Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities joins Sean on the show today to talk about the mysterious world of typography.

far from a geeky subject, the book moves from ancient Greece to the Internet—via the Renaissance, Gutenberg, and Madison Avenue—Shady Characters exposes the secret history of punctuation.

Do you know where the asterisk (*) comes from or the 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,

The author draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).

Keith will be talking to Sean today at 2.30pm