Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks

A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography. 

Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)—which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible—or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).

From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (?) and as divisive as the dash (—). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.

Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

Typography Sketchbooks

"A fine new addition to both the 10 finest books on typography and our favorite peeks inside the notebooks of great creators: Typography Sketchbooks is like a visual window into the minds of the worlds most exciting type designers and, in turn, into the intricate art-science of typography itself a medium both creative and practical that has to walk the tightrope between centuries-old tradition and bleeding-edge innovation with equal parts grace and agility in an era of changing reading habits and design expectations." --Brain Pickings

"Typography Sketchbooks is like a visual window into the minds of the world's most exciting type designers and, in turn, into the intricate art-science of typography itself." -- TheAtlantic.com

"Typography Sketchbooks (Princeton Architectural Press 2011), covers just about every nuance of visual communication from just about every possible approach to type design, from the highly controlled sketches of Matthew Carter (Cambridge, MA) to the free-wheeling headline sketches of Andy Smith (London, UK) to the sublimely beautiful photographic alphabets of Bob Aufuldish (San Anselmo, UK). It's a must for musing and inspiration for visual narrators. And it includes URLs for the contributors." --- DART: Design Arts Daily

"Know someone who loves design? A devotee of letter forms or ABCs? Then this celebration of type should be on your list. This book peeps into the private sketchbooks of talented typographers like Emek Golan, Andy Smith, Tom Schamp, Daniel Pelavin, Bernard Maisner, Katie Lombardo, Jonny Hannah, and so many more. This book is bursting with amazing, colorful, often whimsical, imagery." --Fine Books & Collections

"Heller and Talarico have struck gold again with sketches revolving around type, type treatments, and letter forms... Any reader who doodles will feel an itch in their fingers looking at these pages." -- Communication Arts

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