Why we don’t have a sarcasm mark
Why is there no punctuation mark for irony? Or to flag up a rhetorical question? Well, the fact is: there once was. Numerous innovative marks have been invented then discarded…
Printing Money: The Economics of Small Press
We’re obviously in a really strange time for the arts in general: you’ve got a crap economy, everything costs more money, arts funding has dried up, and nobody has a…
Rob Words: The hidden logic behind keyboard symbols
Did you know #, &, @, § and ¶ are all made up of letters? In fact, they each represent specific words. In this video, I'll explain where these little…
Making Paper From Grass… and Printing On It
Cory Morrison transforms locally harvested grass into handmade paper using a DIY pulp process.
99% Invisible: The Em Dash
The strange history of a punctuation mark that makes writing feel human, and why people now think it proves the opposite.
The entire history of English in 22 minutes
In this video you'll learn about where English came from, what impact the Vikings had on our language, what the Normans did to English, why Middle English is so weird,…
Linotype | How One Machine Shaped History | The Real OG of Mass Communication
The Linotype machine changed the world. Once called the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by Thomas Edison, it revolutionized printing, making newspapers, books, and mass communication possible on a scale…
It’s not yee old it’s the old: the þ in old English
Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle…