A post from Shady Characters

Miscellany № 92: a lightly festive miscellany

Work continues apace on the new book, but here are a few links I couldn’t let go before the holidays are upon us.


First is this amusing and well-crafted video exploration of where the comma should go in the first line of the song God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. Very clever, and very well executed. Kudos to its maker, Ramses the Pigeon.


Next up is my one and only Christmas gift recommendation this year (barring my own books, of course!). This fetching asterisk-as-snow T-shirt is available from Type Tasting, as are hoodies and greetings cards bearing the same pattern.

Red T-shirt printed with snow in the form of asterisks
Asterisk snow T-shirt available from Type Tasting.

Type Tasting, I should say, is the website of Sarah Hyndman, a prolific writer and public speaker on typography. Very much worth a follow on the social network of your choice.


Elsewhere, my blog-friend Glenn Fleishman, who hosts the Tiny Typecast podcast, last month released an episode on electrotyping in the nineteenth century. What is electrotyping, you ask? Well, now you can find out. (Full disclosure: I appeared on Glenn’s podcast last year, talking about books, book history, and and more. Extra full disclosure: I’ve met Glenn in real life, and he is a thoroughly decent chap. Do yourself a favour and subscribe to the Tiny Typecast!)


I was intrigued to see a tweet announcing the publication of an open access book entitled Manual of Roman Everyday Writing, Volume 1: Scripts and Texts. (Volume 2, Writing Equipment, was published earlier this year.) I haven’t had a chance to dig into them yet, but both volumes give every impression of being invaluable resources on how the Romans wrote and what they wrote with — exactly the sort of thing I could have used back in 2016 as I wrote The Book!

Volume 1 was written by Alex Mullen at the University of Nottingham and Alan Bowman of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. Volume 2 was written by Anna Willi, also at Nottingham. Both books were sponsored by the LatinNow project, which has a blog post announcing volume 1. Both are now on my reading list, and if you’re at all interested in ancient writing, I suspect you might want to add them to yours, too.


Enjoy the holiday season, and see you in the new year!

4 comments on “Miscellany № 92: a lightly festive miscellany

  1. Comment posted by Barry Goldstein on

    My roommate in college wrote his senior thesis on a comma in Isaiah: was it

    A voice crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord

    vs.

    A voice crieth, in the wilderness prepare ye …

  2. Comment posted by Glenn Fleishman on

    Thank you for the kind words! I am looking for new topics and people for the Tiny Typecast in 2022, and accepting all suggestions!

    1. Comment posted by Keith Houston on

      Hi Glenn — not at all! I was going to suggest Jeremy Burge, but I completely forgot that you had him on last year. I, for one, would be interested to know to what extent emoji designers make their symbols ready for print, but I may be in a minority of one here!

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