Doh.

I've been waiting for that for nearly 2 and a half hours... ;)

Errr ...

Well, Jonathan is probably asking how, not just whether. Very good questions.

> Has the design of alphabets had any affect on history?

I don't know of any such cases, but certainly the fact that people use different alphabets has had consequences. Perhaps the biggest one is Ataturk's dumping of the Arabic script in favor of the Latin; many people (perhaps most) attribute that (at least partly) to the need of the Turks to make up for WWI.

> Is the deign of an alphabet simply a reflection of the time it were created in?

Do you mean fonts? Alphabets (or more generally writing systems) almost never get designed (except for the highly notable case of Hangul). But their genesis and evolution certainly contain reactions to cultural milieux.

> Has type design ever had a profound affect beyond our profession?

Maybe not "profound", but two cases of the relevance of type come to mind:
1) The Nazi flip-flop concerning blackletter.
2) The recent Bush memo debacle.

hhp

The invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians and the invention of the mass printing system by Gutenberg changed history. Good alphabet design eased readablity, added charm and grace. Not earth shaking, but not bad.

Changes in the alphabet, such as dropping the long s after the French revolution, the rejection of blackletter in Germany, the complete changes in Turkey and Korea - these follow great events of the day. Design styles tend to relate to the other designs of the day - especially architecture, for some reason.

China not using an alphabet (they had one fairly early) was also important. Using ideograms they could represent many languages, barely understandable to each other. This enabled a unified China. Now with radio and TV I believe everyone is learning Mandarin or 'common tongue' as they call it - and inputing it into computers using the Roman alphabet, with the pin-yin system of romanization.

James evans created a Cree alphabet, and possibly avoided the eventual loss of the Cree and Ojibwa languages.

http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/special/F10fonds.htm

The invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians and the invention of the mass printing system by Gutenberg changed history.

The Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet. The ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet into Indo-European use from Semitic sources, and the latter have traditionally been identified with the Phoenicians. There is some scholarship, however, that challenges this tradition, citing evidence that the Greeks adopted the alphabet at an earlier stage, from another Semitic group. In any case, the Phoenicians were only one Semitic group using a variety of an alphabet that had already been in widespread use throughout historical Canaan long before substantial Greek-Phoenician trade. This alphabet is structurally identical to Hebrew. I don't think anyone has identified any particular group as being responsible for the invention of this alphabet, which is not surprising given the small geographic area, the similarity of Semitic languages, and the large amount of trade that took place among the inhabitants of this region.

The idea that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet is a Euro-centric imposition, based on the traditional history of the transmission of the alphabet to the ancient Greeks. There is no reason to suppose, in a Semitic context, that the Phoenician contribution was more important than that of other peoples, including the Jews. The style of Hebrew writing identified as Palaeo-Hebrew is very obviously a stylistic variant of the same script used by the Phoenicians and others.

Although we can probably never be sure, the scholarship that points away from the Phoenicians having essentially invented the alphabet is tenuous and contested. Saying things like "this alphabet is structurally identical to Hebrew" and giving Jews maximal tentative credit is even more misleading than giving the Pheonician the unqualified total credit. Also, the time at which the Greeks took the idea is secondary.

> the large amoung of trade that took place.

The Pheonicians notably being at the heart of this trade.

> The idea that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet is a Euro-centric imposition

While these days another sort of imposition is more in vogue, it seems...

BTW John, let me ask you this: Who invented falafel?

hhp

John and Hrant: I haven't read about the debate, and was just accepting what I had read long ago. I guess I should have said just that the invention of the alphabet was of historic importance. What are good references for the history?

I've no idea who invented falafel, but they deserve a big kiss.

Hrant, you've misread my intent: I am not trying to claim any maximal credit for the Jews, and I only mentioned the structural identity of the ancient Canaanite or North Semitic alphabet to Hebrew because I was surprised that William, a Jew, had an understanding of the alphabet that is essentially that of an Indo-Europeanist, i.e. looking at the alphabet from outside of a Semitic context.

