George, can you take another shot at explaining that?

Any better?

i’m not sure, but i think you’re asking whether or not a writer, who also happens to be the typographer, should use a “slightly” different typeface (almost unnoticeable to the undiscerning reader) as a way of empathizing text, instead of the traditional “italics”.

if that’s what the question is, i would say no. I have read books that have tried something close to this, but the change is from a serif to a similar-looking san serif typeface, the subtleness was almost confusing at times, as my eyes had to often double-check the empathized text just to make sure it really saw something different.

i think that something as subliminal as the method you have mention would be disorienting, not to mention it might just make the page look ugly from a typographical standpoint.

IMO.

i’m not sure, but i think you’re asking whether or not a writer, who also happens to be the typographer, should use a “slightly” different typeface (almost unnoticeable to the undiscerning reader) as a way of empathizing text, instead of the traditional “italics”.

Not a “different typeface”, but a different font made as part of a single typeface; not “almost unnoticable”, but actually unnoticable; and not to empathize text (?) but to direct or strengthen the literary response to what are, though now not merely, verbal effects.

It might be disorientating, I have no idea. But the fonts would be exactly equal in weight and at least vertical proportions, such that there would be no question of the abnormal fonts standing out.

I assumed that this would be sensible, but have had doubts (on the grounds that, as Bringhurst says, typography is abstract code not raw gesture). These doubts, however, are not shared by a phenomenologist friend of mine who knows far more psychology than I do, and who believes, with me, that it is ludicrous that no author of fiction has yet bothered to learn to design type, for this very purpose.

I guess the idea is based on the assumption that there is a subconscious perception and judgement of the aesthetic and character of a typeface while it’s been read.

This could be too subtle to work in my opinion, it may go unnoticed because when the reader is inmersed in the reading, the natural thing to do is to try to discard visual information and rely on the prediction of the meaning of the text.* When the reader is not inmersed, maybe because he is just looking at a diagram, aproaching the title or (who knows) admiring the type, then he is very aware of visual information.

It’s not my intention to hijack your thread with an argument about how do reading happens. I just gave an argument of why I think this may be too subtle to actually be notticed (even subconsciously).

Héctor

* Frank Smith proposes an interesting view on reading on which the reader actually tries to rely more on the predictive habilities of perception to read the meaning of the text and less on the visual information because the visual system has a severe bottle neck, so the reader would be percieving too little visual information to judge the aesthethic or character of a typeface while reading.

Look for my post about 4/5 of the scroll

Good point - though readers hopefully follow richly styled prose more closely than they would a newspaper. I can’t pretend to be able to flesh out the differences in the mechanics of those two styles of reading, and in any case there’s skimmable great prose and stodgier stuff - Ada vs Ulysses - does anyone have any information?

Give it a try, who knows, it may work wonderfully... or not, but someone has to try it.

Héctor

Calligraphers apply a form of this, though more gesture than code.

it is ludicrous that no author of fiction has yet bothered to learn to design type
I suppose that technology has, until recently, been the stumbling block. In Ruari McLean’s Typographers On Type, he reproduces a letter from George Bernard Shaw on his development of a house style for his work (for financial as well as aesthetic reasons), explaining why he changed from Caslon to Plantin in his Standard Edition (because the smaller Caslon was troublesome to keep clean). I imagine that he would have involved himself in type design if he could.

Good luck with this project if you decide it is worth pursuing, it sounds intriguing.

Tim

George, are you looking for a mechanism that works like vocal inflection in speech? If so, you might consider that vocal inflection is heard, without being attentionally focussed-on (unless the vocal inflection pattern is affected).

From my point of view the question has to be: what does the perceptual processing system do with the kind of variation you are describing? Can the “noisiness” in neurological activation terms it contributes become tagged as emphasis or inflection? I’m reminded of your reference elsewhere to Reuven Tsur.

[Héctor, I’d love to try and sort out the Frank Smith / visual system as severe bottleneck thing. The visual bottleneck notion in my mind doesn’t accord well with the crystal goblet ideal of transparency.]

The DaDa poets and the Concrete Poetry people tried to pursue this with what they wrote and the sounds they created. There have also been many typographers (many from the Basel arena) who have worked to visualize meaning through structure and juxtaposition in typography. The texts they used were typically not in the “normal use” vein and therefore don’t quite come off as something you can extrapolate data from. This would still be difficult to do because (like measuring the path of a particle in Quantum mechanics) the act of measuring affects the data. In this case, how do you get someone to differentiate between something gained consciously from something gained supposedly totally unconsciously without making it conscious?
It may be that people (other than those involved in typography, design, and readability research) just read words. Changes in font help with organization for the reader in “normal” kinds of stuff (books, newspapers, reports, etc.). Using typographic design (a la Basel, DaDa, et al), can have a communication affect in shorter, more persuasive texts or artistic literature, but it seems most of this would be conscious or at least semiconscious.
I guess what I am saying is that the affect you describe is more a part of who the audience is and their visual literacy level (along with the kind of reading—not immersive) than who the author is. The author may KNOW where inflection is intended but NOT know how it might be received by an audience unknown to him/her.

ChrisL

I’ve been toying with a similar, but different idea: the use of alternate glyphs to represent phonetic values. If my thinking is sound, then an experienced reader of English will be able to read with little or no distraction, because all the letter shapes are quite standard, but a learner will be able to slow down and extract the phonetics from the difference in detail.

For a taste of the kind of differences I’m talking about, the ’s’ needs voiced and unvoiced variants. Perhaps the voiced variant has sharper bends and more open apertures, so that it bears resemblance to a reversed ’z’.

”...so that it bears resemblance to a reversed ‘z’.”

