Hyphens & Hashtags*: *The Stories behind the symbols on our keyboard

Hyphens & Hashtags explores the evolution of punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and glyphs, revealing their impact on written communication and their role in the digital age. It highlights the historical roots and modern usage of these symbols, including their evolution into emoticons and hashtags.

Format: Hardback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 26 March 2021
Publisher: Bodleian Library

The punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and glyphs that adorn our keyboards have undergone a remarkable evolution over many centuries, shaping our understanding of texts, calculations, and online interactions. Without these symbols, our written communication would be a never-ending stream of letters and numbers. The creation, refinement, and dissemination of these symbols have been the result of countless hands and minds working together. Hyphens & Hashtags delves into the fascinating stories behind each example, revealing the long and winding road many of these special characters have taken to become widely used. In the digital age, some symbols have acquired new meanings or gained renewed popularity, such as the colon, which now doubles as the eyes of a smiling face emoticon, and the hashtag, which has transformed from obscurity to an essential component of social media. While tracing their historical roots, the book also explores the ever-evolving modern usage of these symbols, highlighting those that have fallen out of fashion. Hyphens & Hashtags shines a well-deserved spotlight on these indispensable typography tools, whose ability to summarize a command or concept in simple shorthand has the power to transform our sentences, clarify calculations, and infuse our online interactions with much-needed emotion.

Weight: 360g
Dimension: 126 x 190 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781851245369