Inside, we meet novelists, publishers, scholars and scribes; we range from ancient Greeks to hashtagged tweets; and we see the weird and wonderful foundations of the most successful technology of all time. Entertaining history of a variety of punctuation marks and how they developed and became standardised (not just eg the dash and exclamation, but also manicule, pilcrow, interrobang). Introduced into the history of writing throughout various stages of history when writing meant hand writing on paper or parchment it was easy for punctuation marks to be born, evolve and exist above, below, or in the margins of the written material.

When she reaches the garage a few seconds later, she find the door of the Century open, a shadowy figure running off into the night, and Henry unconscious on the ground. was Houston's clever use of the punctuation, fonts and even writing styles he was describing in that respective chapter.I love knowing the why and the where of things and Shady Characters satisfies my curiosity and piques my interest.

Non-English editions Shady Characters is also available in Polish (as Ciemne typki), published by Karakter, and in Chinese complex characters (as 英語符號趣味學), published by Rye Field Publications. The story stays focused on the mystery and doesn’t stray, but there are some hints here and there about other characters that could lead to a story about them. She’ll do anything to prove his innocence … even if it means digging into secrets her neighbors would rather leave buried. Sure, it's a way of getting a lot of 'facts' down on a page - some of those facts might even be interesting - but you can do that in fiction too; oftentimes much better.Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts. As Shady Characters goes on to explain, the layout of words in books (and in scrolls before) were determined to need extra marks that would assist in the understanding of the text. When she notices a strange man following her and lurking outside the hospital room, Mary wonders just how much trouble Henry is in.