That is a very good use of what is in the reader’s vernacular yet causes a new look at meaning. Strangge how in Germmany the eszett is going the opposite way. :-)

ChrisL

Héctor, thanks for bringing up Frank Smith. One can read text at different rates, and complex texts on unfamiliar subjects are read with many more fixations, so the bottleneck cannot be absolute, but I agree that the brain seems to like discarding as much as possible. It might be that altering the visual aspect of words would cause more attention to be paid to the visual, with perhaps disastrous rather than benign consequences for the perception of the verbal. I imagine it’s a question of how much two-way feedback there is between the relevant verbal and visual centres at the stages of processing responsible to affective response - and that kind of question is far from being settled in psychology.

Tim - you’re right, of course, though these authors have had a while now. But whose prose is sufficiently impressive that work invested in learning to make type would be more valuable than the same work invested in learning to write? Hardly anyone going at the moment: maybe Martin Amis and Don DeLillo, but I read very little contemporary fiction. Certainly not the current rabble of British poets: has anyone here read Andrew Motion?

From my point of view the question has to be: what does the perceptual processing system do with the kind of variation you are describing? Can the “noisiness” in neurological activation terms it contributes become tagged as emphasis or inflection? I’m reminded of your reference elsewhere to Reuven Tsur.
Peter: exactly. We need a Tsur to sort this out!

The DaDa poets and the Concrete Poetry people tried to pursue this with what they wrote and the sounds they created.
Hi Chris, the DaDa stuff generated no substantial aesthetic response. No human can work up more than the most meagre enthusiasm for that kind of thing in the continuous experience of it, though they may value (God knows) having had the experience. These typographic gimmics have no close, immediately experienced relation with felt words, because the words weren’t felt in the first place.

It’s true that it’d be almost impossible to test the additional effectiveness of the massaged versus the straight text. That’s annoying.

Raph, your idea sounds much better than mine! I also love your software - very helpful for splitting letters in particular - but the variety in my samples is too great for the number of classes to be kept at the number of punches. Is there anything I can do to change that?

“No human can work up more than the most meagre enthusiasm for that kind of thing in the continuous experience of it, though they may value (God knows) having had the experience.”

I agree. I was just using the (more phonetic) example to show a prior attempt at involving things other than the “normal” in reading. I do think that sound (as in pronunciation like Raph spoke of) is perhaps a more likely route for success since our alphabet is phonetic. Don’t throw away your idea though. My guess is that you will discover something of value along the way no matter what the outcome.

ChrisL

Some different things:

Straight text: no articulation, other than standard grammar and punctuation.
Text with non-standard spelling (eg Runyon/Twain) to indicate accent.
Text with non-standard spelling (eg Shizzolated) to indicate ... er, shiz!
Text with extra punctuation!!! ....
Text with typographic (visual) articulation, eg “emphasis” by italic, bold or caps, to indicate an aside (or Post-modern multiple narratives), or categoric quality (eg book and boat names).
Text with prosodic articulation, to “spell out” pronunciation less ambiguously.
Visual poetry (eg Dada) — which is akin to what you’re suggesting.

So this is a messy business, and all I can say is try your idea.
I’ve done a fair bit of writing, and sometimes use my own faces, but I’ve never wanted to massage the text as you suggest, it gets in the way too much, unless that’s the whole point.

>gets in the way too much, unless that’s the whole point.

There are two different looks at type when we look a a page. The look at titles, how the pages looks—an orienting look. And here we notice style more. Then there is the immersion, after which the letters disappear, or should. My feeling is that changing the letters in a way that is not noticeable on the orienting look is probably not a good idea. It would be like switching one “crystal goblet” with one slightly different, when the wine drinker is not looking. At most it would be disconcerting. If it is noticeable, then the question, which Nick asks, is what is the point? If it serves a useful purpose, great, if not forget it.

Tell me, Nick, what’s shizzolation? It sounds very rude.

Then there is the immersion, after which the letters disappear, or should. But some visual information retained somehow, even if only in the “icon”, the momentary, unchunked image of what’s been seen, might alter verbal perception. The goal is to manipulate what the reader takes to be purely literary response.

Peter, you should get the book, it’s interesting and easy to read. Altough it’s focus is teaching to read, the author spends most of the pages in reading itself.

Héctor

I’ve been toying with a similar, but different idea: the use of alternate glyphs to represent phonetic values. If my thinking is sound, then an experienced reader of English will be able to read with little or no distraction, because all the letter shapes are quite standard, but a learner will be able to slow down and extract the phonetics from the difference in detail.

I’ve already done that in a display font—-Rhodaelian. Instead of putting the phonetic shaping into alternates I put it up front in the default letter set using a consistent scheme that allows the face to be used without the setter having to make any decisions about which glyph to use based on its sound. The main sticking point is “c”. Rhodaelian’s “c” is half soft, half sharp, to cover soft c sounds and hard c sounds. At least 4 alternates are available for fine tuning every letter. I threw in a stack of ligatures too, but no phonetic or philological ligs, eg: “ch”, “ck” etcetera, because I think those kind of ligatures are too silly for words and only distract the reader, thereby reducing readability.

One day I might look at adding a program to make automatic OT alternate selections based on conventions of spelling and pronunciation.

what’s shizzolation?

Colloquial, dialectic, slang, vulgar vernacular language “Et-cetera, et-cetera!”*

But some visual information retained somehow, even if only in the “icon”, the momentary, unchunked image of what’s been seen, might alter verbal perception. The goal is to manipulate what the reader takes to be purely literary response.

Possibly the concept could work, but again, this idea goes against the notion of transparency. The function of typesetting—-in a novel for example—-is to leave the manuscript and the narrator’s voice untainted, unaltered, unflavoured, unimpeded, to do their thang.

The “verbal percepton” is embedded in the writing and word-smithing, and largely determined by the writer. Typography is just a container for teleportation to the reader’s mind. The smoother and more consistant the ride, the more likely the cargo will arrive intact. What the reader makes of it after that...

The author may KNOW where inflection is intended but NOT know how it might be received by an audience unknown to him/her.

Exactly. Its up to the writer and the reader to decide how a text reads, how the inflexion varies. And since so many decisions are made by readers, a good deal of ambiguity or “fudge factor” is involved. Besides, the best authors don’t use any kind of visual (typographic) emphasis to modulate their narrator’s voice; they rely on their skill as writers instead. Read Hemingway. The penultimate example is The Old Man and the Sea. Literature doesn’t get any simpler or more direct than that.

With the deepest respect George, I think you’re wasting your time.

* Yul Bynner’s brusque, petulant Siamese king from The King and I.

j a m e s

You: The “verbal percepton” is embedded in the writing and word-smithing, and largely determined by the writer. Typography is just a container for teleportation to the reader’s mind.

Me: This ideal only makes sense when the author is not also the type designer. When an author is making type for his own writing he is free to make the type fit verbal style more closely than would otherwise be possible. Should he, then...

And “simple and direct” is not “best”.

This ideal only makes sense when the author is not also the type designer.

How many authors have the aptitude to design a text font? How many of those are likely to learn the required discipline to make a text font as good as Jenson? This “ideal” as you put it is not an ideal. Its a fact of life for almost every writer of prose fiction and non-fiction.

When an author is making type for his own writing he is free to make the type fit verbal style more closely than would otherwise be possible. Should he, then…

If s/he wants to, sure. I’ve got nothing against the idea, but even for a writer who also designs fonts I still think its pointless.

I don’t write novels or plays, but I have written short stories, and I write advertising and promotional copy for a living. Please don’t let my occupation bias your perception of how well I understand literature and written language, or how much I appreciate good writing.

When I first started writing with a word processor I discovered typography and all the possibilities of formatting, emphasis etc. Like a kid with a new toy, I partially mistook the medium for the message and began overusing (abusing) typographic emphasis as a means of expression. Then I learned how to write properly and to separate writing from type—-they’re not the same thing. Emphasis and degrees of emphasis and inflection which is what you want, come from the written prose.

And “simple and direct” is not “best”.

I said, “Literature doesn’t get any simpler or more direct than that.” Talking about writing, not typography. I never said “simple and direct” is “best”. That expression was yours and it looks like you’re oversimplifying my view of writing in relation to typography.

Typography is about clarity, not simplicity. “Direct” is not possible because of the book medium and perception of readers.

j a m e s

How many authors have the aptitude to design a text font? How many of those are likely to learn the required discipline to make a text font as good as Jenson?
Very few, but then very few have the aptitude and discipline to write well. Imagine if all authors of fiction were required, if they were to be taken seriously, to make their own text type: one could then tell at a glance which of them had sufficient taste, and capacity to embody it, that they might be worth reading. 99% of fiction would become blissfully self-cancelling, a great boon to the book-buying public.

When I said that “simple and direct” is not “best” I was talking about writing too - and, as you say, no doubt oversimplifying your position. But would you say that you do believe in the virtue or dignity of simplicity? In imaginative writing I think that simplicity and directness tend towards just another set of stock rhythms and responses. Currently one sees this in limpid, female novels of middle-class divorce, but Hemingway is full of a manlier version of the same standardised starkness. As Nabokov (who did make an exception for Hemingway’s “lovely one about a fish”) said, ’I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase “sincere and simple” - “Flaubert writes with a style which is always simple and sincere” - under the impression that this was the greatest compliment payable to prose or poetry. When I struck the phrase out, which I did with such rage in my pencil that it ripped the paper, the student complained that this was what teachers had always taught him: “Art is simple, art is sincere.” Someday I must trace this vulgar absurdity to its source. A schoolmarm in Ohio? A progressive a-s-s in New York? Because, of course, art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.’

Very few, but then very few have the aptitude and discipline to write well. If all authors of fiction were required, if they were to be taken seriously, to make their own text type, one could tell at a glance which of them had sufficient taste, and capacity to embody it, that they might be worth reading; 99% of fiction would become blissfully self-cancelling, a great boon to the book-buying public.

That scenario could never be practical. Publishing doesn’t work that way. Economic realities are involved. Like Hollywood film production where the movies that get made have nothing to do with making good films, but are instead dictated by union quotas for employment of production staff, the box office draw-power of stars, and the popular appeal of high-concept storylines fleshed out in cliché-ridden scripts by bad acting.

Market appeal and popular demand are the main criteria publishers use for which manuscripts they publish. Book publishing does not thrive on high quality literature, but low quality junk that sells in large numbers. Happily that creates the prosperity that allows quality literature to be published on a small scale, to the delight of people like us.

Discounting the discipline and craft part of font making for a moment; Judging a person’s ability as a writer by their aesthetic prowess in designing a text font is not realistic. The best writers generally aren’t designers. Would you really judge a writer by his ability as a type designer? Or a classical violinist by his ability to make a beautiful-looking, blissful-sounding violin? The guy is a musician, not a carpenter.

Backtracking for a moment;

...one could tell at a glance which of them had sufficient taste...

You and I could, but most of the book-buying public couldn’t. Some printers and typesetters have good grasp of which text fonts are beautiful and practical, and some I’ve met haven’t got a clue and don’t care—-they’re only setting type to earn money, not to be good practitioners of the art. Then there’s publishers, the business boffins at the top of the pile who mostly aren’t aesthetes or fans of type design. Their first love is money.

...99% of fiction would become blissfully self-cancelling, a great boon to the book-buying public

That would wipe out 99% of the publishing industry.

I don’t take to be more than cousin to that which Nabokov describes

I’m not quite sure what you mean.

To clarify, I advocate simplicity of writing technique—-word-smithing—-as the basis or starting point for good writing. I love the simplicity of Hemingway, and equally the complex technical precision of Poe, as well as the deft prose of Philip K. Dick’s mainstream novels, and everything in between, as long as it is artful prose.

...art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex

Some of it, yes. Some art is very simple and direct. Nabokov’s statement focuses on the mechanism of great art, how it works its magic on the spectator. But what of the effect of art? In my view, art has redeeming qualities. It makes us and the world whole again thru a process of redemption. Literature without that quality is hack work, not art.

George, I’m sorry if my comment, “I think you’re wasting your time.” upset you. It’s only my view, only what “I think”. William, Nick and others have expressed their doubts, but with benevolence by adding, Don’t let us discourage you, try it. I’m rather blunt, but a strong believer in relativism. All points of view are valid for the individuals who hold them. So don’t let me put you off either :-)

Note: some of the words in this post have been used before.

j a m e s

But would you say that you do believe in the virtue or dignity of simplicity?

I think you’re intellectualizing the issue, and needlessly so. I don’t give a hoot about the “dignity” of simplicity. That’s an example of prosletyzing; What’s dignity got to do with it? The ’virtue’ of simplicity, if you like, is that a writer can be poetic, spinning rich, informative prose, without digressing or introducing elements that don’t advance the narrative. Economy of means. Do it well and the word-smithing becomes invisible.

If I advocate simplicity then must I ascribe some virtue to it. That’s implicit.

In imaginative writing I think that simplicity and directness tend towards just another set of stock rhythms and responses

Again, sometimes but not always. In the hands of certain writers it can happen. They get lazy and stop trying, pressing the keys but no longer articulating. The best analogy I can make is again with movies. Reknowned critic of actors David Shipman once wrote of Charles Bronson, “...Now that he was a star he was no longer required to act.”

Truely creative and imaginative writers are able to prevent the decay of their prose into stock rhythms and devices. Hemmingway did it with forceful, almost blinding emotional wisdom and clarity of voice in the one about the big fish. Philip K. Dick did it with the uncanny perceptiveness of his characters as they think aloud, combined with neat and skillful control of suggestion, and cinematic, fluid scenery. Dick was unbelievably clever in a philosphical way.

Note: Some of the words in this post have been used before, but this time I used a thesaurus.

j a m e s

I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase “sincere and simple”

Nabokov was essentially right. That view can be likened to the proverb, “You can be sincere and still be stupid.”

And its so true. All the guileless people with the best intentions.

j a m e s

Thanks for your clarifications James.

That scenario could never be practical.
Naturally it would cause economic meltdown, but I think after the huddled remainder of humanity came out of the caves the the world would be a better place. When I lead an army on London, job number one will be a total and rigid ban on advertising, which would of course have still more disastrous effects, but sunny results for human life.

Happily that creates the prosperity that allows quality literature to be published on a small scale, to the delight of people like us.
But the junk - in which I’d gladly include most of our English Faculties’ reading lists - is still read and still noxious. What a contribution to civilisation it would be to destroy all copies, including mental, of, say, ’Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ - imagine hired snipers swinging into the Library of Congress, trained monkeys sorting rapidly through the underground stacks of the Bodleian, the blackmail of publishers and the manipulation of virii. It’d be great.

You’re right about the ends of art being effects not means; but I think popular views of how really good writing gets done are enormously inaccurate (“no unnecessary words” etc - try that on Wordsworth’s “thoughts that do lie too deep for tears”, in which “do” is crucial). Cognitive effects, including affects, arise from each of the four aspects of verbal art: style as juxtaposition in working memory, structure as association between stylistic effects in long-term memory, narrative as story-sequencing and world-building for its beauties. The holistic effect of a sense of redemption is, I think, a little more closely defined as the imagination of a common culture, in which what it is right to feel (and thus say and do) in situations analogous to some we experience in reality is not in doubt. Such a common culture cannot exist in a consequentialist and agnostic society, but the vision of it provides real consolation. Just as important, though, is immediate pleasure in highly worked writing, which can potentially be intenser than that in invisibly smithed stuff; though I’m very glad to hear that you don’t give a hoot about the “dignity” of simplicity, do you really prefer the experience of reading Hemingway to that of reading Nabokov? Fair enough if you do.

Finally, you didn’t upset me in the least, I just thought you hadn’t read my initial post.

George, your idea won’t fly according to conventional typographic wisdom.
However, you should just go ahead and do it, because it’s contemporary, post-modern, art.
The meta-data is extremely important in this kind of work. (An expression of sincere intent for the critics to chew over, among other things.)
It’s like Matthew Herbert’s protest dance music, where you’d never know by listening that the beats are made from modified recordings of organically-raised chickens.
But it makes a difference — or I wouldn’t be mentioning it here.

Speaking of artists who make their own tools, LettError.

it’s contemporary, post-modern, art. The meta-data is extremely important in this kind of work.
Oh dear, what a pity it is that I hate that kind of thing! If there’s one thing you’ll never see me doing, it’s protest-dancing.

Does that mean you are too chicken to dance :-)

ChrisL

When I lead an army on London, job number one will be a total and rigid ban on advertising, which would of course have still more disastrous effects, but sunny results for human life.

Money makes the world go round. Commerce creates prosperity. Without prosperity, human condition becomes degraded. What kind of sunny results do you have in mind? It all sounds a bit too idealistic, and naive.

But the junk - in which I’d gladly include most of our English Faculties’ reading lists - is still read and still noxious.

