Shady Characters – The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks

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To my surprise, this engaging rabbit trail through history ended up being one of the best books I've read all year!

Just as the nouveau-riche indulge in conspicuous displays of wealth like no truly wealthy person would, American intellectuals like Houston always try too hard to be literate and clever, made desperate by their transatlantic cultural inferiority complex.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.

With a Curta, a practiced user could add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers by adjusting a few sliders and then turning the crank on top. When the village’s resident grump is found dead in a pond, newspaper reporter fox Vera Vixen suspects foul play.It blows my mind to think that with all the algorithmic typesetting we have today, the line spacing used to justify the first ever printed book is so perfect that it remains, to this day, the best typeset book in the history of print. Perfect for the youngest of readers, this book will inspire kids to discuss their multitude of feelings in a kid-friendly, accessible format. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned.