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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

Miscellany № 29

April 21, 2013

A genuine miscellany this week; a grab-bag of punctuational ephemera to chew over at your leisure. First, I would draw your attention to Benjamin Samuel’s forensic, heart-breaking, and hilarious ode to the comma at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I quote:

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Part of a series on Miscellany book, news comma, exclamation, parenthesis 6 Comments

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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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