You and I know its crap, but the people who read and enjoy the junk cherish it for its redeeming effect—-on them. All points of view are valid. Its not for you, so leave it. You can’t destroy another person’s universe in favour your own. Bad literature is their prerogative. Would you like a horde of philistines to destroy the works of art that enrich your soul?

Tolerance, please. To quote Hrant, “Don’t reject, assimilate.”

I think popular views of how really good writing gets done are enormously inaccurate (“no unnecessary words” etc - try that on Wordsworth’s “thoughts that do lie too deep for tears”, in which “do” is crucial)

The simple approach is based on a minimum of (not zero) superfluous words, and its only a guideline, not an inflexible rule. Your interpretation is too literal. In your Wordsworth example, “do” helps advance the narrative, so its justified.

Regarding popular views on writing, I don’t subscribe to them. My views on literature are my own. I often debunk what I call, “popular wisdom” of the popular press, pop culture gurus, popular artists, my next door neighbours—-those kinda uninformed people.

Beware of recieved ideas. Like Nick, I’m skeptical of theorists and intellectuals who aren’t practitioners. They get it wrong too often.

Just as important, though, is immediate pleasure in highly worked writing, which can potentially be intenser than that in invisibly smithed stuff.

I’m ecstatic about Poe for that reason—-very much a writer’s writer. The rich detail and complexity, palpable tactility, technical virtuosity.

...do you really prefer the experience of reading Hemingway to that of reading Nabokov?

No. Where did I say that? And why the comparison between those two? I think you’re projecting and inferring things between the lines that aren’t there.

Have you studied philosphy?

j a m e s

Oh dear, what a pity it is that I hate that kind of thing! If there’s one thing you’ll never see me doing, it’s protest-dancing.

One way of keeping an open mind is to do things you wouldn’t normally consider doing, go places you wouldn’t normally go. You might be pleasantly surprized.

Don’t reject—-assimilate.

j a m e s

Oh dear, what a pity it is that I hate that kind of thing!

While James was posting his replies, I was making my way through the three letters of a friendly punctuated: Yes!

Interesting idea, George. The easiest way to see what will happen is to do it. I am all for it. If you can’t write your own words, then find someone who can and will. Keep us posted!

—K

Hiya James,
What kind of sunny results do you have in mind?
The reclamation of consciousness from sellers with advertising budgets.

why the comparison between those two?
Just an example from the materials at hand.

Don’t reject, assimilate... Have you studied philosphy?
You can’t assimilate both A and ¬A. I have taught myself a smattering of philosophy (and a good deal of political philosophy, the ugly sister), but I’ve just finished reading English at Oxford.

One way of keeping an open mind is to do things you wouldn’t normally consider doing, go places you wouldn’t normally go. You might be pleasantly surprized.
Nonsense! I’ve worn baggier trousers, at more depraved squat parties, than many people have had hot dinners. I have made an album, if not of protest dance music, then at least of dance music. I have been a Socialist. My views, on this experience, are now of the most swingeingly atavistic kind.

Would you like a horde of philistines to destroy the works of art that enrich your soul?
While my soul is safe, those of the more impressionable undergraduates are certainly endangered by academic philistines. It would be pleasant if some means of interfering with the absorption of Derridean nihilism could be found; as it is, every practical analysis of real affairs and real art that these innocents make will become faulty and disheartening.

Thank you, Peter, for your long Yes! And thanks Kris.

George, perhaps you misunderstood the import of my comment. I meant to say: yes it is a pity. (I wasn’t being ironic—I was echoing James. Let the impressionable undergraduates dive in. The water may be rougher going than it’s ever been, but it’s a blast. Derrida has his uses. I’m glad to have passed through the refiner’s deconstructionist fires. Our skies are overcast with false certainties.)

Nick actually wrote “protest dance music,” a kind of music presumably, rather than “protest dance,” but this is such an inspired concept that it has brightened my day thinking of what this guy would look like doing an earnest “protest dance” in front of the Houses of Parliament. I can hear the news report: “Waltz, Cha-Cha, Fox Trot, Tango, Rhumba, Swing—and now the new, most thrilling of all—let’s all do it—the Protest.

The water may be rougher going than it’s ever been, but it’s a blast...Our skies are overcast with false certainties.
Not on English courses, at least in my experience, is it now generally a blast. The range of focus, and of analytical tools, on these courses is astonishingly narrow, and the pressure to confine one’s interests and opinions to what’s on offer very great. Capitalised Literary Theory in all its common forms relies on one psychology of literary production (somewhere in the artist’s head, power puts on the mask of culture) and three of reception (the reader naively assents to, or bravely deconstucts the coded messages of the Foucauldian paranoid; or he finds signification endlessly postponed, leaving the text a void), none of which is remotely convincing. But these “false certainties” are repeated so often, by people who explicitly deny the uses of both argument and evidence against their positions, that they are often believed; and beliefs have force, here for evil. What possible uses does Derrida have? What single paragraph of his have you found good? I’d love to see it.

Art that needs meta-data is rhetoric not invention, because it relies on high-level, after-the-fact conceptual consideration. Protest art is obviously rhetoric rather than invention. I want arguments laid down with a decent attempt to list premises, explain method and give deductive or inductive arguments; and I want art unburdened with the freight of opinion that will, a few centuries down the line, look hopelessly moth-eaten. Arguments are arguable, so probably (let’s face it) wrong; and error, for me, is both foreign and corrosive to artistic invention. To avoid opinionising altogether - to achieve impersonality - is hard but doable; the trick was pulled off by Shakespeare, who eliminated the narrator’s voice and ensured that all opinions expressed were contradicted elsewhere.

