Keith Houston's Blog, page 12
September 18, 2017
Miscellany № 81: Toward a Taxonomy of the Interrobang
Remember the interrobang‽ Of course you do! That’s the kind of rhetorical question for which the interrobang is perfectly suited. I’ve been thinking about Martin K. Speckter’s punctuation mark of late for a couple of reasons: first, a Google alert turned up an obituary of a Minnesotan poet named J. Otis Powell‽. I hadn’t known of Powell‽ previously — I’d have loved to have been able to ask him about his surname! — but Minnpost explains his unusual name as follows:
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August 13, 2017
Miscellany № 80: irony archaeology
In the wake of my last post (Miscellany № 79: jè?), I was doing a bit of digging into the history of emoticons — those recumbent smileys used to signify happiness (:)), sadness (:(), mehness (:|) and so on — when I came across Scott Fahlman’s personal website. Fahlman is the man famous for inventing the emoticon and, although I’ve written about him before, both here and in the Shady Characters book, in both cases I skated over the exact circumstances of his invention because, well, I did...
June 25, 2017
The Book at the British Library on Monday 3rd July
A quick reminder today that I’ll be giving a talk at the British Library on Monday 3rd July (just over a week to go!), and that tickets are now on general release. It’d be great to see some Shady Characters readers there — if you do come along, please don’t hesitate to say hello!
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June 11, 2017
Miscellany № 79: jè?
Always nice to ease oneself back into the swing of things with a new mark of punctuation, don’t you think? I was pleased to come across the following announcement a little while ago:
On May 27, at the international design conference TYPO Berlin two new typefaces will be launched that are designed as part of the TilburgsAns project. Both typefaces – TilburgsAnsText and TilburgsAnsIcons – contain a new punctuation mark. This mark is based on the Tilburg dialect word ‘jè’ (which sounds more or...
May 28, 2017
The Book: A Talk at the British Library on Monday 3rd July
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving a talk about books and book history at the British Library’s Knowledge Centre, 96 Euston Road, London, at 7pm on Monday 3rd July. The talk will be about an hour long and there will be plenty of time to ask questions if you so desire. (The bar will be open later, too, until 10pm — I’ll be needing a stiff drink afterwards, I’m sure!)
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April 2, 2017
Książka: The Book is now available in Polish
I’m pleased to say that the first translated edition of The Book is now available: Książka is published in Poland by Karakter and is available there in all good bookshops. Paweł Lipszyc was the translator.
If you’d like to learn more about The Book (or rather Książka), you can read my interview on the occasion of its publication with Zofia Zaleska of Dwutygodnik. Alternatively, you can take a look at Juliusz Kurkiewicz’s review for Gazeta Wyborcza or Jakub Nowak’s review for his blog Qbuś poż...
March 20, 2017
St Bride competition: the winners!
Congratulations to Scott Pack and Ryan Pullen (@rpullen86), winners of the St Bride ticket giveaway! Their names were picked at random from the set of all entrants who replied to or retweeted the original posts about the competition. Thank you all for entering!
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March 12, 2017
Win tickets to “The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration” at the St Bride Foundation, London
It’s almost here! As I mentioned before, I’ll be giving a talk at the St Bride Foundation in London on the 23rd of March — just a couple of weeks away now. I’ll be talking about the overlapping histories of writing, printing and books, and signing some books of my own afterwards. Tickets are on sale at £12.50 (£8).
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February 26, 2017
Shady Characters at Adelaide Writers’ Week!
I’m happy to announce that I’m going to be taking part in Adelaide Writers’ Week 2017, running from Saturday 4th March to Thursday 9th March.
First, on Monday 6th March I’ll be appearing with Alberto Manguel in “Books & Reading” to discuss writing, reading, and the intersection of the two in the form of the book. Here’s how the festival programme describes it:
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January 1, 2017
Paper Adaptations
This article was first published in the Winter 2016 issue of The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors.
Quite honestly, sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about books. Paper books, I mean, like the ones currently clogging my bedside table and piled beside my keyboard. I catch myself sighing whenever I have to reach for the enumerated bulk of the Chicago Manual of Style, or as I hunt through my bookshelves for some half-remembered bit of information. We’ve spent 50 years freeing inform...
