Includes bibliographical references and index.

The pilcrow -- The interrobang -- The octothorpe -- The ampersand -- The @ symbol -- The asterisk and dagger -- The hyphen -- The dash -- The manicule -- Quotation marks -- Irony and sarcasm -- Irony in history -- Ironics -- Digital sarcasm.

Revealing the secret history of punctuation, this tour of two thousand years of the written word, from ancient Greece to the Internet, explores the parallel histories of language and typography throughout the world and across time.