Among other things (like punctuation), this book is about: language, the history of print technology big fires, and individual punctuation enthusiasts who changed the English language. It took me four months to finish this book because I both wanted to devour all at once and read it slowly so I could savor it longer. I found myself giving out random punctuation fun facts to my friends (literally anyone I thought might be receptive to that) and getting excited for my “planned dates” with this book.
I’m excited to report that I saw an octothorpe joke on Bluesky and understood it thanks to this book. Applied knowledge!
I found a lot of similarities to the book The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens where tales of punctuation were wrapped up in the history of how advancements in technology have influenced our systems and standards, in this case specifically the way language and expression evolved. I’m becoming more interested in pursuing books dedicated to these topics and learning the details of how technology impacts the way things work.
The book was an easy read and I breezed through it without taking many notes, so I’m looking forward to reading it again sometime and pacing myself so I can write down the things that I find striking.
I did want to leave with this: There is a whole section on denoting sarcasm with a mark or emphasis of some kind, including the argument that if you’re using irony/sarcasm, then you shouldn’t need to denote it… This book is 10 years old. I wonder how the book would be written now that we use tone indicators.
I hope they update this book or someone else writes more about punctuation and how expression through language has evolved since 2010, because things are changing at a much more rapid pace and I’m very interested in reading about it.