Keith Houston's Blog, page 21
June 15, 2014
Quasiquotes: too good to post only once
Did you catch last weekend’s post on the “quasiquote”? I sincerely hope so, because Ned Brooks and Sandra Bond helped me uncover the history of a truly interesting mark of punctuation, and one that sparked a flurry of comments. For new readers, a quick reminder that you can follow Shady Characters on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ […]
June 8, 2014
Miscellany № 49: introducing the quasiquote
The best thing about running Shady Characters, bar none, is when a reader alerts me to a genuinely novel punctuation mark. A symbol I haven’t seen before, perhaps, or one that fills a niche I hadn’t ever considered. Ned Brooks checked both these boxes when he posted to the Shady Characters Facebook page to tell […]
May 24, 2014
Miscellany № 48: a historical section
A true miscellany for your perusal this week! On with the show. First, a punctuation story that self-destructed almost as soon as it appeared. In mid-April, Levi Stahl, a publicity manager at the University of Chicago Press, posted to his blog about “The first emoticon?”. Stahl had come across a familiar-looking pairing of ‘:)’ in […]
May 11, 2014
Miscellany № 47½: the creator speaks!
I’m very pleased to say that Michele Buchanan, owner of getthepoint.me and creator of its new marks of punctuation, got in touch this week to discuss her project. Her three new marks — the ironic or sarcastic asterisk (*), the equivocal tilde (~),[*] and the happy double-parenthesis (‘))’) — sparked quite a discussion last time […]
April 29, 2014
Miscellany № 47: great!* Another sarcasm mark.
Hot on the heels of the Sartalics’ resurrection, and barely a decade on from the Great Sarcasm Mark Bonanza of the Noughties (I’m hoping that this sobriquet catches on), another new sarcasm mark has swum into view. It has brought friends. I received this tweet a few weeks ago. To cut a short story shorter, […]
April 13, 2014
Miscellany № 46: return to Ampersand Mountain
Well, this is quite something. Alex Jay, a long-time friend of Shady Characters, wrote in after last week’s trip to Ampersand Mountain with the results of a little historical detective work. It turns out that not only do the Adirondacks boast an Ampersand Mountain and an Ampersand Creek, once upon a time the discerning holidaymaker […]
April 5, 2014
Miscellany № 45: the endangered @
I learn from Mashable and Buzzfeed that Twitter is planning to streamline its user interface so as to downplay the roles of the @-symbol and the ‘#’, or octothorpe. I am troubled by this. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a “microblogging” service where users post messages restricted to 140 characters or fewer. When replying to […]
March 16, 2014
Miscellany № 44: clampersands and dieses
First off, I give you The Adjustable Clampersand. Need I say more? Actually, I do. As much as you or I might want to lay our hands on one of these glorious devices, we’ll just have to wait. As Hand-Eye Supply explains on the clampersand’s product page, Sad news! The machine shop at the Foundry […]
Mea culpa № 2
This is a quick note to thank Tim Nau for his eagle-eyed contributions to the Shady Characters errata. As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or leave a comment below if you come across an error in any edition or format of Shady Characters. I’d appreciate it very much, and I’d be very […]
February 23, 2014
Miscellany № 43: sartalics \live\!
It’s a sad fact of life in this business (that is, the business of unusual punctuation marks) that many a promising mark has gone the way of the dodo. The SarcMark©, for instance, was a veritable punctuational mayfly; Paul Mathis’ attempt to rebrand ‘the’ as ‘Ћ’ was over almost as soon as it had begun; […]
