also recommend Keith Houston's wonderful book "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks": https://shadycharacters.co.uk/books/shady-characters-the-boo... He also posts, with some regularity, to his blog on the…
on “A History of Punctuation” ↗This is also considered in Keith Houston's entertaining book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. It traces the history of some other common symbols such as the at sign and asterisk.
on “An Emoji from 1803” ↗From the book “Shady Characters” by Keith Houston "Among Tiro’s notae was an innocuous character representing the Latin word et, or “and.” Though this was only one symbol among many (in their most elaborate medieval form, a system…
on “What Character Was Removed from the Alphabet?” ↗This article takes its content from the book "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks" by Keith Houston. The book originated on his website as a series of articles, the "&" ones are: - The Ampersand, part 1 of 2 (https://shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/06/the-ampersand-part-1-o...)…
on “The History of ‘Ampersand’ (2020)” ↗