Glyphs are the hidden heroes of the typography world. You might not pay them much attention, but they’re undeniably important. Glyphs—and by glyphs we’re referring specifically to those little typographic symbols that include punctuation—give intention and structure to a sentence; they help you interpret a piece of text. They tell you when to pause, when to question, when to feel enthused. “They are the rational part of sound,” says Adriana Caneva.

Caneva is one half of London design studio Off-White. She, along with her partner Shiro Nishimoto, have written and designed what might best be described as a love letter to glyphs. The book, appropriately titled Glyph*, is a dive into the history and form of many symbols you're familiar with—like the comma, the quotation mark, and the asterisk—and several that you probably aren't—like the hedera, and the manicule. The self-taught design duo began researching glyphs while teaching themselves the basics of graphic design. They started by scaling up the glyphs and studying their shape. They soon realized that these symbols are more than integral to the organization and enhancement of the written word—they're actually quite beautiful on their own. "Even something as simple as a period," Nishimoto says. "You blow it up and suddenly it becomes quite a powerful symbol."

The book covers everything from the period to the slash to something called an interrobang. If you, like us, have never heard of the interrobang, read on—below, we've featured a few choice histories taken from the book.

Slash

The word ‘slash’ first appeared in medieval times to mean a slicing movement by a knife or weapon (derived from the Old French esclachier). It’s easy to see how this word was then transposed onto the dynamic diagonal slit that is the slash. In medieval manuscripts, slashes were used rampantly in place of today’s comma, but today the slash has limited uses. Its most common function is to substitute the word ‘or’ (Sir/ Madam, Y/N). It is also used to make a strong connect between words or phrases (love/hate), to replace per (km/h) and to indicate the end of a line in a poem or song. In recent years, the slash has become known as the forward slash, to differentiate it from the backslash, which is used only in computing.

Typographically speaking, it is worth noting the difference between the solidus and the slash (also known as virgule). The solidus is a mark used to denote fractions and is at a close to 45-degree angle. The slash is used in punctuation and is more vertical in orientation. However, today there is little differentiation between them and where there is no option of a solidus, a slash is generally acceptable. There are usually no spaces on either side of a slash, unless it’s indicating the end of a line of verse.

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Hashtag

The hashtag, octothorpe or pound sign, comes from the Latin abbreviation lb, short for libra pondo, or ‘pound weight’. It was first used around the 14th century and was written with a short stroke above the letters so that the ‘l’ would not be mistaken for a ‘1’. This gradually morphed into # – the bottom line implying the bottom of the ‘l and b’ and the top line referring to the stroke above. The symbol was integrated into technology in the late ‘60s by Bell Labs, inventors of the touch-tone phone, who used it in phone systems to separate between strings of numbers. Legend has it that the director of Bell Labs came up with the name ‘octothorpe’ by combining the figure’s eight points with the surname of his favourite athlete, Olympian Jim Thorpe.

The hash then appeared in the early days of the internet, featuring as early as 1988, in networks where users communicated through channels, the subject of which was indicated by the hash sign (#Tokyo was a channel of people talking about Tokyo). By the new millennium, however, hashtags were not widely used online except by the techno-elite. In 2007, an employee at Twitter suggested prefixing the names of groups or ‘channels’ with a #. This suggestion was initially rejected as alienating and over-techie, but was eventually adopted, and the meteoric rise of the hashtag was set in motion.

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Interrobang

The interrobang is a combination of an exclamation mark and a question mark. Advertising executive, Martin Speckter, introduced it in 1962, pitching it as a ‘typographically eloquent way in which to end a statement that expresses excited disbelief, asks a question in an excited manner, or proposes a rhetorical question’. Speckter called his mark ‘interrobang’ from the Latin for query and the proofreader’s term for exclamation, although the term ‘quexclamation mark’ is still used by some.

The interrobang was enthusiastically embraced for a brief period until the late ’60s. An interrobang key was even introduced to some ranges of typewriters. However, the fad soon lost momentum, and the age old ?! combination was reinstated. Today it is still possible to find the interrobang in some fonts, such as Palatino, and it is recognized in informal English as a non-standard punctuation mark. It many ways one could say that the interrobang has now been superseded by the emoticon, which makes similar use of glyph combinations in order to add emphasis and feeling to the sentence that precedes it.

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Pilcrow

The pilcrow, also known prosaically as the paragraph mark, indicates the start and finish of a paragraph. It is most commonly used in word processing programmes, as a non-permanent mark – i.e. a mark that does not show up in print. Despite its virtual invisibility, it has a lengthy history, reaching back to Ancient Greece, where the concept of a ‘paragraph’ pre-dated any other punctuation mark. The symbol itself is mostly likely derived from the Latin capitula (chapter), which was abbreviated to a large ‘C’. To avoid confusion, the ‘C’ acquired a heavier curve, and a vertical bar through it, eventually evolving into the more elaborate sign we know today. The name ‘pilcrow’ is thought to have come from various corruptions of the word ‘paragraph’, or, more entertainingly, from the phrase ‘pulled crow’, due to its resemblance to a plucked bird.

The pilcrow was once used with great abandon, elaborately drawn in bright red ink by specialized rubricators. A manuscript would be left with wide blank spaces in which the rubricators would later draw the pilcrows. Eventually, paragraphs were started on new lines, with an indentation left for the pilcrow. When a rubricator ran out of time, the indentation was left blank, and eventually this became standard practice – the new line and the indentation taking the place of the fiddly pilcrow. Today, the pilcrow’s primary uses are in proofreading as an indication that a paragraph should be inserted, in legal texts, when citing a specific paragraph, and in academic writing, when citing from an HTML page.

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Manicule

Derived from the Latin maniculum, or ‘little hand’, the manicule was used abundantly throughout the Renaissance and up until the 18th century. This pointing hand glyph drew readers’ attention to important or interesting text, acting as an authorial guide through a document. The first known use of the manicule was in the Domesday Book of 1086, but it was only in the 14th century that it really took off. Humanist scholars embraced it enthusiastically, scrawling it in the margins of everything from law books to literature.

Although its basic form has remained intact through the centuries, there were countless interpretations of the mark, ranging from semi-abstract squiggly strokes to elaborate, stylised hands with ornate cuffs and flowing sleeves, in which a note about the note was sometimes written. With the advent of printing, the manicule gradually fell out of favour, giving way to the more pragmatic numbered footnote. Today, the manicule is only rarely used. Now soberly decked in the cuff of a businessman, the manicule occasionally makes an appearance in signage and advertisements, in order to lend a vintage flavour, and also features on the return-to-sender stamps of the US Postal Service. One could argue that the little hand that acts as a cursor on some computers is a form of manicule, interfacing between the reader and the material on screen.

You can pre-order Glyph* on Amazon.