Typophile

Swash and diacritics

Randy

I'm adding some fairly elaborate swash characters to the font I'm working on. These work contextually. One version of the ll combination overhangs the character before and after. Not a problem for "jello" but it is for "millipede." What I've done is to sub i before and after with dotlessi, and the terminals of the swashes indicate the dots. But now I'm wondering what to do with îllém and so forth. It seems a bit culturally insensitive and possibly confusing meaning to convert these to "dotlessi" and "e". Obviously I can ignore sub these, but the swashitude of the font would be severely reduced in say czech. Any advice, or examples of how this has been handled well?

guifa

Maybe provide a reduced height i? Or squashed diacritics?

John Hudson

Obviously I can ignore sub these, but the swashitude of the font would be severely reduced in say Czech.

Yes, there are languages within which heavy use of swash letters is impeded by heavy use of diacritic marks. The diacritic marks take precedence over the swashes, because they are linguistically significant.

Randy

Thanks guys. I'll spend some time today to see if I can't come up with a swash form that would work without scrunching, squashing or complete decapitation. Perhaps one that operates "above the cloud deck."

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