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A review by mschlat
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
5.0
So this was simply a work of sheer delight... Houston could have written twice as much, and I believe I would have been just as enthralled.
What makes the book work is that while the subject is punctuation marks, Houston places his discussion in the context of cultural history and changes in writing and printing technology. A great example is his discussion of marginal marks (e.g., the manicule or pointing hand). Houston doesn't just talk about the development of the manicule and its variants --- he discusses the practice of marginal notes (first, the province of the book owner and a sign of his or her assiduous perusals, and then the province of the book maker to cover more accepted interpretations). You're not just reading about a mark, but you are understanding how readers and writers argued about classical and biblical texts.
Another wonderful emphasis is the impact of technology, covering everything from Gutenberg and the first printed works all the way to the appearance of the digital smiley face. Houston constantly emphasizes that punctuation is kept or abandoned as technology changes. Interested in a new punctuation mark? Well, will it make it onto that new-fangled typewriter, that spiffy Monotype system, or as a character in ASCII? If not, you have another mark lost to history.
Given Houston's love of typography, it helps that the book is gorgeously put together. Black is used for the text, but red for the punctuation marks in question (and the asterisks and daggers for footnotes) and manicules for every image. I must admit that I sometimes lost red asterisks amid the sea of black text (knowing of a footnote's existence solely from its presence at the bottom of the page), but that's a minor quibble for a text with a symbol index.
All this, and I still haven't covered the little tidbits I enjoyed: the reason why paragraphs are indented, why an ampersand is called an ampersand, the rationale for # on touch tone phones, the wonderful appearance of Donald Knuth and his typesetting software TeX, the question of whether you need a written symbol for ironic text, .... Just a delightful work that I would recommend to anyone interested in typography, language, or the art of reading and writing.
What makes the book work is that while the subject is punctuation marks, Houston places his discussion in the context of cultural history and changes in writing and printing technology. A great example is his discussion of marginal marks (e.g., the manicule or pointing hand). Houston doesn't just talk about the development of the manicule and its variants --- he discusses the practice of marginal notes (first, the province of the book owner and a sign of his or her assiduous perusals, and then the province of the book maker to cover more accepted interpretations). You're not just reading about a mark, but you are understanding how readers and writers argued about classical and biblical texts.
Another wonderful emphasis is the impact of technology, covering everything from Gutenberg and the first printed works all the way to the appearance of the digital smiley face. Houston constantly emphasizes that punctuation is kept or abandoned as technology changes. Interested in a new punctuation mark? Well, will it make it onto that new-fangled typewriter, that spiffy Monotype system, or as a character in ASCII? If not, you have another mark lost to history.
Given Houston's love of typography, it helps that the book is gorgeously put together. Black is used for the text, but red for the punctuation marks in question (and the asterisks and daggers for footnotes) and manicules for every image. I must admit that I sometimes lost red asterisks amid the sea of black text (knowing of a footnote's existence solely from its presence at the bottom of the page), but that's a minor quibble for a text with a symbol index.
All this, and I still haven't covered the little tidbits I enjoyed: the reason why paragraphs are indented, why an ampersand is called an ampersand, the rationale for # on touch tone phones, the wonderful appearance of Donald Knuth and his typesetting software TeX, the question of whether you need a written symbol for ironic text, .... Just a delightful work that I would recommend to anyone interested in typography, language, or the art of reading and writing.