Shady characters seem to be popping up in the mainstream media more and more regularly these days. Having discussed its signature use of the diaeresis only a few weeks ago, this month the New Yorker ...
A very quick post today, but I thought Shady Characters readers might be interested to hear about a recently-aired BBC Radio 4 programme called “Ampers-Fan”. Narrated by the Daily Telegra...
Ray Tomlinson, the software engineer who propelled the the @-symbol from obscurity to ubiquity when he chose it for use in email addresses, has been named as one of the inaugural inductees of the Int...
Bas Jacobs of the European type foundry Underware wrote to Shady Characters with a question: what is this character? It is used to mark correct exam answers in the same way as a tick or check mark, b...
The interrobang is still enjoying its 50th birthday — it was, after all, published in the March-April edition of Type Talks — and as such I’m sure you’ll forgive me for pointi...
As mentioned in Miscellany № 5, the interrobang is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of the occasion Amy Freeborn of The Freeborn Times has published an article on the subject...
Of late I’ve been doing some research for the upcoming Shady Characters book, and as such I’ve been investigating the histories of some characters other than those already covered here. I...
As you might have guessed from my articles on the pilcrow, I have rather a soft spot for this particular mark of punctuation. And though I wasn’t brave enough to emulate Eric Gill’s use o...
I came across the Twitter feed of a new, UK-based design agency recently, and I couldn’t let them go by without a mention: Interabang founders Adam Giles and Ian McLean have chosen a name close...
Grammar.net’s competition for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011 has finally, absolutely and completely closed, and Shady Characters has parlayed 8th place into an actual title: “The Best Grammar Bl...
After a relaxing little interlude, it’s time for me to start on the Shady Characters book in earnest. While I do so, though, some readers have shared links that might be of interest. On Twitter...
Grammar.net’s competition for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011 is now closed, and Shady Characters managed what I think is a very creditable 8th place. Congratulations to the winners — A Cli...
I couldn’t have imagined this when I started posting here back in January, but Shady Characters has a book deal. I am still battling with disbelief. Laurie Abkemeier of DeFiore and Company got ...
Ironics notwithstanding, the irony mark lay dormant for much of the latter part of the 20th century. As had been the case with many other previously obscure marks of punctuation, however, the click-t...
I’m afraid the third article in the series on irony and sarcasm marks will have to be be delayed until next weekend. I’ll be discussing modern irony and sarcasm marks — chiefly thos...
Voting is now open for Grammar.net’s Best Grammar Blog of 2011 competition. Thanks again to all those who voted to nominate us, and I hope you’ll place your vote for us one more time!
Adam Rice wrote in response to the discussion of ‘ironics’, or backwards-slanting italics, in Irony & Sarcasm marks, part 2: I’ve occasionally seen reverse-italics on headstones dati...
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Shady Characters has been longlisted for Grammar.net’s Best Grammar Blog of 2011. The nomination process closes on September 25th so if you think we shoul...
The irony marks proposed by John Wilkins, Alcanter de Brahm and Hervé Bazin proved stubbornly resistant to putting down roots, and Bazin’s 1966 point d’ironie would be the last to be publ...
The footer of each Shady Characters post now contains links to share that post to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz (no Google+ yet, I’m afraid) and Delicious. Please try them out and let me know ...
If the multiplicity of irony marks created over the centuries suggests anything, it is that irony must be peculiarly tricky to communicate in writing. And if the subsequent failure of each and every ...
The ‘@’ symbol’s lack of a suitably inspiring English name has generated some interest from Shady Characters readers. Not for us ‘spider monkey’, ‘rollmop herring&...
Before its ascent to accidental stardom, the ‘@’ went almost unremarked for centuries. Widely used to mean ‘at the rate of’[1] — for example, ‘3 apples @ $1 each’ — the symbol lived out a...
This is a quick note to thank the many readers who have commented on the first @-symbol article. There have been some great comments, both adding extra information about the at sign and pointing...
Like the ampersand, the ‘@’ symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word ‘at’. Even so, it is as much a stap...
In all the excitement about the origin of the ampersand and its various visual forms, I ran out of time to discuss the etymology of its name. This short entry is here to address that omission. Althou...
From its ignoble beginnings a century after Tiro’s scholarly et, the ampersand assumed its now-familiar ‘&’ form with remarkable speed even as the Tironian et stayed rigidly immutable. The...
In contrast to some of the other symbols explored here, the ampersand seems at first sight to be entirely unexceptional. Another of those things the Romans did for us, the symbol started life as the ...
After I posted The Octothorpe, part 2 of 2 last weekend, New Scientist magazine’s online editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury got in touch to say: I was surprised and delighted to discover that you had ...
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