Sounds fabulous, I’ll have to ask around and see if someone has an issue I can borrow.

However, in any case Stone’s argument here indicates that the influence of “The Stroke” of the pen, while still very important in the development of type, is somewhat less so than what G. Noordzij indicates in his book of that name…

When I read that section of The Stroke I thought it seemed stretched pretty thin, a logical path carefully crafted only after its destination was determined.

I suspect the reality is far more mushy.

I have seen a reasonable amount of of pen based lowercase that looks quite a lot like Jenson and Griffo's work.

This isn't the only one or even the best example but it's a start:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebensorkin/1553408656/in/set-72157601975232...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebensorkin/1550029204/in/set-72157601975232...

The part of this post that seems somehow fishy to me is the idea that the Roman Capitals were really a problem for the pen. They were not made the same way by the pen exactly. And punchcut they are also not quite the same either. But I don't get a sense of a problem in either case. The Roman caps of Jenson and Griffo maybe have been harmonized by sharing a technique of production as much or more than as a result of an intellectual or deliberate effort to harmonize somehow these forms that were especially hard to marry. So this heavy emphasis on models in all cases seems like a red herring to me - at least so far.

Moreover the ideas of Edward Catich are ceratinly to accepted by everyone. In fact, James' comment about the the ideas in 'the stroke' "a logical path carefully crafted only after its destination was determined" seem to apply at least well in case of Catich. The opposite view being that in fact it is perfectly possible to arrive at the shapes of Roman letters simply by the application of a chisel. That you can after the fact create a representation with a brush proves little. In short, it's a chicken or egg problem.

My take is that the break with the scribal was a slow process of letting go not sudden "fundamental break " that shows up in the twinkling of an eye. Unless one man's lifetime is seen as sudden.

The fundamental problem with these kinds of statements too is that the 15th & 16th century is have perhaps the very most diverse kinds of scribal hands in use of any period. This sheer diversity makes any simple or easy to understand narrative sound suspect from the outset.

I may have the wrong end of the stick on this. But that's how it looks to me just now.

Eben, just so you have what Stone actually says about the Roman inscriptions, here it is:

"The tool for laying out inscriptions was a flexible flat brush, and the letters in inscriptions were both fewer and larger than those in manuscripts. Although the overall impression of the Imperial forms is that they were made with an edged tool, the details, like the serifs and the subtle changes in weights and connections of strokes clearly distinguish these stately letters from pen-written manuscript forms. The ancient letters were then carved into stone, a step which allowed for additional refinement"

Stone's point I don't think relies solely on Catich being right. It is rather the distinguishing features of the actual carved vs manuscript letters--and then those cut in metal. Stone's article is copiously and aptly illustrated, and to me the illustrations make his case pretty convincing.

I had better read the original. You are right. I wonder if it's something a library can get me.

William, or should I say Sumner

Wrong wrong wrong! The forms of the "brush" written caps are easily emulated by a pliable (quill) pens that are used with a pressure/release and angle manipulation techniques. Arthur Baker (and any calligrapher worth their salt) has spent a lifetime espousing this, AND proving it with both his original and fine art work. Yes the larger forms avail themselves to even finer nuances (with size) but the results are the same!!! All you have to do is watch Zapf work at small sizes and your mind would be changed.

Michael

Michael, didn't the pointed, flexible tip pens come later? That is, they weren't used by scribes in the 15th century, right? If so the point (!) holds.

Here are two examples of less that .5 inch lettering done with chisel edged pens with manipulation which rival the nuances of the LARGE Trajan caps. The pointed pen is irrelevant in the making of Roman Caps. The chisel edged pen was employed long before the 15th century(!)

Michael

In actuality writing on a surface akin to paper occurred in the 3rd century before Christ. The Greeks had it all.

Michael

I'm confused - that (C)OUNTRYSID(E) example is clearly "filled in" areas with a small pen, no? That is, the "strokes" of the letters are not "strokes" of the writing tool; so really it's more akin to the use of a brush that Sumner/Bill are writing about.

