Keith Houston's Blog, page 19
March 17, 2015
Miscellany № 59: the percent sign
A few weeks back, Nina Stössinger asked on Twitter: Isn’t it odd that the percent sign looks like “0/0” rather than, say, “/100” or “/00”? This, it turns out, is a very good question. Like Nina, I had assumed that the percent sign was shaped so as to invoke the idea of a vulgar fraction, […]
March 1, 2015
UK paperback competition: the winners!
Ladies and gentlemen: please put your hands together for Álvaro Franca and Yoni Weiss, winners of the UK paperback giveaway! Their names were picked at random from the set of all commenters, tweeters and Facebook users who replied, retweeted, or favourited the original posts about the competition.[*] (Both Álvaro (@alvaroefe) and Yoni (@yonimweiss) entered via […]
February 15, 2015
It’s paperback publication day (again, sort of)!
In the spirit of being late for one’s own wedding, I present to you the UK paperback edition of Shady Characters, a mere fortnight after its actual publication! The paperback is available now from Penguin, Amazon.co.uk (is it wrong of me to want to crack the “Typography” category’s top 5?), The Book Depository, and Waterstones.[*] […]
February 1, 2015
Miscellany № 58: a selection of long reads
A back to basics post this week — here are a few longer articles and websites for you to peruse at your leisure. Erik Kwakkel, who writes the scholarly yet readable Medieval Books blog, recently posted an entry tracing the development of footnotes in the medieval period. Erik’s writings were a great source of inspiration […]
January 18, 2015
Miscellany № 57: ampersand, plus, and _____?
Happy New Year, everyone! To celebrate the coming of the new year, let’s, er, start by looking back to the old one. Back in December, in response to my post about the ampersand/plus-sign face-off currently underway on the signs of London’s hipster restaurants, commenter Jeremy wrote: [H]aving taken what might well be hundreds of miles […]
December 22, 2014
Miscellany № 56: an octothorpean Christmas
We need to talk about the octothorpe — primarily because everyone else is talking about it too. The past couple of months have see the ‘#’ dusted off, dressed up in its party clothes, and presented to the world at large in a variety of articles, videos, and radio programmes. But the octothorpe’s current renaissance […]
December 7, 2014
Miscellany № 55: ¶ < & < +
Christmas shopping getting you down? Me too, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of my list of things to find and buy. Here, then, are a few links of a punctuational kind to help take your mind off the next plunge into city-centre shopping madness. Enjoy! First up is this excellent piece about the origin, […]
November 23, 2014
The 2014 Shady Characters gift guide
A couple of years ago, my wife gave me a pair of interrobang cufflinks (as shown above) for Christmas. They were the perfect gift, and I was lucky to get them — I’m afraid to say that they’re no longer available. But if you’re still looking for a gift for the punctuation-phile in your life, […]
November 9, 2014
Augustus & Everything After: a Shady Characters field trip
The trip from the tourist town of Sorrento, clinging to the cliffs on the southern edge of the Bay of Naples, to the ancient settlement of Pompeii is an engaging one. Sorrento is the end of line, literally speaking: the railway track comes to an end there and so there is often a ticking, cooling […]
October 27, 2014
5 Punctuation Marks That Look Nothing Like They Used To
I wrote an article for the Huffington Post, and yes, I gave it a clickbait headline. Enjoy!