The fact that final or full—for this is closer to what is claimed—signification is endlessly postponed does not leave the text a void, it leaves it open to a continuous and fertile play of signification. That Literary Theory sometimes renegs on this is not Derrida or Foucault’s problem. Also, I am not all that familiar with how Foucault has been applied in Lterary Theory, but (for instance) in it’s domain (the history of science) I find Georges Canguilhem’s Foucaultian The Normal and the Pathological, monumentally enlightening.)

I do not have a Derridaian text ready to hand. It is the force of his accumulated arguments that I find, at least for the most part, compelling. And this is part of what they add up to: “Nothing (at least nothing finite) is a Spinozistic substance that exists in itself and is conceived through itself. Everything is and is understood through it’s others. The importance of this for cultural theory is that it helps to underscore the radical relativity of everything finite, and thus of all cultural processes and artifacts. They are and they mean only in contexts they neither create nor control. And since these contexts are in continuous historical flux, the being and the meaning of culture and it’s components is never final or finished.” (Merold Westphal in “Deconstruction and Christian Cultural Theory: An Essay on Appropriation”)

Did Shakespeare really acheive impersonality? Or was his narrative voice large enough to embrace the tug of contradictory perspectives? Are you acheiving Shakespearean impersonality in your dismiss of post modernism?

Thanks Peter!
The fact that final or full—for this is closer to what is claimed—signification is endlessly postponed does not leave the text a void, it leaves it open to a continuous and fertile play of signification.
OK (though a preference for the fertile and playful in deconstruction was a hangover from Barthes and almost forgotten in the grey labyrinth of later Derrida). But the notion of a full signification is philosophically suspect, as the notion of a final signification is not. For what is a partial signification? There is only signification tout court as a mental event - a change of qualities in the substance of mind. As for final signification, the idea that mind is not static is no great revelation.
I am not all that familiar with how Foucault has been applied in Lterary Theory
If you knew what had been done in his name... But Foucault was certainly unreliable in the extreme as a historian of science. His writing on medieval matters, specifically its treatment of madness, is at the level of a Ruskin or a Morris in its disregard for data, and the Laingian view of the madman as a corrupt world’s last innocent, which underlies Foucault’s stuff, has led to innumerable failures to treat schizophrenics. Again, I have personal experience of this.

Nothing (at least nothing finite) is a Spinozistic substance that exists in itself
Why not?
and is conceived through itself.
No problem with the second half.
They are and they mean only in contexts they neither create nor control.
I see no reason to doubt that things exist irrespective of all contexts except the existing universe. The contexts in which things signify are those of the brain and the mind (if you don’t like dualism forget the latter; but the context of the brain implies that a number of rules of thumb put forward by psychology now or in the future can best explain in detailed ways the complex relationship between the sign that is held to signify and the signification that is the brain’s response).

Did Shakespeare really acheive impersonality? Or was his narrative voice large enough to embrace the tug of contradictory perspectives?
By his impersonality I mean his ability to make plausible his presentations of varying opinions such that one cannot identify his own opinion.
Are you acheiving Shakespearean impersonality in your dismiss of post modernism?
No, and I’m not aiming for it here, I’m arguing (or at least engaging in dogmatics). Such argument leaves me feeling still more strongly the pointlessness of including argument in art. I realise that my very formulations scream “naive” to the sophisticated post-Theory reader, but I have examined these things with care, and found to my real surprise that these plain positions seem to me true.

Would it be impertinent of me to recommend a book I read a week ago, which proposes much my view of culture? Scruton’s too keen on Leavis and insufficiently staunch in sticking up for aesthetic pleasure for the match to be perfect, but he’s still wonderful: Modern Culture.

“I have examined these things with care, and found to my real surprise that these plain positions seem to me true.”

George, we could happily go back and forth for hours and it would probably lead somewhere, but I have to limit myself, so for now I have to say: I’ve not been so fortunate.

I’ll check out Scruton.

George, I’m delighted to see that an undergraduate in English does not buy the relativist poison that is peddled in ’literary theory’, the most illiberal and irrationalist corner of academia. Congratulations on coming though without getting infected. Just going back to the old guys—your ’atavisim’ as you call it—is I trust you recognize not enough. Addressing living problems and creatively building upon and in some cases revising past ideas is the way to progress.

Literary theory has never had a golden age, it’s true, I think because a psychology of literary response has never been (and even now is insufficiently mature to be more than) its architektonikos; but Tsur has got surprisingly far, and with an admixture of Frye, Nabokov, Richard Swinburne and Scruton I think a perfectly respectable literary theory can be managed.

Thanks for checking out Scruton, Peter.

Back to the initial topic. For what it is worth George, I’m offering some design work of mine as a practical suggestion.

If you started with an antiqua-based model for your main type design, any major changes to the antiqua letter structures will likely distract the reader too much. For example;

antiqua “y” > cursive (upright) or blackletter “y”
antiqua “v” > cursive (upright) or blackletter “v”
double story “a” > cursive monocular “a”
binocular “g” > cursive monocular “g”

Ruling out that kind of restructuring leaves a few other axes that might be modulated for subtler changes;

stressing
proportion
component ratios
weight
tracking

Small variations in tracking and weight seem the most promising, while variations in stressing & proportion would have to be strictly limited to avoid messing up readability.

What the flying fish do I mean by component ratios? The size of bowls in relation to stems, ascender and descender lengths, and the bowl size of individual letters in relation to each other.

This sample shows a sans serif I’m working on—-in a primitive stage of development. Sorry its too wide for the Typophile page.

Homely-looking isn’t it? We can forgive that because the font’s ambition is to be a casual text sans, albeit with enhanced readability.

Pretend it’s an antiqua type with serifs in the usual positions that departs from Griffo’s model in only two areas—-the “g” is monocular rather than binocular, and the “w” is cursive.