No it is writing with the lifting of the pen to create wells or blank spaces... in other words the etches are where the pen is lifted, more important is the modulation of the stems, waisting as in most Transitional faces or the Trajan Caps. The countrysides is straight out of the pen... there is no touch up! I.E. calligraphy as in manuscript! These are scans of original art. HEAVY pen manipulation. I.e. it can be done on a small scale!

Michael

What I am fighting is the thought that the pre-brush/carved forms of the first century cannot be done in the manuscript tradition. THAT IS PURE B.S.

Michael

Is the modulation in the letterforms not apparent?

Michael

Michael, I don't think we're on the same page here, because Stone and Noordzij are referring to the *writing* a scribe would do then, quickly and with the fixed width (not expansible) pen held at more or less a constant angle. They are not talking about built-up letters, as Eliason notes.

Because of the multi-colors it looks like your lovely "seasonings" is also built up, no? I am not a calligrapher, as you are, but I dare say that it is not possible to *write* in single strokes the 'seasonings' letters even in one color with a fixed width pen held at a constant angle.

Yes, they did have a 'chisel' or broad tip pen, going back in antiquity, but it was not particularly flexible until the 18th century, if I've got the history right.

edit: I cross posted. I see that you made many strokes. Stone may be wrong, but I think you're not getting the distinction between "writing" and built up letters, which is key for both Stone and Noordzij.

NO BUILD UP. The SEASONINGS was in fact done with a chisel edged pen and the colors were loaded as I progressed with the strokes, using both angle changes and pressure/release. Maybe you should avail yourself to the possibilities of the pen before you tell me I cannot do what I do..

The quill was used many centuries before and they were far more flexible than the NIBS of today!!! Compare the feather quill to metal and my point will be made.

Michael

P.S. They, the scribes did not use fixed pen angles. I will trot out the necessary info if I have to.

As far as the Countrysides

I was merely trying to display a ductus OBVIOUS example of a titling piece that showed modulation and pen rotation (inherent in the piece) that, in fact, went beyond the brush inspired form of the Trajan caps. IT WAS DONE ALL AT ONCE with no going back. Original art! The incisions were an aside but pointed to the process of manipultion.

I get tired of the banter that goes on about letterforms that is ill informed by people that have never picked up a pen, much less never made their living doing it!

Michael

Michael, what is at issue here is Stone's view that the letter forms of Jenson and Griffo reflect forms that are a product of built up letters, and not written letters. If you think the distinction between written and built-up is not valid, please explain.

I admire your wonderful lettering and calligraphy, and calligraphic type faces. However, both Stone and Noordzij are also skilled calligraphers.

In "The Stroke" Noordzij says that rotation of the pen in writing only became into writing in 17th century "mannerism".

Also the flexible, pointed split nib pen is said, for example here in the Wikipedia article to have come into use only in the 17th century.

Before that the characteristic written letter forms, it is said in most histories that I have seen, were formed by a broad pen of fixed width moving at pretty much a constant angle.

With rotation and expansion of the nib of the pen--such as you are skilled at--you can get effects of built up letters, but neither were done until after the time of Jenson and Griffo, if these histories to believed.

Are there histories which contradict these claims?

I have a feeling that Sumner's argument has a much deeper seeded meaning than is being glossed by most. After all he was a great calligrapher!

Michael

Wikepedia would not know its ass from a hole in the ground.

I am not even talking about the split pointed pen.

THE CHISEL EDGED PEN The Roman Square Capitals of the 4th century!
If these are not manipulated I am Santa Claus!

Rustic Capitals... ring a bell?

You want more.
Michael

In addition... How simple can I make it for you... I DID NOT BUILD UP THE LETTERS!

With skilled practice (which has been around since man picked up the pen) anyone can do it with varying degrees of success!

Michael

I am running out of beer so if you want to be right I am going to bed!

Shalom
Michael

Michael, I am just trying to communicate, and not doing a very good job, evidently.

