I’ve read “Shady Characters. The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks” by Keith Houston
This book was published in 2014. It cronicles the histories of several punctuation marks and other typographical characters of English. There are chapters on the pilcrow ¶, the interrobang ‽, the octothorpe #, the ampersand &, the @ symbol, the asterisk * and dagger †, the hyphen -, the dash –, the manicule ☛, quotation marks “” and typographic depictions of irony.
In many of the chapters you can read about the origins of additional typographic marks. So if you’re wondering (like I did) why Houston wouldn’t want to tell me about the comma, don’t worry. It’s in there. I especially enjoyed learning about the origins of the @ symbol and its associations with trading. I was not the biggest fan of the chapter on irony, especially irony on the *~internet~*, but oh well.
I found the book educational and entertaining. You learn a lot about stuff that is not technically typographical. But that is to be expected, since Houston wants to accurately set the scene for the contexts in which every mark was created and how it has developed ever since.
There are just the right amount of graphics in the book to depict certain marks in old manuscripts or variations of marks such as the ampersand.
I was especially fond of the colour work: While the whole text is (expectedly) set in a black font, all the “special” typographical marks (not stops or commas, though) are set in red:
[Depicted above is a photo of part of a book page. All the typographical marks such as asterisks, daggers etc. appear in red when they are part of the main text.]
The book ends with a small annotated further reading section and a vast notes section full of further further readings.
I recommend “Shady Characters” to all typography nerds and fans of historical graphematics and punctuation. From reading this, you will learn when to use which dash (what the heck, english?), a lot about the people working at the library of Alexandria and the consequences of limited space on typewriters.
I did some livetweeting while reading here (in German), if you’re interested in such things.
