<p font="trajan">Thanks are due to Pablo Defendini and neutronjockey for the inspiration they unwittingly provided for the production of this post.</font>

neutronjockey? I hear that dood is (Trajan) Epically Eeevil! (/Trajan)

Does anyone know the name of the tall, skinny, occasionally hard-to-read font used for movie poster credits? The one that looks like it was meant to be read from an unaccustomed angle, like this Holbein painting? The one you get when you ask the studios to print your name in a font of a certain height, but forget to specify width? (It is possible that this contract negotiation was carried out via monkey's paw.)

***

Actually, coming back to this half-written post three minutes later, I think I just answered my own question with a Google search: There's no standard, but it's apparently often Univers Thin Ultra Condensed. Also, I saw at least one page, somewhere, that pegged Holbein-style anamorphosis as the real reason the credits are so skinny, the assumption being that they're not at eye level when the poster is hung. I'm not sure where I heard the contractually-mandated font height explanation.

@ abi,
You're welcome. Bwahahahahaaaaa!

@ Wesley #3,
Yeah, Univers Ultra Thin Condensed is usually the go-to typeface for movie boilerplate. I've also seen it done in Helvetica Neue LT Ultra Light Condensed (my preference over the two, actually).

Noooo! Not Comic Sans!! That font is ... EVIL!!

It's not Comic Sans that's the problem, of course, it's the people who write their work emails in it. And for some reason it's the favorite font of right-wing email forwards.

While we're open-threading: why are there so many right-wing email forwards and comparatively few left-wing ones?

Waiting for Serge to come along with a particularly good font pun now. All the ones I can think of are really lame.

@ Wesley #3,
Sometimes it's a legal thing. I remember when I worked in advertising, no body text in an ad for, say, pharmaceuticals, could be smaller than 8p, and no legal text could be set smaller than 6p, by law.

JKRichard @2:
I hear that dood is (Trajan) Epically Eeevil! (/Trajan)

Really? I heard he had the power to regurgitate live lobsters, but chooses not to.

Dawno @6 -- While you're waiting for Serge....

abi @8 -- Does this mean that the original subject of Chuck Norris jokes was in fact Trajan?

abi @ 8 Shhh. Secret submariner initiation rites should never be revealed in public forums.

I'm waiting for you to get around to "Papyrus." My wife, who has more gigs of fonts on her hard drives than most people have gigs on their hard drives period, can get quite exercised over "Papyrus Abuse." Menus, billboards, business cards--one of these days we're going to walk through a cemetery and there will be a headstone in Papyrus and she's going to start beating the granite with her purse/computer bag.

Trajan struck me as the poor man's Palatino, but I am a huge Zapf fanboy. Do you know how many glyphs there are in Zapfino?

I hear that Russel Crowe has left Trajan, and that, in Nottingham, he plays the serif.

(Dawno, your puns can't be more lame than this.)

re the Font... in this case I'm an anabaptist, and I'm also against capital punishment.

Well, Sony Pictures is trying to buck the trend.

I don't know, Serge, "wow, that Abi sure is a font of wisdom about typefaces" or something like that...puns really aren't my forte.

Bruce @11:

So your wife wasn't too happy with the Serenity posters, then?

I like Papyrus' capitals, and indeed have used them in a particular writing exercise. As you may have noticed, I am prone to overlong sentences. But if I write in a font where I like the capital letters, I find myself writing shorter ones, so I can get to the next initial letter.

If I won't have enough time for rewrites, I drag out Papyrus.

Don't worry, Dawno, no one is too dis-kerning about puns on an open thread. You get points just for trying.

abi: were you leading the witness, just to make an impression?

Terry,

I would have tried platen evidence, but that's bad forme. Besides, it hasn't a brayer of succeeding. So yes, I cut to the chase at that point.

The more, the courier?

Aldus talk about typography is giving me pica...

sburnap @ 15: And thus link the Spider-Man movies to their PlayStation 3 console...

Say, what is the name of that font that was so popular with SF films in the mid-1970s? You can spot a few examples of that in Space:(Party Like It's) 1999.

Serge @ #21, but not so many that you get (h)ives.

JK Richard #10: Secret submariner rites? But I thought those involved pollywogs and shellbacks, not lobsters?

abi: I'm hard pressed to continue banging these out, so perhaps I'll just ink you in for the win, the rest of the dingbats here can fend for themselves.

Fragano: That not submariners, that's sailors, on "Crossing the Line".

Happily I am a shellback and no longer have to worry about such things.

This typography discussion is making me offset.

