Comments on: Sunday Type: paragraph type

By: nh

nh — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:27:30 +0000

Nice design inspiration, thanks a lot.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:04:50 +0000

Göran Söderström

Thanks for a gorgeous sans serif. It’s easy to see from the PDF specimen how much work went into it.

By: Cozmo

Cozmo — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:09:47 +0000

Oooh, Chef Boyardee typeface. hehe. I think I could have fun cutting up some vinyl. Where do you find it?

By: LaurenMarie - Creative Curio

LaurenMarie - Creative Curio — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:01:42 +0000

Yes, thank you, Jongseong! That does make sense and it’s what I thought (though you said it way better).

By: Göran Söderström

Göran Söderström — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:17:09 +0000

Thanks so much for giving my dear, dear project Exemplar some attention. It has been a long journey with this typeface family and now I’m hoping to see some examples of people using ut – that is the biggest reward :)

Also thanks for a fantastic typographic resource on the net!

By: Thickestskin

Thickestskin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:23:21 +0000

This is by far the best feed I get— an excellent source of inspirational things (like that Exemplar type: it’s fantastic!)

Thanks heaps, and please keep us posted on the T-shirt shop.

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:32:51 +0000

Thanks, Jongseong. I can understand the rationale, in fact it’s pretty easy to guess for anyone who’s linguistically inclined.

I guess my original comment is that it would be nice if two things were always included with a style guideline: the rationale, and the authority. For example, I just now thought to consult my Chicago Manual of Style on this rule and sure enough, it’s in there. This tells me that the practice is an established one; and an explanation like yours explains the intended reasoning behind it. If these two could just have been included with the original tip, it would make it infinitely more useful to any serious/aspiring editor. I just mention it because I see that kind of thing a lot in typographic material.

By: Pedro Leal

Pedro Leal — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:24:55 +0000

Wow anziano as a prize!!! Thats great! Gonna try and finish the crossword this time!

Great job once again John!

By: Jongseong Park

Jongseong Park — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:43:03 +0000

I see a number of people are curious about the rationale behind the type tip on not italicizing the apostrophe and the s that follow an italicized word. I have been following this rule all my life, not because I learnt it as a rule from anywhere, but because it seems the logical way to do things.

The linguists out there may correct me, but I think the English possessive marker apostrophe-s originally was something like a case ending. However, in modern usage, it functions as a clitic, meaning that it is a grammatically independent word even though it is pronounced like it is part of a word that it is attached to. ‘Typography’s’ might look like a single word because it is written without spaces, and be pronounced like a single word, but on the grammatical level it is really two words, ‘typography’ and ‘apostrophe-s’.

So grammatically, the apostrophe-s in the phrase ‘typography’s principal duty’ has the same independent function as the word ‘of’ in the phrase ‘principal duty of typography’. Just as no one would italicize the word ‘of’ because ‘typography’ is italicized, the apostrophe-s would not be italicized.

I think what people have trouble with is that no space goes between apostrophe-s and the word it is attached to. It is confusing because italicization usually follows word boundaries marked by spaces. But if you think about the fact that italicization is used to set a word apart, and think of apostrophe-s as part of the ‘background words’ from which the italicized word should stand out, then you would find this rule consistent with the principle of italicization.

By: annie

annie — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:05:40 +0000

I second Joel’s comments (politely). Please do tell us more about this week’s type tip… sometimes it’s hard to put your heart fully behind uncontextualized wisdom, even if it seems like a good idea.

My favorite letter is lowercase “g”. About 15 years ago, I even convinced a fellow type-geek friend to get a gill sans “g” tattooed on his ankle (something like 250pt, I forget, exactly). Talk about a sexy tattoo!

By the way, I’ve only found this site recently, and I absolutely adore it! Keep up the good work. It’s inspiring, truly.