Comments on: Let’s Have A Post About Fonts!

By: roac

roac — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:56:38 +0000

44: I concede that since the rules (codified where, BTW?) apparently allow hyphens, there is no obvious reason not to allow apostrophes as well.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:56:48 +0000

“Sometimes they’re being only fake naive.”

It keeps me up all night, worrying about stuff like this.

By: derek

derek — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:42:41 +0000

I disagree with the OED. We don’t require that spelt, learnt, and meant be spelt spel’t, learn’t and mean’t. Only where there is a letter “d”, and the medium is poetry, and the obsolete custom is followed of assigning an extra syllable to the “e” in spelled, learned, and meaned, do we need an apostrophe to indicate that no such syllable is intended.

In any case, apostrophes are allowed in the game of contriving holographic sentences, so I still don’t see how it’s cheating.

By: alex

alex — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:44:01 +0000

Ah, I thought “vext” wasn’t a word at first sight, but it’s in Webster’s online, so I refrained from protest.

Meanwhile, on the question of whether a cwm is uncwmed by being befjorded, we shall have to await the Cardiff/Oslo Geomorphological Nomenclature Colloquium of 2012… Assuming Cardiff and/or Oslo still exist in 2012…

By: roac

roac — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:28:10 +0000

On rereading 38 I see that I have evaded alex’s question: Does a cwm stop being a cwm if it becomes a fjord? Gee, I dunno. Possibly a bilateral commission of Welsh and Norwegian geologists should be set up to adjudicate the issue.

By: roac

roac — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:18:02 +0000

37, 38: Seems well within the capacity of plate tectonics to open up a cwm to the sea and convert it to a fjord. But “vext” is arguably cheating. According to OED, “vex’t,” as an obsolete variant spelling of “vexed,” needs an apostrophe. (The only example given where the apostrophe is missing is “still-vext Bermoothes,” from the Tempest.)

By: derek

derek — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:30:03 +0000

Why o why do all naive typesetters think that the most crucial/important paragraph should be set in capital letters

Sometimes they’re being only fake naive. When the tobacco companies were forced to include clear cancer warnings on their cigarette packets, they made them all caps, bold, as big a font size as could possibly be squeezed onto the side of the packet with no wasted white space, and with a bold border close around the text. You can’t get clearer than that, right?

By: alex

alex — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:35:12 +0000

But can something be simultaneously a cwm and a fjord? Saith the vext quiz…

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:18:43 +0000

Who doesn’t need a test phrase that uses each letter once?

Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:16:19 +0000

Since we’re talking about a choice of font, or in some cases a preference for particular letter forms, I ought to mention that I’ve never been fond of the lower-case “g”, which like “a” departs conspicuously from the common handwritten minuscule form. When I first encountered computer typography, I realized that Courier used my preferred form. It felt like conceding that Nixon advanced some progressive initiatives.

A long while later I was impressed by the unusual typeface used in someone’s resume, until I realized that it was just the output of an old monospaced dot matrix printer, which I may have been slow to notice because, as a programmer, I was still using a text editor with a monospaced screen font, which, come to think of it, I had designed myself. (See “Fun with VGA cards.”)

By: PHB

PHB — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:42:02 +0000

The practice of saying ‘forget about B, A is a bigger problem’ is a form of agenda denial.

It is a tactic that is used when there is nothing to be gained from a discussion of B and that discussion itself will have a price.

It is very often used by supporters of Israel of course, look! Iran! look! evil Sudan! But it has a much broader application. Apologists for the Bush regime are quick to point out that Iran and North Korea are worse. I must have forgotten the bit in the bill of rights where it says that the forgoing ten amendments can be waived provided the US can avoid the bottom two places on the global human rights abuse list.

Another related agenda denial tactic is to claim that now is not the right time to think about the issue. Of course it never ever will be. We could not discuss the corruption of the Bushies while they were in office and now that they are out of office it is too late. So Bush never did give a public explanation for his involvement in the Plame affair.

When it is not done for purposes of deliberate agenda denial, raising a different problem may or may not be off topic. Trying to deal with Internet security issues we have no shortage of people trying to tell us what the problem ‘really is’ and when you try to convene a meeting to address topic A you may or may not want the discussion of topic B raised.

Case in point is type setting. If someone is talking about the choice of font you may or may not want someone to raise the problem of agenda denial.

By: Christian Louboutin Boots

Christian Louboutin Boots — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:31:08 +0000

The world fills up with little letter-y fishhooks that snag your eyes, painfully, but leave the ordinary mass of readers untroubled in their reading passage. Being able to appreciate truly great typography means sacrificing the capacity to find sloppy typography to be perfectly legible. A common enough trade-off, in a sense.

By: Salient

Salient — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:27:16 +0000

The one you failed to read/understand completely because it was set in all caps.

You answered your own question. :-)

By: phoebesmother

phoebesmother — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:35:16 +0000

One proven legibility rule: AVOID ALL CAPS.
Why o why o do all naive typesetters think that the most crucial/important paragraph should be set in capital letters, the paragraph that you really MUST read before you click the “I accept” button or sign your mortgage or car loan papers? The one you failed to read/understand completely because it was set in all caps.

As to font plethoria and inelegancies, glanced lately at a typefounder’s catalog from the 1880s? Yes, Ed Benguiat and ITC have a lot to answer for, but they were following in giants’ footsteps. As to sans-serif fonts, I’ve always been partial to the Gothics of Stephenson Blake, good imitations of early wooden specimens.

What hath PostScript wroth? (Sort of like complaining about the Internets.)

By: Deliasmith

Deliasmith — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:48:26 +0000

I’d be ever so grateful for an example of the fatalities produced thus far. I promise not to snicker.

‘No, no. I wrote “Cop that cap”.’