And after that horrible pun, I must make amends with a poem:

You ask for gifts that last longer than gold
not knowing how the clouds assemble fast
this is the way the story's always told;

we seem so formal, stiff, and even cold,
our hearts are given to the vanished past.
You ask for gifts that last longer than gold.

What you expect are souls ardent and bold
whose urgencies and wishes have to last;
this is the way the story's always told.

But those who have bad cards just have to fold,
the noble outcome cannot be forecast;
you ask for gifts that last longer than gold.

It does no good to scream, rebuke, and scold,
nor nail your tattered colours to the mast,
this is the way the story's always told.

Only the wary live to become old,
those who are foolish cannot take the blast;
you ask for gifts that last longer than gold,
this is the way the story's always told.

Terry,

Your lack of confidence is unjustified. Call it a draw. You be King of typography puns, and I'll be Quoin.

(Fragano can be our Crown Prints.)

Terry Karney #27: Forgive my ignorance, for I am a mere landlubber (and some might say a mere lubber), but are not submariners sailors? I am all at sea.

Fragano @ 25 You speak of Crossing the Line ... a ceremony not for submariners alone. Trajan has also...crossed the line.

abi:

So your wife wasn't too happy with the Serenity posters, then?

I managed to get her into the theater without her having to stand in line and look at them too closely.

I like Papyrus' capitals, and indeed have used them in a particular writing exercise. As you may have noticed, I am prone to overlong sentences.

Not by my standards. You should see the cutting that happens here before I hit "send."

But if I write in a font where I like the capital letters, I find myself writing shorter ones, so I can get to the next initial letter.

If I won't have enough time for rewrites, I drag out Papyrus.

But do you leave the final results in Papyrus or do you put them into a different font if a different font that would be a better choice for the job? Her complaint is usually along the lines of "They think it should look elegant or old--time to drag out Papyrus again."

Mind you, as someone who feels that you can't commit any major sins if you stick to Times-Roman and avoid San Francisco (I can still hear a typographer I know spitting out "Real fonts aren't named after cities." with enough venom to kill a busload of football players when I pointed out that the Federation had apparently contracted with Apple to handle their screen displays) any further discussion tends to go well over my head...

Serge, #23: I googled "Space: 1999" and "font" and found this page.

I was never able to get through more than half an episode of that show, but I'd guess the font you're asking about is Data 70, which looks familiar from every '70s SF show I've ever seen.

A distressing variation on Crab Louis:

"I thought about an almond cake I recently made, the blackberries I picked before breakfast, and my landlord’s chihuahua Louis."

(From a foodblogger who's usually a little more aware of context.)

Those "futuristic" fonts are based on the machine-readable, magnetic-ink printed numbers found on checks.

Some designers figured that, well, since the Computerized Numbers of the Future look like that, then in the future letters will too!

It was always a design conceit. There never were machine-readable fonts that looked like that.

In Computer Lib / Dream Machines, Theodore Nelson called this kind of bogus futurism "cybercrud."

It is the typographic equivalent of people walking around in white jumpsuits with fins on the shoulders.

JKRichard #32: To the Islands of San Serriffe?

Bruce @ 11, my boyfriend (a graphic designer) gets exercised over Papyrus too, but he saves most of his venom for Comic Sans -- like Doctor Science @ 5. He doesn't have much of a religion, but Comic Sans is against it anyway.

I think Trajan is pretty, if somewhat overused these days.

I actually love Trajan (I used it for the title page of my master's thesis, lo these many years ago). The sad thing is that Trajan is a beautiful font that's been hideously overexposed (as opposed to Comic Sans, which is a hideous font, hideously overexposed).

Re 33 -

Abi and Bruce

My spies have alerted me to this thread. I find that I must make my stand clear:

I like Papyrus.
I have even used Papyrus (way back in the 80s on my very own business cards - when I had to buy Letraset sheets to use it.).
I have used Papyrus since then.

What bothers me is Papyrus abuse. Ever since Microsoft included it in some of their software, it has been tortured, racked, shrunk, and thrust into vile company. Poor Papyrus!

It's my belief that much of this abuse is the result of unskilled labor sent to do a designer's work. They want something 'creative', they look in their font list and find - Papyrus! Or Comic Sans.

So for those of you who do not want to contribute to Papyrus' pain and agony, remember Papyrus is not a text font. do not use it in sizes smaller than about 14 pt or so (and larger than that if your paper tends to bleed), and always ask yourself, is this the best font for the purpose?

(And I thought Papyrus looked pretty good on the Serenity posters.)

