Shady Characters

The Book has been on sale for a few weeks now and so I thought I’d collect some of the articles published in connection with it, both by me and by others.

I’ve been a fan of John Boardley’s blog, I Love Typography, since I first started learning about typography and symbols back in 2009.

In the run-up to the US publication of The Book, I was happy to be able to write an article for BBC Culture entitled “The mysterious ancient origins of the book”.

Cover of The Book as designed by David High.

Cover of The Book as designed by David High.

The second round of The Book giveaway came to a close yesterday, and I’m pleased to announce that Angela Boothroyd (@StudyingOnline) is the winner.

So!

It’s publication week for The Book here in the UK, and so things are a little busy.

Cover of The Book as designed by David High.

Cover of The Book as designed by David High.

So: you’ve made some paper, and now you need to put something on it.

The publication of The Book is almost upon us (it’s out on August 12th in the UK and August 23rd in the US) and we’re having a bit of a bash at Waterstones in Edinburgh’s west end to celebrate.

Did I mention that my second book is coming out next month?

“Gouville-on-sea, world capital of the open sea oyster” - but not, evidently, world capital of punctuation.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Tuesday 16th August, when Gerry Cambridge and I will be talking with Stuart Kelly about printing, typography, shady characters and – of course!

I’m on holiday this week, spending some time in sunny Wisconsin with my wife Leigh’s family,* but a minor kerfuffle in the world of punctuation has come to pass that demands comment.

You remember the octothorpe, don’t you?

There’s no miscellany post this weekend, but by way of compensation I might point you towards tomorrow’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth programme, to be broadcast at 4pm here in the UK.* In it I’ll be talking with the estimable Michael Rosen about…

It’s easy to overlook the importance of empty space as a form of punctuation.

It’s January, 1776.

Publication of The Book is still a few months away (if you haven’t circled August 23 on your calendar with a fat red marker pen, I urge you to do so right now), but I thought it might be nice to take a closer look at the book itself, both inside and out.

At the heart of Shady Characters’ recent redesign are the text and display typefaces of Satyr and Faunus, both designed by Sindre Bremnes of Norway’s Monokrom type studio.

Last time round, inspired by Marcin Wichary’s tweet, I wrote a short post about the curious case of the character ‘⋮’, which was present on some of the earliest typewriter keyboards but that mysteriously disappeared from later machines.

Computers are not typewriters: this is evident.

Image by Jessica Svendsen.

The Book hardcover.

As you may have noticed, things are a little different around here.

But first: interrobangs.

Things have been quiet lately on the interrobang front.

Cover of Ciemne typki (Shady Characters), published by d2d.pl.

It’s December, and that means it’s time for the second annual Shady Characters gift guide!

We first met the Right Reverend John Wilkins FRS, renaissance man of the Restoration, back in 2011.

An ironieteken, courtesy of Olivia Howitt.

Things have been frantic around here lately.

Let’s try an experiment.

Palaeography is the study of old writing.

In lieu of a post this week, head over to BBC.com’s Culture section to read my article about “The Mysterious Origins of Punctuation” – it’s hot off the presses!

Readers!

I’ll be on holiday this coming week, enjoying the final stage of the Tour de France in Paris with my wife Leigh (as she put it when she suggested the trip: “lycra is optional, the Louvre is not”), but here are a few punctuational links to tide you over un…

Edwin Lewis, The History of the English Paragraph (1894), page 11.

Melanie Wiener’s poster for “Punctuation in Practice”.

There have been a welter of informative and thought-provoking comments here lately (including some from Choz Cunningham, inventor of the snark, or “.~”), but all this activity is sometimes a little hard to follow.

The Chinese (complex characters) edition of Shady Characters, as designed by Chang Lien Hung and published by Rye Field Publications.

Just the one punctuation-related link this week: Shady Characters is upping sticks and moving to London this coming week, and blogging time is scarce!

At the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh on the city’s Blackford Hill, in the depths of its oldest building, is a locked, climate-controlled room.

Things are busy here at Shady Characters and I’m afraid there’s no time for a proper entry this weekend.

Well, hello there.

I am guilty of having somewhat ignored the tilde, or ‘~’, here at Shady Characters.

Reproduced from David Eugene Smith’s 1908 Rara Arithmetica, the last line of this manuscript contains the abbreviation pcº, with the ‘c’ pulled out into a long horizontal stroke.

Ladies and gentlemen: please put your hands together for Álvaro Franca and Yoni Weiss, winners of the UK paperback giveaway!