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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 information technologies of the unorthodox kind: from emoji to unusual marks of punctuation; from codices to calculators; and everything in between.

Now available to pre-order, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji. Learn more

We have winners – and a new competition!

August 27, 2023

Congratulations to Mary Ann Atwood and John W. Stuart, winners of the first round of the Empire of the Sum giveaway! Their names were picked at random from the set of all entrants who replied the original post about the competition. Thank you all for entering! If you won, congratulations, and look out for an email from me arranging delivery of your copy of Empire. If not, read on.

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Win a copy of Empire of the Sum!

August 14, 2023

This is your chance to win one of two free copies of Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator! To enter, leave a comment on this post with a valid email address so that I can contact you in the event that you win.

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Ciemne typki competition: we have a winner!

October 6, 2021

Congratulations to Mykola Leonovych on winning a copy of the new edition of Ciemne typki, the Polish translation of Shady Characters! I asked entrants about their favourite marks of punctuation and why they liked them. Here’s Mykola’s winning entry:

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Win a copy of Shady Characters for National Punctuation Day!

September 24, 2021

It’s the 24th of September, which means it’s National Punctuation Day! To celebrate, I’m giving away a copy of Wydawnictwo Karakter’s gorgeous Polish edition of Shady Characters. (My terrible photo does not do it justice – this is a great-looking book.)

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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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Cover for "Face with Tears of Joy", showing the face with tears of joy emoji throughout emoji history
Face with Tears of Joy paperback. (W. W. Norton, 2025.)

Sex! Conflict! International standards bodies! The story of emoji is far more interesting than it has any right to be. Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji will explore where the world’s newest language came from, how it works, and where it is going. It will not help you master emoji — only a tween could do that, and they will be too busy texting — but it _will_ provide an indispensable guide to the most vibrant part of modern language.

Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji is available for pre-order, to be published in July 2025 by W. W. Norton.

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The sun rises behind a pocket calculator, whose display reads "07734"
Empire of the Sum hardcover. (W. W. Norton, 2023.)

An entertaining, informative story about a technology that defined an era.

Kirkus Reviews

To describe a calculator as “a symphony of solenoids and switches” (that would be an early, discarded model of what would become the Casio 14-A, which went on the market in 1975 for $1,347) may not be erotica, but it is good writing — and these days, the latter is rather more rare.

Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times
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Paperback cover of "The Book", showing the title on a cream band against a dark green background.
The Book paperback. (W. W. Norton, 2025.)

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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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

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© Keith Houston 2010–2025 · Colophon