I don't see in Rustic capitals any evidence of pen rotation. Here is a Youtube video of writing Rustic Capitals. The guy in this video holds his pen at a constant angle, never rotating at all that I can see.

Do you mean something different about rotation of the angle of the pen?

You seem to think that rotation and expansion of pen tips has been around always as regular practice in writing. Everything I have read contradicts this. This is not a question of skill but of history.

If they were done with anything other than a Rotring pen and by someone who knew what they were doing with Rustic Caps the I would say you have a point. True Rustic Caps .... well these pale in comparison as far as the nuances. God bless the internet and its ability to spread ignorance.

Michael

Manipulation is the bedrock of letter forms. It is not a new thing! Please believe me. Whatever you are reading is so ridiculously wrong. Think about it, if you are doing Egyptian you have to turn the pen perpendicular to the stem to get a comparable weight serif. Hello. Pen manipulation!
It has been around for at least 17 centuries!
Bed... gone. Pick it up tomorrow.

Michael

Bill, I have not read Sumner's article (my copy of the newsletter has not arrived yet), but it seems to me that you are getting a little over excited when you say 'what is at issue here is Stone’s view that the letter forms of Jenson and Griffo reflect forms that are a product of built up letters, and not written letters'. At least, it seems that way from your summary of Sumner's line of thought, because Sumner appears to be talking fairly specifically about serifs, i.e. stroke terminals, not 'letter forms' in toto.

I'll just make a few very quick comments:

1. The point about the difficulty of making classical Roman serif shapes with a pen -- especially a reed or quill -- is acceptable only within the context of scribal 'publishing', i.e. document production, in which writing is expected to be fairly fast, even when the formal roman bookhand is being written. More slowly, and as often seen at larger sizes, such serifs can be formed with a pen, as countless calligraphers have demonstrated. So it is not a question of scribes being unable to make such forms with their pens, but of them typically making a different form in the humanist bookhand. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the whole debate about whether this is possible is a red herring because what really matters is...

2. ...the conscious decision by early type makers to model their serifs on the classical Roman forms rather than on the typical humanist bookhand serifs. I don't think this is because there is anything specifically 'sculptural' about these forms, though. I think they viewed these serifs as a classical ideal, something that resonated with the renaissance rediscovery of classical Roman literature and art and, as such, most appropriate to the subject matter of their books.

3. But the letter forms themselves are still very much based around the stroke of the written forms, even as details become idealised. And it is interesting to note how this model persists: the structure of typographic letters and their characteristic contrast patterns continue to derive from written forms even as the tools of writing change (most dramatically in the 18th century), while terminals and serifs are subject to idealisation. So in the same way that we can observe someone like Griffo idealising the serifs while following the structure and ductus of the humanist bookhand, we can see Bodoni doing the same thing, three hundred years later, with a different writing model based on a different tool with a different ductus, treating terminals as balls and serifs as fine lines: the forms, in this case, suggested by the characteristics and abilities of the tool, but idealised in their typographic interpretation.

I don't know if it can be useful for your debate. I've found this example of capitals (from the Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia):

this is from the 'Alcuin bible' A.D. 800 circa.

Thank you John!

I don’t think this is because there is anything specifically ’sculptural’ about these forms, though. I think they viewed these serifs as a classical ideal, something that resonated with the renaissance rediscovery of classical Roman literature and art and, as such, most appropriate to the subject matter of their books.

Or they simply saw them as the nicest way to make letters, when the time factor of penning each one is annulled.

Interesting pic, MiseEnAbime. The striking shift in style made me think at first that the title had to be a later addition! Here's another from the 9th c..

In it Sumner Stone argues that the Jenson and Griffo made a fundamental break with scribal tradition, to letter designs that were critically dependent on the sculpting of metal, rather than on purely pen-written shapes.

I would agree with Stone in the case of Griffo whose work clearly shows a sculptural sensibility, but not Jenson. His work is still tied to the idea of recreating a form rather than creating it. By that I mean that Jenson was looking at a pen letter model as a guide. Griffo was moving away from that idea as can be seen in De Aetna. There are variants of certain lowercase letters and some are — to my eye — sculptural and some still based on pen lettering. Griffo was apparently moving away from the pen model. The typeface of the Poliphili doesn't have this same level of variance and the letters seem to me to be entirely sculptural. The difference is whether the letter is created positively as in pen lettering or negatively as in carving.

