Shady Characters, the quiz

The launch party for Shady Characters went swimmingly! The bar was packed with family and friends, both old and new; many books were signed, and much wine was drunk. My mum brought along a fountain pen that had once belonged to my grandfather, and it was an honour to be able to sign books with it at my first-ever book launch.

While at the launch I took the opportunity to pass out a quiz I wrote a while back to help Particular Books promote the UK edition of Shady Characters, and I thought I’d share it here too. Regular readers of the blog (and book!) will have the answers down pat, but if there are any you’re unsure about just hover your mouse above an answer to reveal whether it’s the right one or not. (On touch screen devices, tap the answers instead.) Some questions have more than one answer.

Enjoy, and post your scores here if you feel like bragging! Read more →

And the winners are…

…Paul Carvill (@paulcarvill) and John Stuart (@biostuart)! Congratulations to them both. Paul and John’s names were picked at random from the set of all commenters on the original competition post, plus all those who replied to, retweeted, or marked as favourite the tweet announcing the contest.* Their copies of the UK edition of Shady Characters will be on their way very soon.

The response to this competition was huge — 143 entries! — and I really appreciate all the lovely comments and tweets you posted in order to take part. Commiserations if you did not win, but thanks again for entering!

*
In more detail: I arranged the names of all entrants in a text file, then used random.org to pick two numbers between 1 and the total number of lines in that file. ↢

It’s publication day (part 2)!

Shady Characters in Waterstones, Edinburgh. Picture by the author.
Shady Characters in Waterstones, Edinburgh. Picture by the author.

Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and Other Typographical Curiosities

is now available in the UK. (I checked for myself at my local Waterstones and collected some documentary evidence, left. The recent excision of the Waterstone[’]s apostrophe still galls me.) You can order a hardback or digital copy from Amazon.co.uk, The Book Depository, Penguin, or Waterstones.

Thanks this time round go to Josephine Greywoode and Kate Watson at Particular Books, and cover designer Matthew Young, for all their hard work in bringing the UK edition to fruition!

As if a competition to win one of two copies of the UK edition isn’t enough, you can now also chance your hand at a copy of the American edition over at Constance Hale’s blog, Sin & Syntax. Good luck!

It’s publication (and punctuation) day!

Shady Characters in Barnes & Noble, NYC. Picture courtesy of Tricia Halling.
Shady Characters in Barnes & Noble, NYC. Picture courtesy of Tricia Halling.

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks

is now available to order from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, Indiebound and Powell’s.* If you’re still on the fence as to whether to buy the book, you can now take a look at a few sample pages over at W. W. Norton’s account on Medium. Perhaps Judith Abbate’s excellent typography or Jason Booher’s vibrant cover will sway you!

This is a quite a day for me, and and there are lots of people to thank for helping to make it happen. Thank you all for reading and commenting on Shady Characters over the years; thank you to my agent, Laurie Abkemeier, and to Brendan Curry et al at W. W. Norton, for shepherding me through the processes of writing and publication; thank you to Jeff Sanders for early encouragement and editing; and most of all, thank you to my lovely wife Leigh for being so supportive. Not coincidentally, today is National Punctuation Day, so in honour of that esteemed holiday, I’ll finish by saying: may your clauses be crisp and your punctuation judicious.

*
Stay strong, UK readers; your time will come. It will come on Thursday, in fact. ↢