news – Page 18 – Shady Characters

Miscellany № 70 — ‘⋮’, ‘⌨︎’ & ‘¶’

February 28, 2016

Computers are not typewriters: this is evident. Even so, it’s easy to forget that Christopher Latham Sholes’ mechanical marvel was the wellspring of the QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and similar keyboards we use to interact with our laptops, tablets and smartphones. Sholes and his invention play supporting roles in the Shady Characters book, too: the typewriter helped popularise the @-symbol even as it savaged the em and en dashes, but there was always one symbol on Sholes’ embryonic QWERTY keyboard that I never quite got to grips with. Take a look at the leftmost key on the third row of Sholes’ keyboard, as shown in his 1878 patent for “Improvement in type-writing machines”.1 What on earth is that? Or rather, what on earth is this: ‘⋮’?

Shady Characters at the New York Times

February 22, 2016

I recently wrote a piece for the New York Times on the kerfuffle currently engulfing the humble circumflex accent (ê). You can read the piece here — let me know what you think about it in the comments or, if you’d prefer, drop me a line via the Contact page. (Many thanks to Jessica Svendsen for the use of the image that accompanies the article!)

The Book, revealed!

February 21, 2016

Ladies and gentlemen: The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time is now available for pre-order! You can order the hardcover in the USA from W. W. Norton, Amazon.com, Indiebound or Powell’s. In the rest of the world, order from Amazon.co.uk, The Book Depository or Waterstones. It will be published in August.

A spring clean for Shady Characters

February 14, 2016

As you may have noticed, things are a little different around here. Shady Characters is a little over five years old now, and the original design was starting to fray around the edges: it was not especially readable on mobile devices; PC and Mac users were presented with different fonts; and the underlying code had grown a little stale, leading to ugly citations and unpredictably-sized images.

Miscellany № 69: the hyphen resolved

February 1, 2016

But first: interrobangs. This is shaping up to be a banner year for Martin K. Speckter’s creation. Having been selected by Pearson, the giant publishing firm, to form the nucleus of its new logo, the interrobang now pops up at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft as the title of an upcoming exhibition of letterpress printing.