The "B5 Station Human" font looks like a font I kept seeing all over the place in the 1980's, one that resembled Motter Tektura (but wasn't, because it clearly featured the capital A that B5 Station Human contains). I'd like to know that name of that older font.

[confession time] I'm actually rather fond of Comic Sans, in small doses. I'd never use it for big blocks of text, and never for something I intended to share (since that would out me as someone with no taste), but I do use it for the song titles on my private CD compilations.

#41 - J H

Try www.myfonts.com

Search for Motter Tektura, and then click on the more fonts like this - you may find what you're looking for.

Fragano@ 37

From the halls of New Times Roman,
To the shores of San Serriffe;

We fight our typeset battles,
With Quark X Press misery.

We fight for serif freedom,
To keep our font galleries clean;

Forward your manuscripts to Pablo,
In Trajan font pitch fourteen!

Wesley @ 34... I didn't realize that there were two variants of the font I remembered. Then again, it's been a long time since it was used, during my college years, and about as long since I saw Space: 1999. (The show had its moments, but even my young uncritical mind had problems with one shuttle after another being wrecked without the stranded Moonbase running out of them. But that was the least of their problems.)

The "Village" font...

Serge (#45): They had a magical shuttle replicator in the basement, of course.

As for fonts: sadly, this video omits Trajan; it'd have been a good addition.

Fragano: All submariners are seamen, not all seamen are submariners. All who "Cross the Line" become intiates to the family of Shellbacks.

abi: for each line o' type in which I attempt a pun, I find I've turned out slugs, instead of good coin.

On the subject of typefaces, I liked Present, but I've not got a copy of it at present. It makes a really nice body text for correspondence, though on screen it's so-so.

I don't know if New York counts as a city name, but San Francisco is bad. Chicago is not to my taste, but can be used well; albeit with care.

Serge, #45: The show had its moments, but even my young uncritical mind had problems with one shuttle after another being wrecked without the stranded Moonbase running out of them.

So it was the Star Trek: Voyager of its era?

"Real fonts aren't named after cities."
I remember back in the old days, where my graphic design prof patiently lectured about the difference between display fonts and vector fonts. Some of my classmates still didn't get it until they tried to print stuff out set in San Francisco and had to ask him why it was all jaggy.

Reason being, all the fonts with city names on Macs were bitmapped so they would look good on the screen, and the city name thing was just a nice way to avoid having the font list say "screen font Chicago, screen font New York, etc."

I don't know if this is still the case. I would love to have a vector version of Chicago that didn't look all janky.

Say, does anybody know what font is commonly used on keyboards? Or kinds of fonts? I can't find a google keyword that will turn up anything, but somebody has to be nerdy about that.

Found it. The font is called Stop. It was designed by Aldo Novarese, who is probably more famous for Eurostile. I've always liked Stop because it renders just about anything almost entirely impossible to read without feeling very strange as a result.

I had a boss, whom I appreciated and respected in every way but two. 1) he loved putting commas in places I couldn't see the reason for and 2) he sent his emails out in Comic Sans 14pt.

"Say, does anybody know what font is commonly used on keyboards?"

Weirdly, Wikipedia can tell you what font is used on Apple keyboards. No idea A) what other folks use, or B) whether Wikipedia is correct.

All who "Cross the Line" become intiates to the family of Shellbacks.

Unless they somehow contrive to Delay their inevitable Appearance before King Neptune's Court by some Mortal Trick of Politics (or Worse), in which case they are Damned to remain Abject, Filthy Pollywogs until their Case can be Tried, their Guilt is ultimately Proofed, and their Sentence is Fairly Applied.

I have a publishing/submitting question that's befuddled me for months now, and I've been working up the courage to ask the fine folks here for enlightenment. Please forgive me if I ramble, it's awfully late here and I'm pretty nervous.

Back in 2006 I started a story that amused me, but I thought it wouldn't be anything but trash--fun trash, but trash. I made an experiment out of it, trying to post a chapter per week with minimal editing, as if it were a serial novel a la Dickens. The experiment failed as I missed a number of weeks throughout the year, but I liked the story enough to finish it and it actually made a good story, albeit one that now needs lots of rewriting (awkward writing from 2006 is awkward).

But here's the trouble: It's posted online on my personal web page, so it's already 'published'. I was originally going to edit it and stick it up on Lulu for the handful of people that wanted a physical copy. A web comicking friend of mine wanted to do chapter illustrations for it as well. She offered to contribute an ISBN number for it out of those she had left over from the print volumes of her comic, so it'd be a touch easier for some of my fans to acquire.

