As you know, the American edition of Shady Characters was published on September 24th — which is, of course, National Punctuation Day. In honour of this auspicious event (National Punctuation Day that is, not the book’s publication), Jason Santa Maria, the polymath founder of Editorially and A Book Apart, launched a simple website to promote Smart Quotes for Smart People. As Jason succinctly explains:
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.
Some housekeeping this week, with lots of links from the past few weeks to get through. As always, if you have something you’d like to see featured here, please drop me a line with the details.
Just before my honeymoon, I was lucky enough to be interviewed for an article in Fast Company’s Co.Design blog. John Brownlee’s article, The Unlikely Evolution Of The @ Symbol, focusing on the symbol’s use as a signifier of digital identity, is now online. Thanks are in order for John for selecting the most coherent parts of my answers!
I was excited this week to receive a package postmarked from France: inside were two printed copies of Hiatus, la revue, the magazine for which I wrote a short article on the history of punctuation. I must say thank you to Francis Ramel at Les Éditions Hiatus for sending these over; though it was great to have the opportunity to write for Hiatus in the first place, seeing the article in print is even better.
The manuscript is delivered, ladies and gentlemen. Barring any drama when the W.W. Norton staff return from Labor Day weekend, another milestone in the production of Shady Characters has been reached. To the many people I’ve hounded in the past month about images, quotes or other details, please accept my apologies and my thanks. Also, thanks must go to you, the Shady Characters readership, for your patience. Sorry for the radio silence!