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Shady Characters

The secret life of punctuation

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Shady Characters is miscellany, books, and more from Keith Houston. Here you’ll find unusual marks of punctuation, books and book history, and everything in between.

Now available, The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time. Learn more

St Bride competition: the winners!

March 20, 2017

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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book, competition, events 1 Comment

Win tickets to “The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration” at the St Bride Foundation, London

March 12, 2017

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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And the winners are…

August 28, 2016

The third and final round of The Book giveaway is now closed, and I’m pleased to announce that the winners this time are Twitter user Elizabeth Fraser (@Frauhaus) and commenter Frank S. Congratulations to both of them! Their signed copies of The Book will be on their way soon.

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It’s US publication day!

The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Ex­plor­a­tion of the Most Power­ful Ob­ject of Our Time

August 23, 2016

is published today in the US! You can order a copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound or Powell’s — or, of course, from your favourite local bookshop. Learn more here, or read an extract over at Medium.

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book, competition, news 7 Comments

We have a winner – and the final competition!

August 22, 2016

The second round of The Book giveaway came to a close yesterday, and I’m pleased to announce that Angela Boothroyd (@StudyingOnline) is the winner. Congratulations to Angela! Her signed copy of The Book will be on its way soon.

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The Book hardcover. (W. W. Norton, 2016.)
The Book hardcover. (W. W. Norton, 2016.)

Erudite, playful, and illuminating…a splendid, challenging mixture of information and fun.

Kirkus Reviews

Hundreds of books about books have been published during the past century…I will not claim that this one is the very best of all time. Yet The Book is possibly the best of our time.

Steven Heller, Eye Magazine

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Buy at Indiebound
Buy at Waterstones


Shady Characters paperback (W. W. Norton, 2014).
Shady Characters paperback (W. W. Norton, 2014).

Punctuation is not a mere ornament or a curiosity — it is essential, and we need to know about it. Keith Houston’s history is entertaining and readable.

Ian Sansom, The Guardian

Scholarly, highly readable and, on some deeper level, slightly deranged.

Marcus Berkmann, The Spectator

Buy at Amazon
Buy at Barnes & Noble
Buy at Indiebound
Buy at Waterstones

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