However, I later heard that having an ISBN number attached to a POD book that would only sell a few copies would hurt me when agents and editors later look at my history. It may be a moot point; I didn't get the book edited when I planned because of a series of life crises, and my friend recently started a busy animating job and got married, so I doubt she'll ever have the time to do 30-some-odd illustrations for my dinky book.

I know I can make my book tons better than it is now with a solid rewrite, don't know if that much change (it'd be enough to be considered a seperate draft) would be enough for it to be okay to submit anywhere. I really don't want to waste the time of any agents or editors by doing something stupid, nor do I want to hurt my chances at getting further books looked at (as I might if I do something stupid), as the book I'm worried about isn't the only one I'm working on.

I'd appreciate any advice anyone can offer. I've read all of the publishing posts here with great interest since I first wandered by years ago, but I'm still completely at sea with this issue!

I like to look at the different fonts, but since I write for a technical and professional audience, I'm limited to certain fonts. When I create presentations, I choose the fonts that give me the most readable lines at the smallest size, so when the screen is larger, the folks at the back of the hall can still see things.

I learned how to put together presentations when I was a resident in the lab, zoo, and marine mammal program; I still prefer the special fonts we liked to use for our marine cases. It was created for us by the leader of the cetaceans.

Yes, that's correct: I worked with the Prints of Whales.

Terry Karney #48: Isn't 'seamen' a rather dated term, since women serve aboard ship? (Yes, I know submarines are boats.)

Sheesh, Ginger, what's the cetacean equivalent of a shaggy dog story? ;)

Ginger #56: But did you work with the Ducks of Cornwall?

j h woodyatt, 53,

thanks! One step closer to creating my own any key

Trajan is far more dangerous than you think.

[QuickTime needed, and it takes a while to load this video. But it is worth it!]

Fragano: Sailor is the term for a civilian/merchant who plies the sea for fun, or as a trade.

Seaman is the name for the enlisted ranks of the US Navy (just as Airman is for the US Air Force).

The members of both services tend to be both prickly, and defensive, about the proper use of those terms.

I just received a "get published now" unsolicited commercial email from Molli Nickell which included a 1.27MB PDF file.

Which ML thread is it that collects info about this sort of thing?

Oh, and it's been almost two weeks, and I only ever received the one CNN spam email (or similar descendants).

And for an encore, this stunning expose of Cooper Black's seamy past.

Renatus #55 --

I'd say rework your book until it's the best it can be, then send it around. Be upfront about its history if asked.

Don't go the self-publishing route until every suitable paying market has already said, "No thanks."

j h woodyatt, #51: If you say that's it, I'll believe you -- but the font my brain associates with B5 is Serpentine.

If I could wave a magic wand and make one font disappear from the world forever, it would be Letter Gothic. I can't put a finger on exactly why I find it so offensively ugly as to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but I do.

The first print issue of Coilhouse magazine just came out and it has a 5 page excerpt from the upcoming Samuel Delany novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. According to Delany: "It's not really a science fiction novel — though I wouldn't mind anyone calling it that. Still much of it takes place in our future." I enjoyed the excerpt and am looking forward to the book. Knowing there are other Delany fans hereabouts I figured I'd give a heads-up.

Lee @66: (now that I'm in the right Open Thread!)
Because it was the "small" font in most non-Apple laser printers for most of a decade?

Mark D @ #61, that's quite a film. I particularly like "Daily Verital," which sounds like a Napa Valley tabloid.

The futuristic font that sticks the most strongly with me is actually Stop, which I believe I first learned from every third-grade poster-maker's best friend, The Lettering Book.

For many years I tried to re-find and couldn't, and assumed I must have misremembered the name. Today I am vindicated! Thanks, Making Light.

glowing testimonial ends

Linkmeister @ 58: How about a Hairy Dolphin story?

Fragano @ 59: No, but I used to hang out at Duxie's in Basseterre. Now you know how low I will go.

"If I could wave a magic wand and make one font disappear from the world forever, it would be Letter Gothic."

Me? I'd like to nuke Courier from space. Yes, and I'd also nuke Courier New just to be sure.

Doctor Science, #5, the problem is that you read emails in html so others get to force their choices on you! I read in .txt so I read all my emails in Comic Sans! Seriously, I don't use it when I print things for other people to read, but it's very easy for me to read.

We had a minor cat terror here last night.

And today's WashPost is discussing graphic novels in two places.