George
I felt bad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no Bodoni

Michael, when you write about my "telling you what you can do" you are completely misreading me. I am not talking about you as a contemporary calligrapher, but about historically what was actually done by scribes, not calligraphers--a category that I believe didn't exist.

Here are actual Rustic Capitals. To me they look like they were written with a broad pen, not particularly flexible, and with no rotation of the pen tip. Can you point me to where you think the pen must have been rotated?

Were your "Countryside" letters made with a rapid zig-zag filling in the form of the letters? If so, that is exactly the kind of thing that Noordzij calls "building up" letters, and not writing. You keep not answering my question of whether the distinction between built up lettering and writing is a valid one. And you never give me any references to any historical facts that contradict what I have been reporting on my reading. After you answer, I think we can communicate better.

John, I was focusing on the difference of Sumner Stone's view from Noordzij's. Stone still gives a big role to the influence of the written forms. But he does go beyond the serifs as part of the departure from writing. As I quoted earlier, he writes,

"the details, like the serifs and the subtle changes in weights and connections of strokes clearly distinguish these stately letters from pen-written manuscript forms."

In writing of the changes in weights and connections, I believe he is referring to the same factors that I argued in the earlier thread, which help even color and readability, as well as pleasing form.

I thought you conceded that such manipulation was going on with Jenson and Griffo, and this did represent a change. Peter Enneson did write that perhaps Noordzij did err in not sufficiently such "feature manipulation."

As to my excitement, that is just joi de vivre. Many of you English seem to think that enjoying yourself is infra dig as English schoolboy slang has it, but I am unrepentant.

The question here is not whether the written forms were influential, which everyone agrees, but whether Jenson and Griffo made a fundamental change and advance. That Stone does seem to think so in the above quotation, and that the change was away from the written forms. Do you disagree?

George, I cross-posted with you. I agree with you that Griffo is a more clear break, particularly on the serifs, but I think that Jenson has already headed that direction, though not so decisively. Both are, of course, still heavily influenced by the writting, as letters are still today.

Here are actual Rustic Capitals. To me they look like they were written with a broad pen, not particularly flexible, and with no rotation of the pen tip. Can you point me to where you think the pen must have been rotated?

Does rotation have to occur during a stroke to count? The Rustic H's I've seen have different thicknesses of their vertical strokes.

EDIT: As here, for example.

Jenson and Griffo made a fundamental change

Sweynheym and Pannartz made the first type based on humanist writing--Roman capitals plus Carolignian miniscules, after the Italian humanist style of writing.

One important innovation of Jenson's lower case was the straight right side of the "h". His contemporaries followed the scribal practice (both blackletter and humanist) of a curved right side.

I agree with you that Griffo is a more clear break, particularly on the serifs, but I think that Jenson has already headed that direction, though not so decisively. Both are, of course, still heavily influenced by the writting, as letters are still today.

I don't think that Jenson's work was intentionally sculptural whereas Griffo's clearly was. Griffo shows a much greater awareness of the interaction of positive-negative space than Jenson. Both were influenced by writing but ideas about form had changed between the time of Jenson — early High Renaissance — and Griffo — mid High Renaissance. Griffo was doing similar things with positive-negative space in his page layouts in the Poliphili and I think this came directly from his design practice.

And I would disagree that letters today are "heavily" influenced by writing. Writing is about letter form and we've moved past designing typefaces based on form to a greater consideration of letter structure which has a much greater impact on contemporary design practice than writing does.

George
I felt bad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no Bodoni

The marriage of inscriptional capitals and pen-made small letters whether in handwriting or in type is not a perfectly happy one, and many of the artists who have turned their hands to designing typefaces have tried to undo it. At first there was doubt as to which should be the dominant partner and impose its idiom on the other. However, Jenson to a large extent and Aldus completely laid down a pattern of a consortium preserving the purity of the antique capitals and making the lower-case conform with them as best it could. Such was the prestige of Aldus and the skill of his punchcutter that this arrangement of the priorities has been the rule ever since.

Harry Carter, A view of early typography (1969), page 46.

Eliason, Noordzij focuses on rotation within the stroke, which he says is mannerist, and not earlier. I don't see a discussion of rotation between different strokes. Stone doesn't discuss rotation.

The thicker right strokes of the H's in your picture may be partly because they veer a bit to the diagonal, and perhaps are borne down on more. It looks like this is a deliberate effort to distinguish the H's from two I's or LI. The pen seems to be held at something like a 60 degree angle for this style of letters, (cf the Youtube video), so, contrary to the stone-inscribed Capitals, the verticals are generally lighter than the horizontals and diagonals also quite thick. I suspect rotation of the pen is not required.

Thanks, James, the quote from Harry Carter is apt. I would just expand on that by saying that the 'skill of his punchcutter', apparently Griffo, is a mastery of design, as well manual dexterity. To cite just one example, the diagonals are lighter than they would be than if written by pen at a constant angle, and so more even color of the text is achieved.

I am going to respond to this and then I will have time with the family and get back on later!

IT WAS ONE IN THE SAME. They too did titling, it was not about manuscripts totally. Proclamations, frontispieces, endispieces, etc, etc.

Dear William.

As I have said I think that the Stone argument has little to do with what we are discussing but you have a misguided sense of what is real and what is malarkey.

WAISTING: in Transitional Roman this is achieved via pen manipulation, i.e. pressure at the beginning of a stem, release toward the center and pressure toward the end. Then you have a flattening of the pen angle in the exit... voila the serif. This has been around for umpteen centuries. It did not start in the 15th century. Throw away that research please.

The guy in the video. DO YOU WATCH NETWORK NEWS AND BELIEVE IT?

Have you scrutinized his letterforms against the antiquities. I DON'T THINK SO, and neither did he! Because the forms(original) incorporate modulation, and have less staid nuances.

As to the Countryside... The letters were made in one continuous stroke, pen angle altered between between flat and 40 degrees which ultimately define serifs as well as the waisting in the stems. The incisions were achieved by rocking the pen during the process.

You need to get a pen and experiment... until you do you will sit and argue from an ivory tower position with no practical experience reading God knows who and I will keep banging my head against a wall.

Michael

Bill: The question here is not whether the written forms were influential, which everyone agrees, but whether Jenson and Griffo made a fundamental change and advance. That Stone does seem to think so in the above quotation, and that the change was away from the written forms. Do you disagree?

I don't think the change was significantly 'away from the written forms', at least not in terms of the text culture in which both print and manuscript, type and writing, were still very much in daily 'conversation'. As I wrote in the earlier discussion, I think the kind of features to which Sumner draws attention -- treatment of serifs, of connection between strokes, of subtle variation in weight -- are very important within a narrow history of typography and more specifically of typeface design. And perhaps they are most important in terms of being able to make letters smaller while retaining open counters, clean connections and crotches, etc.. But the letter forms are still 'fundamentally' the same as the written forms: the treatment of terminals are idealisations of the written terminals, the variations of weight are variations on a pattern established by the ductus of the pen, and the counters and crotches that are being given attention to survive the printing process as the same counters and crotches that result from the writing of the same letters. And I think one of the best ways to judge the significance of these innovations, in terms of moving away from the written forms, is to compare them to 19th century types that really do leave the chirographic models behind (and in many cases become ugly and difficult to read in the process).

I have seen so much disinformation in the past several decades. I was talking to a lettering buddy the other day and we got to giggling about how there has been much made of an album logo he did decades ago. Demonic it is said. He actually used some Bible pages as the inspiration! He said he finally went online to correct it but people would rather create false information than believe the truth.

20/20 hindsight and critics. All BS.