Keep the “g” structure as it is, and pretend the “w” is an angular antiqua model, mmmkay?

Check the “g”, “p”, “q” and “y”. Those particular letters utilize the principal of ratios to determine their bowl sizes. This is aimed at increasing differentiation between similar letters to create more distinctive word pictures, and in turn increase readability. In one word—-demodularization.

I wonder if component ratios could be a useful form of modulation for your concept George. Binocular “g” should support variable ratios too, if you were to use that form instead of the monocular form shown here.

A book roman in a range of fine divisions of weight might have applications for emphasis, but would need high quality printing to make it effective, and tight quality control over a print run to keep it viable; small variations in press gain could defeat subtle variations in weight used in deifferent parts of a book.

Tracking modulation is already a proven means of emphasis and control of
r e a d  s p e e d, so it wouldn’t hurt to try it again.

If you can succeed in designing the kind of type system you imagine, the main stumbling block would be the task of convincing publishers to adopt it and print appreciable quantities of books. You also need sympathetic authors to put up works to be frankensteined. Then how do you go about working with these authors to decide exactly how their texts are treated? Getting them interested in typography could be a long and complicated affair with potentially sticky politico-aesthetic disputes.

Assuming those problems can be solved and don’t interfere with the management and logistics of the publishing process, publishers probably would not care how it all happens as long as the technical process is viable and editions sell in decent quantities.

j a m e s

Hi James, your sans is wonderful, and the idea of manipulating component ratios sounds a good one. I was really just thinking of introducing these subliminally perceived differences into type made at some stage for my own fiction, so there shouldn’t be too many politico-aesthetic disputes; but maybe, as you’ve hinted, prose style becomes something else, less pure and less traditional, when given typographic backup for its effects. Prose is words, paragraphing and punctuation, and there is something pleasant about that constriction, as in type design the conventional nature of a script’s forms is pleasantly constrictive.

type made at some stage for my own fiction

Ah, then that’s a different kettle of fish :^)

Calligraphy might offer a more immediate means which you could manipulate directly, at will, and a greater range of expression than type.

constriction

Discipline. Every art form has some kind of discipline that frees the artist to concentrate on articulation. Bending and pushing the limits of discipline sometimes expands the discipline.

j a m e s

JA: “Every art form has some kind of discipline that frees the artist to concentrate on articulation. Bending and pushing the limits of discipline sometimes expands the discipline.”

[bending this]
Every praxis has some kind of discipline that frees the practioner to concentrate on articulation. Concentration on articulation sometimes produces norm violations that expand the discipline. In type-making, the persistence, through imitation, of robust (in perceptual processing terms) norm-violations produces typographical history.

(just my way of saying: right!)

“Calligraphy might offer a more immediate means which you could manipulate directly, at will, and a greater range of expression than type.”

Is that so? Then for total freedom of expression you can just draw pictures. But if the issue is free but clear expression, e.g. if you wanted to get anything done in business, or court or a thousand other things, before type, you needed a disciplined scribe or no one would be able to read it. Type, on the other hand, in expressing through changing mechanisms and tastes, has taken on a wide range of forms, many of them totally non-Calligraphic, in the successful service of crystal clear expression. And, today that mechanism can use type pretending to be most nearly every style of writing...

Is that so?

David, good point. I got the “greater range of expression” part wrong. I oversold. It was just a thought—-looking for ways George’s idea might be made to work.

But if the issue is free but clear expression...

I’m not certain that is the issue—-or the goal. George’s proposition entails conflicting requirements. Resolving that paradoxical ideal may turn out to be impossible.

Then again there might be something very valuable burried under layers of conventional widsom and received ideas waiting to be (re)discovered, and since we don’t have a clear definition of that thing...we are in the position of the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that may or may not be there.

I’m trying things, reaching in different directions by way of trial & error, in an effort to find that cat and illuminate it. Nature—-the blind watchmaker—-designed every known plant and animal by trial & error over millions of years. Experimental type design sometimes follows a similar methodology.

Then for total freedom of expression you can just draw pictures.

Calligraphic letters and tyopgraphic designs are, in a sense, very detailed pictures we draw according to an established repertoire of gestures and forms. George is a writer expressing himself in words who seeks a means of infusing subtle nuances of inflection into text type. In that sense he is trying to combine some of the expressive capabilities of pictorial art with text type.

Type, on the other hand, in expressing through changing mechanisms and tastes, has taken on a wide range of forms, many of them totally non-Calligraphic, in the successful service of crystal clear expression.

Certainly. I don’t have a problem with that. At the same time I’m not suggesting calligraphy would do the same unbiased job of clear articulation. Earlier on this thread I was arguing in favour of conventional text types and their inherent clarity. Then, later, I suggested calligraphy as a possibility for George’s pursuit—-rendering his own writing with more expressiveness and subjectivity than conventional text types allow. The application is for George as both the writer and type designer, not for widespread use as a distributed type tool.

And, today that mechanism can use type pretending to be most nearly every style of writing…

Yes. And the stylistic range is growing in ever more fascinating and challenging guises.

j a m e s

Peter—-thanks :^) “praxis” is a good replacement for “art form” because it broadens the range of activity this can be applied to—-and it forces people to look up “praxis” in the dictionary.

The rest of your expansion is well received. If I may rephrase some of it;

In type-making, the persistence, through imitation, of robust (in perceptual processing terms) norm-violations produces typographical history.

“In type-making, the persistence through imitation—-of robust norm-violations—-produces typographic evolution and history.”

Can you amplify “in perceptual processing terms”? I think I know what you mean but it’s a bit obscure for lay readers.

Cheers,

j a m e s

”[...] produces typographic evolution [...]”
Yes!

