The back acreage of a typeface conceals some of its greatest treasures, and tells some of typography’s most fascinating stories. Meet four typographic curios on which the designers at H&Co love to lavish special attention, and learn how these piquant spices can help turn up the flavor of your design.

Once the customary way to represent a number, the Numero symbol battles for supremacy against the # — remaining ubiquitous in Russian typefaces but absent in American ones. Here’s why.

The paragraph mark commonly thought of as a “backwards P” is beautiful and expressive, and guards two surprising secrets: it doesn’t stand for “paragraph,” and this symbol is actually a letter C. Find out why.

Cousin to the asterisk, the humble dagger has a huge typographic vocabulary: it can be an obelisk, obelus, long cross, or diesis, and it includes both a quillion and a choil. Meet 15 different species of daggers in H&Co fonts, designs from the exuberant to the restrained. See more.

The symbol called “the 27th letter” has a surprising claim to inclusion in the alphabet: the ampersand is 600 years older than the letter W. Here’s an introduction to some of our favorites — Come and see.

What’s New at H&Co

A tiny universe of fonts combining the informality of handwriting, the expressiveness of lettering, and the versatility of type. Inkwell features a Serif, a Sans, a Script, a Blackletter, a Tuscan, and an Open, each in six weights, all designed to work together seamlessly.

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As versatile as a superfamily, and as charming as a “potluck sans,” Ringside is the perfect complement to our Knockout family for designers working at text sizes, or on the web. In six widths and eight weights, with italics throughout: Meet the 96 faces of Ringside.

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Recently from H&Co: Meet Inkwell