It's time for the 2025 Shady Characters advent calendar! I'm counting down to Christmas with ten of the most interesting, controversial and odd emoji to have appeared on our screens. We're getting started with FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY (😂), which you can read about here: shadycharacters.co.u....

These are amazing! (And, of course, I have a related book to sell! Check out “Empire of the Sum” for the story of how calculator watches got started in the first place: shadycharacters.co.uk/books/empire... .)

Ten years ago, the OED’s word of the year was “😂”. If this is a word, is ‘emoji’ a language? @keithhouston.bsky.social’s interesting exploration of the question takes us along a literary translation (Emoji Dick), the challenge of universality and more: buff.ly/D00WGXr

Happy World Linguistics Day from Linlithgow, Scotland!

I was browsing the Emojipedia blog archives this evening for a forthcoming project, and I was reminded of a conversation Keith Broni and I had earlier this year (blog.emojipedia.org/...) about the history of emoji. It's a great companion piece to "Face with Tears of Joy" (shadycharacters.co.u...)!

Impossible how good reading is. You mean I just point my face at the paper for a bit and it does a whole update on my brain?

A question for any web developers reading: what's the canonical way to move off WordPress?

From the Shady Characters archive, journey back to where it all began! Read about the life, death, and afterlife of the pilcrow (¶), or paragraph mark: shadycharacters.co.u.... (Image courtesy of the of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: search.digital-scrip....)

Super niche, but I like it. (Readers of “Shady Characters” will already know what a manicule is, of course!)

It’s almost here! “Face with Tears of Joy” is having a launch party at Linlithgow’s best bookshop, Far From the Madding Crowd, at 6.30pm on Wednesday October 15th. Join us for drinks, snacks, chat, and a reading from the book. Get the details at shadycharacters.co.u..., and see you there!

I’ll be unable to work at all for a few weeks, then at reduced capability for several weeks. I would never ask for charity when so many people are desperately in need of aid in the world. But I do write and publish books that make great birthday and holiday gifts—for yourself and others.

Hi, folks, a little personal news. In mid-November, I'm getting my aortic valve replaced via open-heart surgery. As scary as that sounds, my prognosis is excellent. This is fairly personal health news, and I'm posting publicly for two reasons.

If you've ever wanted to know why I got into writing, or to hear a little bit about the process behind writing my books, you might enjoy this episode of Kelly Provenzano's podcast, “Paper Places”: www.relay.fm/paperpl....

Podcasts! I recently recorded two of them, in fact, courtesy of Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl (bsky.app/profile/gra...). Head over to Shady Characters for links: shadycharacters.co.u....

It's the 8th of September, which means (of course) that it is National Ampersand Day! This year is even more special, because it's ten years since Chaz DeSimone founded this world-renowned and not at all tongue-in-cheek celebration of the '&' (www.nationaldaycalen...).

A reminder! “Face with Tears of Joy” is having a launch party at Linlithgow’s best bookshop, Far From the Madding Crowd, at 6.30pm on Wednesday October 15th for drinks, snacks, chat, and a reading from the book. Get the details at shadycharacters.co.u..., and I look forward to seeing you there!

Another day, another punctuation-AI mashup! This time round, why do people suddenly hate the em dash? Read more at shadycharacters.co.u.... (For some previous musings, see emoji.shadycharacter... and shadycharacters.co.u....)

I found Elizabeth Goodspeed's short, sweet history of business card design (themalin.co/journal/...) courtesy of Dan Cederholm's newsletter (https://simplebits.com/). Here's one of mine, printed back in 2012 (shadycharacters.co.u...) at in Robert Smail's in Innerleithen (www.nts.org.uk/visit...).

“Face with Tears of Joy” is having a launch party! I’ll be at Linlithgow’s best bookshop, Far From the Madding Crowd, at 6.30pm on Wednesday October 15th for drinks, snacks, and maybe even a reading from the book. Get the details at shadycharacters.co.u..., and I look forward to seeing you there!

📽️ #ThatWordChat episode with Keith Houston is premiering on YouTube today at 4:30 p.m. ET! Catch up on our deep dive into symbols and emoji. Watch here: bit.ly/ThatWordVideo #Editors #Writers #Emoji #Typography #Publishing

Audiobooks galore today! First, you can win one of four copies of the “Face with Tears of Joy” audiobook at shadycharacters.co.u.... (There’s nothing complicated to do - just leave a comment!)

Quite exciting to appear on WGN Morning News today with Robin Baumgarten and Dan Ponce! 📺 Watch the piece here: www.youtube.com/watc....

It's competition time again! Go to shadycharacters.co.u... to win one of four copies of the audio version of “Face with Tears of Joy” - just leave a comment on that post and you're in with a chance to win.