This is a question about which I know a good deal, because over the past many months I have been engaged in discussions regarding the suitability of encoding Phoenician as a separate script in Unicode. What is interesting is that Indo-Europeanists and Greek Classicists favour the encoding, while Semiticists tend not to because they consider Phoenician simply one stylistic variant of the ancient Canaanite alphabet. They think that this alphabet is misnamed in Unicode (as Hebrew), but that all the characters necessary to encode texts in this alphabet already exist. Having reviewed the lengthy statements from both sides, I have to agree with the Semiticists: Phoenician is one expression of a continuum of alphabet use that extends both backwards and forwards chronologically, and laterally across different linguistic and cultural groups. The fact that the Greeks probably got it from the Phoenicians, should not override our understanding of this alphabet in a Semitic context. If you look at a chart of ancient Canaanite writing, one sees that Phoenician falls in the middle of the continuum: the alphabet was in in use -- with the same structural form, later to become the basis of the Aramaic and Arabic scripts -- before the variant that we identify as Phoenician. Indeed, the actual Phoenician letterforms represent a quite advanced and sophisticated form of this alphabet.

I am keen not to talk about the importance of alphabets or printing but instead the importance of type design.

I have written a dissertation called: 'What factors affect the design of our alphabets? I am now looking to conclude with a debate about the importance of type design. The improvement of legibility seems to be the key importance of good type design? Type dose not appear to have really ever changed the course of history. It could be said the way a text looks helps to translate the message.

>an understanding of the alphabet that is essentially that of an Indo-Europeanist

I was aware that Phoenician is very closely related to the Canaanite language that became Hebrew. But I just naively accepted the usual one-sentence history - that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet. Your recent study of the competing views is fascinating. If you have more, I hope you publish an essay about it, or at least favor us typophiles with a summary.

On the factors that influence type design, Jonathan Lawley's question:

Your new posting makes it much more clear what you are after.

I am by no means an historian of type, but from my reading some of the factors I am aware of affecting type design, and why type design is important, are:

1. Issues of readablity. Here I think the two key changes were: first, the initial re-design of the lower case reflected in the Jenson and Garamond typefaces. They figured out how to make the printed alphabet more readable by making it more optically even than text written with the broad pen. Second, the rebellion against 'modern' typefaces as text faces at the end of the 19th century. The extreme contrast of these made them less readable at text sizes, even when compensating with extra leading, space after sentences, etc. So the return to less contrast was important.

2. Changes in printing technology. These have been very important. The improvement in ink and press I believe allowed Baskerville then Bodoni to make higher contrast faces successfully.
At the end of the 19th century you had Mergenthaler's invention of machine composition and Benton's invention of the the pantographic punch cutter, both of which affected type design.
Then in our time you have first photo type and then computer based type - all of these involved redrawing old faces and creating new ones in order to serve the market successfully.

3. Changes in economic conditions for print. These are important to your question here, as the new type designs served the new economic conditions better than old designs alone. The first example I know of is the cheaper paper, which enabled much more printing, and the spread of print advertising. This provided the impetus of more black type for display, including slab serifs, the first use of the san serif in type, decorative faces, and so on. This has continued in the 20th century and to day. The progressive reduction in cost of buying a typeface has created a boom in typeface design, starting with the pantograph, and much more now with the computer. The sheer variety of faces is better able to serve the market in terms of the demand for unique identity for firms.

4. Changes in design fashion. These are part of the general changes in design, which affect architecture, furniture, clothing, etc. Visual looks tend to go stale after some time, and changing the fashion keeps things visually fresh, interesting and delightful. I think it would be a big mistake to dismiss fashion as worthless because it is ephemeral. It is part of the excitement and delight of modern life. Also the best versions of a given style tend to be revived after twenty or thirty years on the shelf, and become part of a standard repertoire of looks for different purposes.

So summarizing:
1. good type design has first of all benefited readiblity, though that was an early solution, not improved on since.

2. Good type design has helped the new, more economically efficient printing processes to produce material that is often as good or better than the past in terms of readability and aesthetics.