As to the H. Could it be as simple as the H needed an entry serif on the left hence the lighter weight of the down stroke to compensate for that very serif. The right side was a more speeded up stroke and visually did not need a top serif so it was a simple "draw down" and manipulated to create weight at the base! Simple as that. Second nature to a calligrapher. No research needed. No need to spend millions of taxpayers money to figure it WORKED OUT JUST BEAUTIFUL. Just like using odd numbers in the garden.

I have said 100000000000 times that the first stroke you lay down defines all the rest. Whether it is manuscript, logo or type design this is true.

To say that modulation has not had a place in letters since its genesis is just wrong! All you have to do is look at the development of the Aleph (Phonecian) to our current A, scratch to pen. Modulation all the way, and pen manipulation to boot, depending on the style.

Michael

19th century types that really do leave the chirographic models behind (and in many cases become ugly and difficult to read in the process)

Willing to name names? I'm curious as to what you have in mind with this.

Willing to name names?

Clarendon types are a good example of what I have in mind, while still being in the realm of 'normal' typographic letters. Charles Ricketts' Vale Press types are another, more extreme case.

Please, enough with the all caps already.

>the treatment of terminals are idealisations of the written terminals

So you don't agree with Stone, as I understand him.

He says that the symmetric serifs did not arise from any written form. It arose rather from painted and carved forms. If you accept that the distinctive treatment of serifs and weights in inscriptional characters doesn't come from writing, then he has a strong argument, as the ideal wasn't a written one, either ancient or medieval. Do you think that the distinctive features of the letters eg on the Trajan Column, that we don't see in surviving writing, as I understand it, were actually written forms?

>the variations of weight are variations on a pattern established by the ductus of the pen...

I don't want to quibble about what is 'fundamental' or 'essential', but what I do think is that Jenson and Griffo had a conscious goal of improving on their written predecessors, that they were willing to contradict the written models, and that they succeeded particularly in increasing readability.

I do think that more upright forms with more even color, and at smaller size all increased readability. What you seem to be saying is that they were just trying to make letters that were just more perfect forms of written models. That I think flies in the face of the fact that they were willing to straighten eg the right stem of the n, as Nick points out, and systematically *contradict* the 'pen rules' as far as the weight of diagonals.

I am getting a deja vu experience here. When I studied history of science, I read how devoted Catholic Pierre Duhem argued strongly that modern science continuously evolved from medieval science. Alexander Koyré on the other side argued for the discontinuity of Galileo's breakthroughs and the reality of revolution in science. I always thought that Koyré had the better of the argument. Jenson and Griffo's innovations are no way as great as Copernicus and Galileo's, but I still think there is a conscious and deliberate innovation going on.

>To say that modulation has not had a place in letters since its genesis is just wrong!

I never mentioned "modulation," so I don't know what you are talking about.

Noordzij identifies three sources of modulation in the written stroke. First is "translation." When a broad pen with fixed width and angle moves through a curve, the width of the stroke changes with the curve. This was always there. Second is "rotation," when the pen is rotated on its axis, also changing the width of the stroke; he says historically this only came in a systematic way with mannerism. Third is "expansion," where more pressure on the pen broadens the stroke, and which he says only came in a dramatic way with the pointed, more flexible pen tip. The pointed flexible tip pen culminated in the "copperplate" style of script, and influenced 'transitional' style type design.

It seems you dismiss Noordzij as an ignoramus, as all of this went on since antiquity. I think you are flat wrong on that, but I am here to learn. If you can give some historical examples and analyze them concerning rotation and expansion, I'll be happy to change my views.

It seems you dismiss Noordzij as an ignoramus, as all of this went on since antiquity. I think you are flat wrong on that, but I am here to learn. If you can give some historical examples and analyze them concerning rotation and expansion, I’ll be happy to change my views.

HOW DARE YOU PUT THOSE WORDS IN MY MOUTH! I have always been enamored with his work. One of the first books I bought was Lettering Today (USAF Library, DaNang AB) and his work is beautiful. You are not here "to learn." You keep throwing this crap back in my face and misquoting me just to appear right... according to your readings!!!!!!

