Miscellany – Page 19 – Shady Characters

Miscellany № 21

December 23, 2012

Mental Floss recently published a primer on the many and varied uses of the em (—) and en dashes (–), including a mention of my personal favourite, the “compound adjective hyphen”. This is the case where a compound term such as “Pulitzer Prize” is joined to another term not with a hyphen but instead an assertive en dash to yield, for instance, “Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist”. And if your interest is piqued by Mental Floss’s brief treatment of the usage of the dash, then hopefully the chapter on its history in the upcoming Shady Characters book will be worth waiting for!

Miscellany № 20: On Typewriters

December 10, 2012

Recently I was lucky enough to take a break from editing the Shady Characters manuscript with an entertaining trip to New York City to visit Brendan Curry, my editor, and Penny Speckter, to whom dedicated readers will require no introduction. (More on that in a week or two, I hope.) In amongst the various punctuation-related news items that popped up since I was away, however, one story in particular caught my eye: the last new typewriter to be manufactured in the UK came off the production line at the Brother factory in Wrexham, Wales, at the end of November this year.1 It is the end of an era, and one that bears a little attention.

Miscellany № 19

Shady Characters

November 19, 2012

is in print at last! Well, in a sense. David Březina of Rosetta Type, who specialize in multi-script typography, approached me a little while ago to ask about including some snippets of text from Shady Characters in their first type specimen, and I was happy to agree. The specimen arrived in the post a few days ago, and so here we are:

Miscellany № 18

October 29, 2012

The interrobang is in the ascendant this week. Richard Polt, a professor of philosophy at Xavier University, Ohio, is also a vintage typewriter buff who has helped me a number of times with regard to keyboards, typewriter models and such like. Back in 2011, Richard contributed this great image of a piano-like, 1889 Hammond to my article on The @-symbol, part 2 of 2; now, though, he has outdone himself handsomely with an amazing find. Witness the interrobang in print on the cover of Agent, Action, and Reason (1971) edited by Robert William Binkley et al.1

Miscellany № 17

October 14, 2012

I visited London this weekend, continuing my niche campaign to explore the world of computer-to-Monotype interfaces. (If none of this makes any sense, take a look at my earlier post about the last working Monotype caster in Scotland.) Having seen Harry McIntosh’s system first-hand in Edinburgh, this time round I prevailed upon Phil Abel and Nick Gill of London’s Hand & Eye Letterpress to show me the system installed at their own workshop, of which much more in a future post.