Last week I was at a department meeting at which all of the English teachers were trying to establish certain parameters within which we were all going to require our students to write. When the subject of fonts came up, and we tried to come up with a list of acceptable fonts for student papers, one of my colleagues expressed her affection for Comic Sans. Her argument was that, for middle schoolers with dyslexia, it's one of the more readable fonts. While I could concede that, I suggested, as the English 12 teacher, I wouldn't find Comic Sans acceptable, as writing college papers in Comic Sans was likely to get you mocked. Her reply: "I disagree. I wrote all my graduate school papers in Comic Sans."

Ouch.

People, please tone it down with the puns! If I laugh any harder I might rupture a ligature!

Back on the gripping hand, can anyone recommend a good monospace font which is readable at particularly small font sizes? I have an Eee (laptop with a fairly small screen) and while Ubuntu's default monospace font is okay to read at arm's length, I'd be curious to test out others to see if I can find something better.

Somewhat typographically related: some typo vigilantes corrected a sign they found at the Grand Canyon Watchtower. However, this wasn't a lunchcounter sign for 'Todays "Special"'. It was a historic hand-painted sign by Mary Colter. They used white-out and a black permanent marker to change "womens'" to "women's" and added a comma after "religious crooks and wands". In their blog they complained about "an emense westward view" but didn't try to correct it.

The culprits are banned from National Parks for a year, plus they have to pay the estimated $3,035 to restore the sign.

kouredios @74: That's fascinating. Did she mention/do you have any idea what characteristics of Comic Sans make it more readable for people with dyslexia?

Kevin @ 75

I find that Tahoma and Verdana are pretty legible on-screen in 8-pt, although they aren't monospaced. YMMV, of course.

Kevin Riggle @ 77: I think it's basically the fact that it's sans serif...and that the a and g look like we normally write them. Of course, it's not the only font for which that's true, but the young teen boys that make up a lot of her students tend to like it.

I. Had. No. Idea. Now that you mention it, I'll be looking at all the DVD and movie poster covers with a whole new perspective.

My teenage son and I have an ongoing font battle. He insists on using Lucida Grande for every school essay, while I scream, "Times New Roman" at him.

I know, I know... first it'll be fonts, then he'll move on to the hard stuff, like staples.

I had a Spanish teacher who wrote in almost perfect handwriting-book cursive. The 'almost' is mostly because she had a pretty good blackboard slant going on-- she was creeping up on forty-five degrees a few times.

I couldn't read it. It took me so much longer to read her perfectly neat handwriting than my own scrawl-- or anyone else's scrawl.

It was too regular. I couldn't glance at a word, pick out three letters, and know what it said. I had to read each letter individually; the n and m were nigh-identical, save for the number of bumps. My letters change according to context.

Maybe that's why more handwritingy fonts, like Comic Sans, work better for some dyslexic folks.

In #8, Abi writes of Neutronjockey:

Really? I heard he had the power to regurgitate live lobsters, but chooses not to.

Remember this?

Watch Hadji Ali perform here, if you can stomach it.

Kouredios, #74: I mock my college students who use Comic Sans.

Well, okay, actually I don't - I just encourage all my students to use a nice, readable Roman font.

Even that's changing, though. As I do more and more of my review and editing and grading on-screen (using 'track changes' in Word or annotations on PDF), we're moving from fonts that look good on the printed page to those that are highly readable on a monitor.

Sandra Cormier #80: My teenage son and I have an ongoing font battle. He insists on using Lucida Grande for every school essay, while I scream, "Times New Roman" at him.

That's not too bad; at least he's not using Raslani the Pharaoh for his headlines....

I find Inconsolata a great monospaced font, although I've heard it only really works if you have a Mac (Windows tends not to smooth fonts in smaller sizes, leading to different fonts being readable).

Ah, found where I got it from: the page on fixed-width fonts at the TextMate Wiki.

Sandra, #80: What's the problem with Lucida Grande? It looks like a nice, readable sans-serif to me. Times Roman gets awfully boring after a while! (For a serif font, I have several other first choices -- generally I settle on either Clearface or Centaur, although Pegasus is my favorite for letters and such.)

I just watched Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me tonight for the first time in years, and as usual when I watch it or any of his movies after it, I remembered how much I love the simple, all-caps, italic font his movies use for the opening credits. A little googling didn't reveal what font it was--does anyone know?

j h woodyatt, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who considers Courier a manifestation of pure evil.

Ginger @ #56

Have you tried Whale Vs. Submarine? or Vanilla Whale?

Real font names, I swear.