Or maybe: concentration on articulation drives typographical evolution, and the persistence through imitation of the robust norm-violations that concentration on articulation introduces, produces history.

“Can you amplify “[robust] in perceptual processing terms”?”
Think of our (somewhat plastic or elastic) bio-physical ’reading-ware’ or ’vision-ware’ as a ’fitness filter’, selecting for and favouring the replication of emergent optical-grammatical features it finds useful for streamlining it’s processes. This happens subliminally, George, or so I think.

(Is this the kind of amplification you were after?)

Is this the kind of amplification you were after?

Sí, correcto.

In short, “...bio-physical vision-ware selects emergent optical-grammatical favourable to it’s streamlining processes.”

...of robust (in perceptual processing terms)...

What property of the perceptual processing makes it “robust”, and why, etcetera? Why is it called robust? Because it is vigourous in the way it goes about processing?

j a m e s

James, I meant to say the norm-violations are robust. That is, that some of the norm violations produced through ’concentration on articulation’are keepers from a perceptual processing point of view, they score high on the fitness for enhanced readabillity meter. Robust norm-violations are those that encourage efficient processing at the biophysical or vision science level. Efficiency is at least foundationally a matter of neural computational efficiency at the visual cortex (and earlier) level (as distinct from a lexical access level).

Why robust? because the norm-violatios might enhance the saliency—and via that, cue-value—of just those features which in bouma context are criterial to effective visual wordform resolution. We do not know these features beforehand, and a theory of reading does not hand them to us. It just tells us what kinds of things are relevant. Overdetermined saliency maps are relevant. Proper cue value is relevant. Concentrated & ludic ’travaille sur’ articulation is a (the?) search-engine.

Or so I think.

Héctor: [about Frank Smith]

I’ll certainly look into Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. In preparing for the presentation underlying my Typo#13 contribution I read parts of Frank Smith’s 1996 Reading Without Nonsense and the wonderful essay “What’s the use of the Alphabet” in Essays into Literacy : Selected Papers and Some Afterthoughts.

But I also found this 1969 paper useful, for its emphasis on “sufficient” processing of “criterial combinations of features” “discriminated simultaneously”; and of “feature discriminability” as “the crucial variable in word identification”, and its non-dependance on a letter by letter approach.

(It is one of the things that consolidate my misgivings about Hrant’s parafoveal emphasis, while keeping alive the prospects of a view that doesn’t capitulate to a letter-slot pocessing approach to visual wordform resolution. Lateral interference in the paravoveal stream causes the what where of criterial features (role-architecture-level particulars and primitives) to be beyond discrimination.)

Peter, I understand the point of the paper you pointed out, but I get a bit lost on your last paragraph (not good enough English, sorry). But I still think that reducing the reading task to the processing of the text in units (such as letters, words, syllabes or whatever) is missing the point that human perception can work at any level to ger the visual information it needs to predict the meaning of the text.

But don’t take me too seriusly, I’m a graphic designer who read a book on the topic, I really don’t have knowledge or experience in the topic.

Héctor

>English

That’s English? ;-)

No, it’s me.
And it assumes my contexts.

...norm-violations are robust...enhance the saliency—and...cue-value—of just those features...criterial to effective wordform resolution.

Which makes them noticeable, or memorable. Naturally, higher level abstract cognitive process takes up after word-picture data is read, and gestalt meaning of a text by way of ratiocination.

...biophysical or vision science level...at the visual cortex ...

About the visual cortex. Have you looked at axon modelling as the physical basis for memory and shape recognition? Susan Greenfield’s Brain Story makes me wonder if that specific part of the human brain, using axon modelling, is involved in word shape recognition.

According to neuroscientists the human brain has a substantially greater capacity for shape recognition than any other primate, and apparently this is linked to, or engineered by our need to recognize the differences between individual human faces—-as a survival skill.

Anthropologists have taken this up as a way of helping to explain the superiority of Homo Sapiens over Neanderthals, and why Neanderthals died out. For example, if they had difficulty recognizing one individual from another, or the subtleties of facial expression, Neanderthals may also have struggled to detect a lie by reading a face, placing them at a disadvantage. In examination of artefacts like tools and personal items Neanderthals are seen to have less creative ability (they weren’t as good at crafting objects d’art).

j a m e s

Héctor, the argument of my last paragraph is that: if Frank Smith is correct about discriminability of features being fundamental to the perceptual processing component of reading, than this poses a challenge to Hrant’s claim that the bulk of recognition happens or can happen parafoveally. This poses a challenge because the ’what feature where’ information is rendered impossible to discriminate or compile, due to lateral interference. (This is not to say that some skipping based on parafoveal preview does not routinely occur.)

I agree with Frank Smith that grammatical and semantic context knowledge (in the field of discourse relevent to the subject mater of the text) reduces the dependancy on visual processing in reading, to the extent that it allows the probability summation routines underlying recognition to reach sufficient confidence about lexical identity sooner.

James, I have not read Susan Greenfield’s book, but if my intuition about what axon modelling is, is correct, I’d want to say: it would be nice if axon modelling could penetrate the mechanics of probability summation to the point where is could factor in familiarity of context, and the contributions of lateral interactions at the visual cortex level.

Axon modelling might also, if it can become sophisticated enough, help George with his search for what level of typographical variation is subliminally discarded as noise, and what is fed forward to the reception system as inflectionally informative. (It might also help decide between my model of perceptual processing in reading and Kevin Larson’s.)

Well I don’t know if the bulk of recognition happens in the parafovea but certainly there can be a big deal of it in the parafovea, depending on the kind of feature the individual needs to recognize in order to eliminate the uncertainty of the meaning of the text being read.

But I’m a bit lost, I can’t recall what lateral interference is.

Héctor