The following is the third of three excerpts from Keith Houston’s new book, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. Unlike the pilcrow, which wended ...

In his new book, “Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks,” Keith Houston reveals the stories behind esoteric punctuation marks, from the pilcrow (¶) to ...

Keith Houston's new book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, Indiebound, and ...

Ever wondered about the little hand symbol you see online? Well, it's called a manicule – and it's got a very long history. Read: The ancient roots of punctuation Made by Dayglow Media/Pencil & Pepper ...

This image is of the margin of a book printed (in ancient Greek) in 1544, and then annotated within a decade or two by the English scholar and statesman Sir Thomas Smith. It was shown at a wonderful ...

Glyphs are the hidden heroes of the typography world. You might not pay them much attention, but they’re undeniably important. Glyphs—and by glyphs we’re referring specifically to those little ...

For thousands of years, the written word contained no indications of pauses, clauses or breaks. Then came the curls and squiggles. See how these evolved. From the ancient scrolls that sit in the great ...

I: Of marks and methods -- Introduction: used books -- Toward a history of the manicule -- Reading the matriarchive -- II: Reading and religion -- "The book thus put in every vulgar hand": marking the ...