Those who live by the typographic pun shall be forever untyped; all their works shall be covered by the Sans of Times.

My current favorite film title "font" is the calligraphy used for Bronowski's The Ascent of Man series (starting at about 0:25). It's simple, distinctive, and gorgeous.

I don't mind Papyrus much, though I agree it's overused. It's the Tekton of the 2K's. (I look back at Tekton and wonder, "How did anyone ever think that looked good?")

I will say that I found one use of the font to be inarguably good: in the "store hours" sign of a card shop called...Papyrus.

My own font bugaboo is Peignot. At work we used to do a magazine of newspaper clippings once a month. It had a title page cum clipping list set entirely in Peignot. Put me off that font forever.

j h woodyatt@53: I have handy a small collection of keyboards, of which one is an Apple. The Apple keyboard appears to match the font on my HP laptop; the Microsoft keyboard collection (a new Natural Elite which is junk, and a pair of the Natural keyboards from a decade ago that are delightful solid devices) approximately match my IBM Model M, and the random early-1990s off-brand keyboard has what looks like an off-brand poor copy of the IBM Model M font. Oh, and the Logitech is yet another completely different font.

A bit of poking on Identifont -- and some very close inspection of the "G" key -- indicates that the old Microsoft keyboards are Helvetica Neue, whereas the new one is the original Helvetica. (I found the fact that they use Helvetica entirely unsurprising in that, "Well, should I have expected anything else?" sort of way, until it occurred to me that this is Microsoft and they're not using Arial. And the reversion from Helvetica Neue to Helvetica is a bit odd.) I am not certain if the IBM keyboard is Helvetica or not; the letters appear to be, but the symbols are different; then again, the symbols don't seem to entirely match the letters. They're probably off of some IBM corporate font, I'd guess.

Mark D @61:

Bless you. I've been looking for that for weeks.

My pleasure, madam.

Terry Karney #62: I see. Doesn't that get confusing for female members of the US Navy and Air Force?

Ginger #71: Not as low as Peyton Place in August Town.

I have to produce large-print versions of all my material, for the benefit of people who can't read the standard versions. We'd do this anyway, but several regular readers have various kinds of visual impairment, and they all tell me that sans-serif fonts are clearer than serif fonts. They're very happy with Arial. Dull? Yes; but effective.

j h woodyatt@53, Brooks Moses @93:

An inspection of the keyboards I have here suggests that most PC keyboards use Helvetica of some form or other. Probably, in fact, this form, although it's hard to be sure as the quality of printing is fairly blurry on most of them.

Keyboards inspected were: a Cherry RS3000 (mid-90s vintage, 102-key), an unbranded "multimedia keyboard" supplied with an eSys PC, and a Tesco Value keyboard (yes, I know, I just needed one in a hurry...). All three seemed to be the same font.

John Stanning @ 98: I have vision issues and it's been my experience too that sans-serif fonts are much easier. I would use Arial if I didn't have an irrational hatred for it, so I'm currently using Tahoma.

Which brings me to my Open Thread question: Tahoma is fine at the various sizes I need -- anywhere from 18pt to 42pt depending on the day -- but it's becoming a bit, well, same-y. Are there other sans-serif fonts that can scale like that and remain readable?

Fragano @ 96, I was never classified as a seaman. I was always called fireman because of my engineering rate.

In the US Navy there are seaman(shipboard non-engineering to include electronics rates, all others not included elsewhere), airman (aviation ratings), and firemen (shipboard engineering and damage control ratings). In the mid-90s there were also constructionmen ratings which included all Navy SeaBee ratings; it was merged with seaman.

No gender distinction is made between men and women and their early ranks (seaman recruit, seaman apprentice, seaman) --- the exception I've seen to this was allowing a female recruit whose last name was Guzzler have her rating designation changed to fireman until she made E-4 (Petty Officer).

Kouredios @ 74... writing college papers in Comic Sans was likely to get you mocked

"They laughed at me at the University!"

Christopher Davis @ 47...

"Nobody uses Microsoft Works!"

Wesley @ 49... So it was the Star Trek: Voyager of its era?

They were totally different. One had a relative of Maximilian Schell who could turn into all kinds of animals. The other had a part-machine woman who was stuck inside a cat suit.

JKRichard #101: Doesn't that get really confusing?

So, when the hundred years of war on terror that McCain has stated it might take to win is over, does that mean we'll get a similar monument that we can call the McCain Column? Of course, will ours feature a robed McCain at the pinnacle with his hands outstretched and lightning bolts emanating from them?

Fragano: Leaving aside the complications of rates in the Navy, no, it doesn't get confusing.

Seaman/Airman is a term of art.I have been, in the course of my career, a Private First Class, a Specialist (which is a rank, not a description; and technically I was a Specialist 4th class, which is the only class the Army has now. There used to be classes up to to 9, but none lower than 4th), a Sergeant, and a Staff Sergeant.

When I was a Private, First Class I was, generally, called Private, even though there are three grades of Private in the Army (and Private First Class is at the top, even though Specialist 4th class is at the bottom.

So, now that I've muddied the waters by way of clarification, all of those ranks are titles, and, pretty much, independent of any meaning apart from where they place one in the pecking order of one's military tribe. The presence of "man" in them is much as that of Chairman used to be.

To change it (to Seawoman, or Yeowoman, or Airwoman), that would be confusing.

What about submariners?

kouredios @74: I'm surprised that you were making a *list* of fonts. My college student informs me that she's never had a paper (high school or college) that *didn't* specify "12 pt Times New Roman".

I, on the other hand, am from the older generation, where you had a choice of Courier or Courier. I don't really understand the animus against it -- it's *supposed* to be boring and monospaced. AFAIK it's still industry-standard for screenplays.

Not so much about fonts, but they'll make an impression... Read a review of a Thorne Smith murder mystery by Susan de Guardiola and you'll wind up linking to sites that sell bullet bras.

Yay, open thread!

Can someone please point me to the entry which was about something to the effect of 'things people say when they flounce away from internet arguments'? The entire comment thread was stuffed with gems of examples. Strangely enough, trying to locate this entry via Google only brought me into direct contact with flame wars.

Jim @ #65 -- Thank you so much. A prod in the right direction from someone who knows what they're talking about is what I needed.

Taking advantage of the Open Thread-ness...

So, the Olympic swimming on the 13th, men's breast-stroke final. Did anyone else find it questionable (and/or amusing) that the announcer, possibly creaming his tweeds in excitement, yelled, "He's done it! Kitajima has done it! Kitajima is the GREATEST BREAST-STROKER of ALL TIME!!!!!"

Greatest breast-stroker, eh? This provoked a conversation among my friends about how this event would be judged, which led to musings on competitive fellatio in 2012.

Tracey S. Rosenberg @ #111:

You mean the Flamer Bingo thread?

(Did you know that you can limit a Google search to a single site by adding, for instance, site:nielsenhayden.com ?)

Avedaggio:

Extempore sports commentary has always been a minefield, although swimming commentary is usually safer than, for instance, any sport involving balls.

Any font size smaller than 12 for Times New Roman is painfully unreadable to someone my age (more accurately, someone at my stage of presbyopia).

I think san-serif fonts are a deliberate attempt to make good readers slow down and poor readers give up. They take much more actual effort and concentration to read, and I (for one) end up with a headache if I read a lot of them.

Monospace fonts were briefly necessary because of the unsophisticated design of typewriters. They are a cheap shortcut in cold typesetting (though come to think of it I'm not sure they were ever used in cold typesetting). They were not used in calligraphy and should not be used for any published (meaning, you want someone to actually read it) material today.

Submission guidelines still require them, which I find odd. It supposedly makes it easier to figure out how much space the printed version will take up, but since the printed version will be set in a proportionally-spaced font, how does that help? I'd think it would be better to specify a particular proportional font, and count based on that; it would make reading submissions less onerous, too. Is it just the weight of tradition?

Suppose you have a major character whose name appears a lot. It's an alien, and its name is Wpmwm'Mwm. Then the author decides to change the name to Ilili'lii. That difference doesn't show up in Courier at all, but could make a pretty big difference to the final typeset version. (This unlikely scenario is to exaggerate the difference, which could cause a problem over the length of a novel...or so it seems to me.)

I know there probably is a good reason for this, because publishing is complex, and in the past there have always been things about it that I didn't know or never thought of, but I don't understand it.

Avedaggio 113: musings on competitive fellatio

Damn, and I thought my Olympic dreams were completely dashed!

debcha @83: Definitely. I've taught high school, college, and occasionally delved into middle school, but in all cases, Comic Sans is not a font I'd consider appropriate. Well, occasionally for middle school poster projects. Definitely not for high school and college, much less graduate school.

Doctor Science @109: It's a fairly progressive charter school, and we like to give the kids choices, within guidelines. Times New Roman was definitely at the top of this list, and then Arial (which I don't love, but it's the default font for Pages), and then we started talking about Comic Sans and ran out of time. I tend to use Garamond a lot, myself.