All three of the models you spoke of are examples of modulation! As to the third it is impossible to work with a quill and not avail yourself to the pliability of the tool. Why don't you call it by the proper terms. Rotation is pen manipulation and expansion is pressure and release. Once again you have never used a pen!

I am shaking the dust from my sandals buddy!

Thank God. The angry calligrapher moves on to adorn some other blog comment section with all caps.

Michael, Bill: As a moderator I think I see some smoke forming if not actual flames, so let's keep the tone a bit more chill please.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for joie de vivre but...

As for my own view:

I think that in the urge to make distinctions it is often the case that things are set out more starkly than reality offers them up to us. For instance I am recalling a presentation I saw at last year's TypeCon where the fine art of the touch up or cheat in calligraphy was celebrated. Now at some point one of us might say, well that's crossed the line! That's not "pen formed". But really it is. Just not in the "pure" sense. My point here is that there are distinctions to make, and they are important/meaningful. But what you call them, and here you make them is significantly up to you.

As for G Noordzij he definitely wasn't interested in setting out anything hard & fast, just in offering a different lens, the lens of his practical physical observation. This is one of the reasons I like his work so much.

Michael, keep in mind that while you can do nearly anything at all with a pen; I absolutely agree, the question of what was normally done by scribe in the 15th/16th century while hugely broad is not nearly so broad. There are distinctions to be had between that profoundly varied body of work and Jenson/Aldine type.

Notice, also I am using cite tags to make italics not all caps.

The thing about the Jenson and Aldine letters are that they are a huge cultural touchstone. And what they did seems border on magic, partly because it was so influential, and partly because of the myth machines that have grown up around the actual work. And partly because it was a sort of visual genius. All this means that the urge to get in there and make your own interpretation is great. I should know. I am involved in that now too. But you have to be as skeptical and dispassionate as you can be. And show what you mean.

Bill, maybe you can show us what you mean by more even color in an example.

What they did was complicated and changed over time. And just like you need to use a pen to get it - you need to see original Jenson & Aldine books to get a sense of them.

And lastly, the simple distinctions of this is "pen based" and this is "typographic" and this is "carved" and so on are to my mind, growing less useful by the day. What I think would be more useful is to show the thing you mean, eg the visual distinction and avoid the urge to throw too much extra jargon over the top. Typographic and calligraphic jargon is mushy mushy stuff however much we may treasure it. And as such it has a wonderful use as grease to get conversations started - but not too much as grist with which to go deeper.

Apologies to all parties for adding heat to the fire.

Good observations from Mr. Sorkin, and since it is possible to add illustrations to these comments, by all means, please do — they would help much in a discussion such as this one.

Now all I have to do is figure out which of the tags below produces italics.

which of the tags below produces italics

I use <em>.

If you click on the link at the bottom of the page called "input format" it shows you the options.

>How dare you put those words in my mouth?

Michael, this exchange has been disappointingly bizarre. I did not put those words in your mouth.

You said "Whatever you are reading is so ridiculously wrong." I repeatedly said that I was reading Noordzij and Stone, and I kept asking you whether and where Noordzij had it wrong that in this period (Jenson and Griffo) writing was with a not very flexible broad nibbed pen held at a constant angle.

You kept not replying, and instead issuing tirades indicating that what I was saying was ignorant and absurd. So I just repeated and emphasized that as the views I reported were the views of Noordzij, and you were in effect dismissing Noordzij.

Perhaps you will now respond to my questions, but I am not optimistic.

Eben, I have been very courteous in replying to Michael, whose work I respect. He has responded with tirades that have annoyed at least two people. When I point out that in dismissing what I have been reading he is dismissing Noordzij, you seem to find something improper in that. I don't.

Bill, when you say "It seems you dismiss Noordzij as an ignoramus" it isn't exactly inflammatory I suppose but it does seem like heavy rhetorical tactics. I am not interested in counting who is worse, or giving out black marks - just in encouraging all involved to have a little break and simmer down a bit.