“Empire of the Sum” in paperback is my third book this year! 🤯 Read more about it here: shadycharacters.co.uk/books/empire...

Just finished reading the latest from @keithhouston.bsky.social and give it my absolute recommendation as the definitive book on emoji history. Don’t let the huge set of references and citations fool you, it’s an easy and interesting read. Goes deep where it needs to, without going off the deep end

With “Face with Tears of Joy” (shadycharacters.co.u...) now available to buy around the world, I took some time to revisit an older topic at shadycharacters.co.uk – through an emoji lens 🔍, of course! The question at hand: do emoji obey Zipf’s law? Read more here: shadycharacters.co.u....

To mark World-Emoji-Day-slash-book-publication-day, I sat down with Emojipedia's Keith Broni for what turned out to be an 💥epic💥 discussion about the past, present and future of emoji. Read it at Emojipedia (blog.emojipedia.org/...)! 1/2

To mark World Emoji Day 🎉 (and, uh, the publication of my book 📖), I put together a little emoji quiz for my publisher, W. W. Norton. Have a crack at it here! wwnorton326.outgrow.... (And buy my book here! shadycharacters.co.u...)

It’s publication day (again!) for “Face with Tears of Joy”! The book has been out in North America for a couple of weeks, and now that World Emoji Day (worldemojiday.com/) has rolled around, it's time to launch it everywhere else. Get it wherever you buy your books! shadycharacters.co.u...

I just recorded an episode of “That Word Chat” (www.thatwordchat.com/) with Mark Allen on emoji, punctuation, and much more. What a lot of fun! Thank you to Mark for hosting and to Heather and Sarahni for producing. The recording will be up on YouTube in due course: www.youtube.com/c/al...

This is excellent news for emoji nerds!

Summertime. In the mountains it’s 63, and the living is easy. Finally getting a chance to really sit down with @shadycharacters.co.uk’s Face with Tears of Joy. Currently, I’m reading about the birth of emoticons. :’-)

“Face with Tears of Joy” is one of Kobo's best new non-fiction books for July! www.kobo.com/us/en/l....

Another podcast! You are WELCOME. This time round I spoke to Mike Carruthers, whose “Something You Should Know” programme is more than 20 years old and still going strong. Mike and I had plenty of time to really dig into the history of emoji. 1/2

I had fun yesterday doing a couple of interviews for BBC radio: first on Radio 4's Today programme, together with Susie Dent, which listeners in the UK can listen to here (www.bbc.co.uk/sounds...) at around 2:55. 1/2

Steven Poole, writing for The Guardian, calls ”Face with Tears of Joy” a ”fascinatingly geeky and witty history”: www.theguardian.com/...

B&N Reads features @shadycharacters.co.uk's newest riveting read. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY is the ultimate exploration of emoji, the world's newest language. www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/keith-h...

Hunter Dukes at The Telegraph says that “Face with Tears of Joy” is a “delightful history”: www.telegraph.co.uk/....

Only two more days to enter the giveaway for one of two free copies of “Face with Tears of Joy”! Non-US readers can enter here: shadycharacters.co.u....

I wrote about writing about emoji for Barnes & Noble: www.barnesandnoble.c...

I had a lot of fun talking to Mignon for this. Thanks for having me on!

If you’re on the fence about ordering a copy of “Face with Tears of Joy”, Longreads has your back! Read a chapter here: longreads.com/2025/0....

What are emoji, anyway? Megan Garber unpacks the 🍑, the ️🤡, and the 👍:

"Emoji are not a language, that much is clear. They are something more intriguing and more disruptive than that." New on @longreads.com today: an excerpt of @shadycharacters.co.uk's new book, FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY (😂), which tells the entire history of emoji so far: longreads.com/2025/07/01/e...

It’s US publication day for “Face with Tears of Joy”! Get it wherever you buy your books. shadycharacters.co.u...

Did you know there's no such thing as a single bookworm? The tracks in books are usually made by larvae from a variety of beetles. I learned so many fascinating tidbits like this from @shadycharacters.co.uk in the podcast that's coming out Thursday. I know it's a holiday week, but don't miss it!

Resharing this post from a few months back: “Face with Tears of Joy” will be published on Tuesday in the USA, and there's still time to pre-order a copy to a) make sure you get it as soon as you can, and b) put the book on the bestseller lists!

Looking for something to read this weekend? The Shady Characters Periodic Table of Emoji (emoji.shadycharacter...) isn't just a visual experiment, but also documents what it takes to make a tool like this and where it might go in future.

A quick reminder that “Face with Tears of Joy” will be published soon (July 1st in the USA; July 17th, or World Emoji Day, in the UK), and that I'm giving away two free copies to non-US readers! Visit shadycharacters.co.u... to enter.