Keith Houston.
Shady Characters: the secret life of punctuation, symbols and other typographical marks.
Norton. 2013
In Shady Characters, Keith Houston weaves a fascinating trail
through the nooks and crannies of typographical history,
from the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs.
Whether investigating the annotating duo of asterisk (*) and dagger (†);
the plucky pilcrow (¶) and humble ampersand (&);
or the at sign (@) and octothorpe (#),
both newly reinvigorated by the Internet,
Shady Characters will delight all who cherish
the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.