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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

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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book, competition, news 4 Comments

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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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.)

Houston chronicles the rise of the emoji in this fun romp through the evolution of digital language…equal parts informative and delightful.

Publishers Weekly

An excellent read for those interested in history, technology, and the global scale of digital communication…Houston writes with humor and an easy-going tone, plus a pace that is smooth and seems effortless, keeping readers engaged.

Library Journal
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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