Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical MarksA charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography. Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (+) which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart