English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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01:41

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I am writing about an analogy that is made in a text that I am reading between a substance that blends in to the point of being incapable of being identified as a distinct object (like a certain type of flour into another, when they are mixed) and an object that remains a distinct object, even wh...

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Q: Whats better than inventions are invented

"It is a great privilege to be born in the century of innovation. This is a time when revolutionary inventions are invented daily." I need alternatives, but I've already used created. Or does it not sound bad at all? Thank you!

single-word-requests word-choice word-usage synonyms

Robusto

01:52

@tchrist Good job. I upticked you.

tchrist

Thanks.

I despair of ever seeing good typography and layout here. I know I should explain to them why you want different properties in a display font from what you want in a body font, from what you want in a caption font. But my resolve falters when I realize they simply have no idea what I'm talking about. "Let's just paint the ceiling Arial."

Old punch-line, recast.

I just cannot believe that we're still stuck with the "system fonts" of 25 years ago here.

practicaltypography.com/system-fonts.html

> My aversion to Comic Sans—king of the goofy fonts—probably comes as no surprise. But why Arial? Arial was created as a Helvetica substitute. To many, they’re indistinguishable.

> But to typographers, Arial contains none of the consistency and balance that makes Helvetica successful. For instance, the ends of the lowercase a, c, e, g, s, and t in Helvetica are exactly horizontal. In Arial, those ends are sloped arbitrarily. Reading Arial is like trying to have dinner on a tippy restaurant table.

Cerberus

They say they have "designers".

tchrist

> As a system font, Arial has achieved ubiquity akin to times new roman. And like Times New Roman, Arial is permanently associated with the work of people who will never care about typography.

@Cerberus They don't have anybody who knows anything about setting type.

Cerberus

Then I wonder why Eric (was that his name?) said they have designers working on the theme...

tchrist

Because if that had, they would never have tried to set the word "meta" in Times New Roman next to the Big Caslon for "English Language & Language" in the logo on our meta. That's simply obscene disregard.

@Cerberus I didn't contradict you; we said two different things.

Cerberus

01:59

They how can he say they have designers?

tchrist

Ah, that.

These are not typographers. They're webby people. They don't understand things like readability.

Cerberus

Remember, I asked for their designers to talk to the community directly, but he seemed to refuse.

So they're not real designers like Jin?

tchrist

Just because you can "design" a bunch of <div>s in CSS does not make you sensitive to typography.

@Cerberus Not that I can tell.

Cerberus

I saw Jin talked about the design he/she was creating for our site quite a bit, in this very room in 2010.

Or maybe 2011.

I saw Jin talked about the design he/she was creating for our site quite a bit, in this very room in 2010.

tchrist

I think we hurt people's feeling. I wish we had not.

Cerberus

02:01

@tchrist Then they should hire real designers.

What ever happened to Jin anyway?

tchrist

@Cerberus They aren't around anymore.

SEE ALSO on x-heights 1, 2, 3. On display/body/caption 4, 5, 6, 7. — tchrist Oct 3 at 14:36

Cerberus

Then they should find new professionals.

Or even ask the community.

They have an entire website dedicated to graphic design.

They could pay some of them to make new themes.

tchrist

They're using the same line spacing of 19.5px no matter whether they're setting Arial at 15 points or Georgia at 15 points. That is insane: it produces paragraphs with completely different "colors". The x-heights are not the same in those two faces.

Cerberus

Colours?

tchrist

Yes. Color.

Cerberus

02:04

Oh, quotation marks.

Flavours.

tchrist

It means the proportion of black and white in the space; how much "ink" you use.

Cerberus

Ah.

I think Eric quoted from your favourite book...

So I wonder what's going on there.

tchrist

Jon, not Eric.

Jon Ericson.

Cerberus

Something like Bringhurst?

tchrist

He did.

Cerberus

02:06

Oh, that was it.

Well, like father, like son, eh?

tchrist

From blog.prototypr.io/…

You cannot just swap around fonts of different x-heights at the same size without compensating. It screws up the look of the paragraph.

Cerberus

The right one looks nicer.

tchrist

Exactly. What you see up there is what they're doing to us. They've chosen a font size and line spacing for Arial. When they use Georgia at the same font size and line spacing, they create problems. They have to adjust.

Cerberus

So what's the solution?

Send them a copy of Bringhurt?

I think you once suggested sending me one.

tchrist

I've threatened, yes.

Well, them I've threatened; you I've offered.

Cerberus

02:09

Heh.

tchrist

> For experimentation’ sake, let’s now readjust Adelle on the left to match Baskerville’s x-height. This means decreasing its point size from 22 to 18px, and giving it a smaller line height to match its now smaller type size. And now let’s compare them again side by side:

Cerberus

I'm afraid it's too high above my level of understanding typography, so I probably wouldn't understand half of it.

tchrist

You have to look at the paragraph overall to see whether it looks ok. They have no idea how to do that, or why.

Cerberus

That does look better.

tchrist

Nobody who knows spit about setting type would ever let paragraphs grow to 110 characters in length the way Stack Exchange does.

Cerberus

02:10

Hmm.

tchrist

It's too long to read. They don't care about such things.

Cerberus

I wonder why hired real designers in the past but not now.

tchrist

I often have my window set to the full monitor width of 1920.

And I sit about two feet from it.

I never have a problem on a professionally designed site. But I do here.

Cerberus

I usually have my screen vertical, but elsewhen I have it set like you have.

tchrist

Real magazines and newspapers of quality do a good job here.

Cerberus

02:14

At 24 inches diagonal.

tchrist

Yes.

The Atlantic, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the New York Times.

Mother Jones. The Nation. Harper's Magazine.

The Guardian Weekly.

Cerberus

parool.nl/binnenland/…

tchrist

And yes, by listing the publications I've just laid out my politics for all the world to cast aspersions. Fuck it, I don't care: you can read all of those. They do a good job.

Cerberus

How do you feel about this site?

tchrist

Looks good.

Cerberus

02:17

OK.

tchrist

I can't get too deep into it because of the paywall, but what I see seems actually designed for readability.

They're using an actual display font for the headers, for example.

Cerberus

No need, I just wanted a quick impression.

I would never pretend to be able to design a site.

tchrist

"Quarto A" whatever that is, to be exact.

Cerberus

That is, I have picked a theme for some sites and adjusted it a little bit, but knowing that it was totally amateurish.

But it didn't matter to anyone and there was no budget.

tchrist

Their body font is Georgia at 21.375 for me with a wide screen. Not the skimpy 15 px that ELU has.

Cerberus

02:21

Alas.

tchrist

They have a distinct caption font.

Cerberus

So I understand SE want to unify themes.

But why didn't they hire real designers to do that? Within the required constraints, surely they could have made it a lot nicer?

tchrist

Lato-light, whatever that is.

@Cerberus I'm pretty sure they don't have typographers, just CSS monkeys.

Cerberus

I wonder why not.

tchrist

At least, I've seen no evidence.

Cerberus

02:22

Perhaps 'we', that is, the people on ELU, could create CSS of our own.

So we'd be independent from SE's CSS.

tchrist

And your site knows that they shouldn't use as heavy a font weight for their larger displays as they do for captions.

Cerberus

Right.

(For the record, it isn't my site but the site of a major newspaper.)

tchrist

To just make everything Arial is insane. At display sizes you want things lighter and less letter spaced than at body sizes, at caption sizes you want them heavier and more letter spaced.

@Cerberus Oh yes, I know.

It's like Rob said about never hearing of anybody ever deliberately using Arial for a display font. Of course not.

Trying to use the same rules for all three the way they are doing shows they don't understand or they don't care.

Cerberus

Ugh.

tchrist

And then swapping in Georgia for Arial without changing some of the metrics just adds insult to injury. The paragraph fill is different, and it looks squished together because of the x-height not being compensated for.

It's not my job to teach them what good typography is, but apparently it's also not their job to provide a well-designed site from the perspective of good typesetting. That's not the mission here. And it shows.

Then they're the problem of how when you use Georgia primary and Times New Roman secondary, those have different x-heights and weights and flourishes, so your IPA and your polytonic Greek looks like a ransom note.

They didn't even compensate for the different aspect ratios of those two faces.

Cerberus

02:30

Maybe they'll listen eventually.

tchrist

> ɪɾ̃ɚˈnæʃɨnəɫ fəˈnɛɾək ˈæɫfəbɪt
['tʰre:ɾər], [ˈtʰɹeɪɾɚ], /t͡ʃ/, [t͡ʂɻʷeɪd]

That shows you what Georgia lacks for those glyphs.

So those ones get swapped in with Times New Roman, which has a different x-height and weight and approach to serif thickness, so looks mismatched and confusing.

Ancient Greek, heck Koine, has the same problem.

> Βούλομαι οὖν προσεύχεσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ ἐπαίροντας ὁσίους χεῖρας χωρὶς ὀργῆς καὶ διαλογισμοῦ

Cerberus

So but that isn't the case now, is it?

That Greek looks wrong in chat font.

tchrist

@Cerberus That is still the case, yes.

There, that shows you the "holes" in Georgia for that line of Greek.

Cerberus

Hmm I usually only notice such things with Greek.

Yes, I am aware of that problem, it's basically most accented letters.

tchrist

Even pure Times New Roman would work, rather than mixing. But Palatino Linotype would better. So would many others.

That's all Palatino Linotype.

And that's all Times New Roman.

Going all Times New Roman is fine for IPA or for Greek.

But we have no ability to specify <ipa>....<ipa> or <greek>...</greek> so we get Georgia + Times New Roman ransom notes.

Cerberus

02:37

I remember needing a different font.

tchrist

yeah

Cerberus

I use Charis SIL now, I think.

For something, but I don't remember where.

tchrist

@Cerberus That's well thought-of.

Cerberus

I think in Golden Dictionary, which has the OED and etymological dictionaries, so it needs lots of special characters.

Right.

I remember experimenting with a few fonts.

tchrist

Cerberus

02:38

There was also one with "2000" in its name, or something, but that wasn't good enough.

@tchrist That looks fine.

A bit like the font that the Loeb editions use.

tchrist

That one was designed by a Greek guy, and its καὶ ligature surprises those not used to reading more Greek texts.

Cerberus

Ah, I hadn't even noticed.

The Loeb doesn't have that.

tchrist

Cerberus

Funny that this ligature should still be in use in Greece.

tchrist

There are so many nice Greek that we’ll never see here.

I wonder what the people on the Japanese sites do. Or Chinese.

shudders

Cerberus

02:44

Hmm.

tchrist

Cerberus

That would be interesting...

tchrist

That one is always slanted.

Cerberus

Even more ligatures!

tchrist

True. :)

It's a more cursive hand to my eye.

But most Greeks are.

Note how the big Pi is "falling over to the right".

But alas, we get only ransom-note Greek: all those Omega boxes get swapped out for Times New Roman, but the rest is left in Georgia.

Cerberus

02:49

Alas.

tchrist

Yesterday it was sunny and 67 degrees here. This morning I awoke to 8 inches of new-fallen snow, still falling. It's going down to 15 tonight, and that's in old money.

Which is awfully cold for this early in autumn.

Randy seemed to delight in bounding through snow that came well up to his chest and beyond. Silly kitty.

Cerberus

Impressive.

It was like 22 here.

Silly kitty having fun.

tchrist

@Cerberus That's so last-week. :/

I put that in centigrade for you.

You cannot even see how far down the right margin is. So cold.

Cerberus

How fickle!

tchrist

We have only two seasons: summer and winter.

It's like a yoyo that eventually ran out of string and landed flat on the cold, cold ground.

Today I of course cooked a kettle of soup.

Cerberus

03:02

Good.

tchrist

In a dutch oven, no less. I thought of you then. :)

Made of cast iron, not aluminum.

> A braadpan is mainly used for frying meat only, but it can also be used for making traditional stews such as hachée. Cast-iron models exist, but are used less frequently. Currently, Combekk makes the only true Dutch Oven that is actually made in the Netherlands.

Hm.

Mine is one of these from Le Crueset, in the so-called Marseille color: lecreuset.com/round-wide-dutch-oven I got it a very, very long time ago, back before it ran just south of $400 the way it appears to now. Wow.

Word to the wise: make sure to buy expensive things several decades ago only.

Jasper Loy

@tchrist I just read that page. Oh dear! I have been using Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New my whole life, and nothing else, and these are meant to be the worst fonts!

tchrist

@JasperLoy There's a lot to read there, eh?

Cerberus

03:56

@tchrist Creuset is also the most popular brand for those cast-iron pans here.

tchrist

I have a set

My grandmother didn't like the idea that the enamel might with age become damaged, having seen that once. But I have not.

This will have been 20 or 30 years ago.

Perhaps I in that much more time will have the same advice. I don't know.

KannE

@tchrist Your discussion made me realize that I didn't really know what my Deaf uncle (a typesetter for The Washington Post) actually did for a living. (My Deaf father was a printer; deaf people often worked in very loud workplaces years ago). Anyhow, I found this article re: typsetting (for book publishing)...I think it's pretty much a dead craft...and its sister, typography, is a dying art...except in India? gettingpublished.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/what-is-typesetting

tchrist

No, that is an insane idea. You may be confusing it with the whole hot lead affair though.

KannE

Anyway, that may explain the excess of...webby people.

tchrist

Letterpress still exists, with a shop or two in every large town. But it is rare, and used only for very high quality stuff like wedding invitations.

However, that is only about metal. Typography in the digital age is still just as important as ever. How could it be otherwise?

Making fine books and other textual publications like magazines and newspapers is still the same as it has ever been. You know quality when you see it. Go read some of those magazines I mentioned.

Electronically.

They pay people to do a good job. And it shows.

tchrist

04:26

@KannE After reading through a bunch of that, it's pretty realistic.

I've been through the process described there many times. There really is a huge amount of work to do to get a book published. People who haven't been through the slog have no idea.

There's also a world of difference between using a word processor and using actual publishing software. He mentions that.

KannE

@tchrist I bake apple cobbler and enchiladas in Le Creuset cookware. When people ask me why theirs turned out differently, I tell them--it's the cookware! But they never believe me; it does make a difference.

tchrist

Of course it does. Quality shows through.

> Part of why this book works is that it’s not polluted with nagging and wheedling. I specifically wanted it to be a calm oasis on the noisy web—a chance to rediscover something we like about printed books, which is the immersion and focus that can be created by nothing but text and typography. That part is not incidental; it’s intrinsic.

practicaltypography.com/effluents-influence-affluence.html

A calm oasis is so welcome in today's awful web that once you're there, you're shocked at how much you've longed for that without even realizing it.

KannE

04:41

French people leave their Le Creuset in their wills, not in their cupboards for some estate sell...I don't know what else it takes for people to believe. I would let them borrow mine to prove it, but I've already lost two dishes (and two friends) that way; I really miss those dishes.

tchrist

No, those I don't lend out. Folks can use them at my place if they really want to.

It's like how sets of fine china are left in wills.

Cast iron cooks differently than aluminum or brass.

Or stainless steel.

KannE