Paul A @114: thanks!

I did try restricting to this site but I failed at that too. :(

Xopher @ 116: I think san-serif fonts are a deliberate attempt to make good readers slow down and poor readers give up. They take much more actual effort and concentration to read, and I (for one) end up with a headache if I read a lot of them.

I won't dispute your personal experience, but studies have shown no legibility difference between serifed and unserifed fonts. That said, some popular sans-serif fonts have features that make them less than ideal for extended text settings: Helvetica has a very small aperture, Futura has strict geometric proportions, Kabel has a small x-height, etc. But fonts like Syntax and Frutiger are a pleasure to read.

Submission guidelines still require [monospaced fonts], which I find odd.

I've always assumed that it makes manuscripts easier to mark up. It also gives you a better line length, and (to my eye) looks less disgusting paired with double-spacing than proportional fonts do, a plain manuscript rather than a typesetting failure.

Avedaggio, would that be a timed event, or would there be a panel of judges?

Paul A @115

Extempore sports commentary has always been a minefield, although swimming commentary is usually safer than, for instance, any sport involving balls.

Best sports commentary ever -- click on the top 'listen' link on the right hand of the page.

I should point out for those not au-fait with British euphemisms that "leg over" is fairly common slang for sexual intercourse.

fragano:

Consider "chairman". I for one will first be damned before I let anyone call me "chairwoman" or, worse, "chairperson".

Tim 120: I've always assumed that it makes manuscripts easier to mark up.

Um. Er. That is...DUHHHHHH on me.

Thank you. Move along, the guy just had a stupid attack, but his friends are taking care of him, nothing to see here...

For those who followed Miss Teresa's Pirates of the Saskatchewan particle, and were curious about the bridge outside of Moose Jaw that spans the mighty river ... here's a photo.

And for anyone who isn't au-fait with the rules of cricket, here's a primer.

Although I don't have a good source, I believe it may be a quote from Peter Sellers.

There is a special circle of Hell reserved for whoever decided that we have to enter Web forms in a small, proportional sans-serif font. Courier may not be the world's prettiest font, but at least you can tell the difference between "l", "I", and "1", or between " " and "  ".

Jules, people have tried (really tried, not like the primer you link to, which is designed to be as confusing as possible while still being technically correct—I assume) to explain the rules of cricket to me on many occasions. I still find it completely incomprehensible.

lightning @ 128: There is a special circle of Hell reserved for whoever decided that we have to enter Web forms in a small, proportional sans-serif font. Courier may not be the world's prettiest font, but at least you can tell the difference between "l", "I", and "1", or between " " and " ".

I read ML using the default small, proportional sans-serif font, and all of those are easy to distinguish. They're hard to distinguish in Helvetica or Arial, for sure, but proportionality and lack of serifs aren't the reasons.

Rikibeth: Given the variations in response, I think a panel of judges would be incumbent.

Avedaggio @113: It's nice to see that Les Nessman is still getting work.

"Bailey: And it's the breast stroke, Les, not "breast stroking."
Jennifer: That does sound wrong."

lightning (128): I fondly remember my mother's old manual typewriters*, which didn't have a '1' key, instead making the small 'l' do double duty**. For an exclamation point, you typed a single quote ('), then backed up and put a period under it. (Iconoclasts could type the period first, then the single quote.)

*on which I typed all my college papers
**the font would have been Courier, yes?

Expanding on my dislike of Courier: part of it, I'm sure, comes from the fact that it is associated in my mind with nearly-indecipherable mimeograph copies, since that was, indeed, my primary exposure to typescript until the advent of photocopying and later the holy and blessed IBM Selectric.

However, at this point of life monospaced fonts just complicate the problems of reading online, which is, on a normal day, about 80% of my reading time. Even when I reduce the width of the window and increase the size of the text, I find it a struggle to scan and retain meaning in Courier on the computer screen. At times when I have to read for meaning and correctness, I have been known to copy the document into my WP program (I'm back to NeoOffice, and relatively happy with it on the "camel in the tent" principle) and then convert it to, say, 12 point Palatino.

Terry Karney #107: All I can say is ouch! That's a positively Byzantine system.

joann #124: The convention today is to use 'chair' -- in spite of complaints about being part of the furniture.

Doctor Science, #109: Fuzzy memory suggests that the reason Courier is still standard for screenplays is that it allows easy estimation of eventual runtime from script length (X minutes per page). The amount of variation in words per page is much higher with a proportional font than with a monospaced one, and that would affect the runtime estimate.