3. Good type design has served advertising very well. Advertising is not a dirty word, though of course we get too much of it. The fact is that most money for design comes from this industry.

4. The delight of new, well executed visual fashions.

I see I also left out: 5. The joy of beautifully designed and produced printing, to which typeface design contributes a lot. and 6. The very important promotion of literacy and preservation of languages, which earlier posters have pointed out.

Oh, and I see I may have left out the main point, which is that good type design in the modern era - 19th century on - is design for a specific purpose. So you have type that will be good for a serious novel, for comic books, for text books, for a serious newspaper, for a teen magazine, for advertizing soap or medicine, etc. So the beauty of modern type design is that you end up, when complimented by good pages design and detailed typography, with pages superbly suited to their purpose.

> I was surprised that William, a Jew, had
> an understanding of the alphabet that is
> essentially that of an Indo-Europeanist

Well, he also didn't know about Arial Sharon until you/we told him. :-> It's OK, there's a lot of things I don't know about Armenians. In fact I'm lacking a thorough knowledge of Armenian typographic history. Luckily though I happen to know what its future should be. :-)

Your studies of Phoenician are interesting, and certainly go beyond my knowledge. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would oppose the inclusion of it in Unicode. It seems a bit like a cultural/political game more than anything. Sort of how Mesrob Mashdots (an Armenian) was given credit for the invention of the Georgian alphabet by virtually everybody, that is until the Armenians in southern Georgia started asking for more autonomy; suddenly Georgian scholars were very eager to take the credit away! And the logic they use? That Mesrob was not fluent in Georgian. As if. And nevermind that he had a native-Georgian advisor in the project (by the name of Jagha). The biggest problem with the Phoenicians is that they're extinct. This makes it a little bit hard for them to defend their history against the living. Sort of like this anthropology professor I had in college, who was always badmouthing Assyrians. I was the only one to complain. If he had badmouthed a certain other ethnic group he would of ended up on a plane to the 80s equivalent of Guantanamo Bay in 5 minutes. Anyway, I digress.

--

> I just naively accepted the usual one-sentence history

Which I actually think is fine. Nothing can be perfect, certainly not one single sentence concerning history. If you need to use one sentence, that one is the least innacurate. If you use a paragraph, then a hint at the complexity of the matter is due. And if you write a balanced article, then you can avoid 90% of potential complaints. To me it's really not about The Truth, it's about integrity, and managing the scope/context of an expression adequately.

----

> I am keen not to talk about the importance of
> alphabets or printing but instead the
> importance of type design.

OK, that's different. Beware, a simple misunderstanding can lead to a flurry of tangents on Typophile! Not that a misunderstanding is strictly required for that. :-)

> the rebellion against 'modern' typefaces as text faces at the end of the 19th century

Actually that started closer to the middle of that century. See Ovink's landmark three-part article in Qu

he also didn't know about Arial Sharon until you/we told him. :->

But I did know how to spell his name (unusual for me!): ari = lion; el = God. Ariel = Lion of God. God help us.

I knew enough about him to detest him, but John pointed me to stuff that was worse than I knew. But he may help lead the region to peace. If so it would be extremely weird and wonderul. On alternate days my theology is that God is a practical joker, with a sense of humor I don't get.

If you need to use one sentence, that one is the least innacurate.

This is less inaccurate:

The alphabet was invented by Semitic peoples, and transferred to the ancient Greeks with whom they traded, most likely by the Phoenicians.

Well this is taking the thread another direction, but as I blabbered a lot 'on topic' above, I have a question:

Is there any idea in these studies of Semitic writing, what were the social conditions among Semitic peoples that were the impetus for development of the alphabet? My old teacher Popper had the theory that a lot of advancement in ideas comes from culture clash, which is often occasioned by trade and travel. Also you need to keep records when you trade.

I heard somewhere or other that the Egyptians actually had some alphabet but surpressed it so only the priests could read. This may be rubbish, but was there trade by those in Canaan from Egypt in the south and also the north? If so, this may have played a role...