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A review by dmturner
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
4.0
A snack-fest of history and typography, the book is divided into stand-alone chapters about the pilcrow, the interrobang, the octothorpe, the ampersand, the @ symbol, the asterisk and dagger, the hyphen, the dash, the manicule, quotation marks, and the various attempts to create irony marks. Some have become part of the character set of modern written language, while others have faded, especially the various attempts at the irony mark. The only irony mark that has survived is from the set of emoticons ;).
There is some repetition, because as the author suggests in the beginning, each chapter can be read separately from the others. I found the chapter about the octothorpe # (otherwise known as the pound sign, the hash mark, the number sign, and the hashtag) particularly fascinating. Its history is intertwined with the Latin words libra and pondo, from which sprang the weight symbol lb. and the weight and monetary unit "pound." In fact, the hash mark was created from an elided variant of the "lb." abbreviation.
Very entertaining if at times slow going.
There is some repetition, because as the author suggests in the beginning, each chapter can be read separately from the others. I found the chapter about the octothorpe # (otherwise known as the pound sign, the hash mark, the number sign, and the hashtag) particularly fascinating. Its history is intertwined with the Latin words libra and pondo, from which sprang the weight symbol lb. and the weight and monetary unit "pound." In fact, the hash mark was created from an elided variant of the "lb." abbreviation.
Very entertaining if at times slow going.