"The first has to do with the direction of reading. I believe the second is, like many things in typography, customary; there’s nothing inherently better than right-leaning letters, except we’re used to them since those are the only ones we ever see."
Not at all. It is simply because the tip of a quill and the nib of a traditional[1] fountain pen cannot move in any direction. The way you hold it if you are right handed forbids moving in the "backslash"* direction[2] upwards. You can "draw" from top down but not "shove" upwards in that direction. Since in joined script we start letters mostly from the baseline (and have connecting strokes) this makes the "right leaning slant" much easier to write.
The anatomy of a right handed writer also plays a role. When you write fast, the hand pivots at the wrist and fingers as it moves rightward, and that produces a forward slant.
[1] Modern fountain pen nibs have a little ball at tip. So even if you used on in primary school you might not have noticed the directional effect.
[2] That is why the slash (virgula) has existed for centuries while the backslash is an invention of the computer age.
It seems like the author and you actually agree. You described the custom in “customary”; I understood “there’s nothing inherently better” to be in the context of screens.
Also, when left-handed writing became accepted, there were special left handed pens (with a broader tip that you can push forward without it ‘biting’ into the paper)
Finally, how do you know nobody did that, and got harassed for writing incorrectly?
“Particularly when produced spontaneously, mirror writing is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon: the mirroring may range from as small an item as a single reversed letter, through numerous reversed letters but not words, to thousands of pages of mirrored script; the place in the word in which a mirror letter occurs is variable, and numerals may or may not be reversed too”
“What may be the first documented reference to the character is a 1937 maintenance manual from the Teletype Corporation, which includes a photograph showing the keyboard of its Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator WPE-3 using the Wheatstone system. In a 1945 document, Teletype used the name "diagonal key" for the symbol, and gives it a (non-standard) Morse code of ._.._ . Neither document gives its usage”
> If a left handed person does it, its been invented beforehand
I disagree. A left-handed person writing a slash in mirror image doesn’t write a backslash; they write a slash using a different glyph.
There are some fascinating theories on how writing media affects writing direction and glyph shape. A lot of southeast asian languages have a lot of curves/circles because they'd use a stylus on a banana leaf and the curves are less likely to run a split in the leaf.
My father was a southpaw, but he wrote with his right hand, because when he was in primary school, before WWII, he got his hand beaten many times, to encourage him to write only with the right hand.
Except for writing, for everything else requiring skill he used his left hand.
I thought maybe to account for the origin of italics, it could be that it's easier to slant in that direction while writing left-to-right than the other way.
However, when people write Yiddish (which has a right-to-left script) they slant the same way[^1], whereas you'd expect the opposite if it were easier, so maybe it is just arbitrary.
I’m a simple man. I see a post from Marcin about typography or keyboards and I upvote. He has such a passion for this and I’ve always loved his storytelling.
> This is Gorton and the letters are carved into the plastic, so this required some effort!
Having operated an old engraving machine and software I would have assumed it was a lack of effort in line spacing. Some of that old software was very primitive as it was a XYZ engraver which operates like a cnc from an origin point, each line needed an new origin offset you had to specify per-line. That happy mistake is when someone sets the line spacing to the font height.
> Instead of a whole rectangle of pixels being changed at once, the display is updated line by line, starting from the top one.
Isn’t it actually updating from the bottom? If the text is moving to the left and the bottom seems to be further left, those need to be processed first, right?
"The first has to do with the direction of reading. I believe the second is, like many things in typography, customary; there’s nothing inherently better than right-leaning letters, except we’re used to them since those are the only ones we ever see."
Not at all. It is simply because the tip of a quill and the nib of a traditional[1] fountain pen cannot move in any direction. The way you hold it if you are right handed forbids moving in the "backslash"* direction[2] upwards. You can "draw" from top down but not "shove" upwards in that direction. Since in joined script we start letters mostly from the baseline (and have connecting strokes) this makes the "right leaning slant" much easier to write.
The anatomy of a right handed writer also plays a role. When you write fast, the hand pivots at the wrist and fingers as it moves rightward, and that produces a forward slant.
[1] Modern fountain pen nibs have a little ball at tip. So even if you used on in primary school you might not have noticed the directional effect.
[2] That is why the slash (virgula) has existed for centuries while the backslash is an invention of the computer age.
It seems like the author and you actually agree. You described the custom in “customary”; I understood “there’s nothing inherently better” to be in the context of screens.
I'm surprised no left handed writer before the computer age tried to do a forward slash, found it doesn't work, and said "fuck it" and did a backslash
Firstly, in many cultures, people were forced to write with the right time up till the 1970s.p (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_peopl...)
Also, when left-handed writing became accepted, there were special left handed pens (with a broader tip that you can push forward without it ‘biting’ into the paper)
Finally, how do you know nobody did that, and got harassed for writing incorrectly?
Left-handedness is somewhat associated with mirror writing (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2117809/:
“Particularly when produced spontaneously, mirror writing is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon: the mirroring may range from as small an item as a single reversed letter, through numerous reversed letters but not words, to thousands of pages of mirrored script; the place in the word in which a mirror letter occurs is variable, and numerals may or may not be reversed too”
> Also, when left-handed writing became accepted, there were special left handed pens
its still a very unnatural action to do when writing, compared to a backslash
> Finally, how do you know nobody did that, and got harassed for writing incorrectly?
The parent asserts that it was invented for computer use, not beforehand. If a left handed person does it, its been invented beforehand
It was invented for the teletype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash:
“What may be the first documented reference to the character is a 1937 maintenance manual from the Teletype Corporation, which includes a photograph showing the keyboard of its Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator WPE-3 using the Wheatstone system. In a 1945 document, Teletype used the name "diagonal key" for the symbol, and gives it a (non-standard) Morse code of ._.._ . Neither document gives its usage”
> If a left handed person does it, its been invented beforehand
I disagree. A left-handed person writing a slash in mirror image doesn’t write a backslash; they write a slash using a different glyph.
There are some fascinating theories on how writing media affects writing direction and glyph shape. A lot of southeast asian languages have a lot of curves/circles because they'd use a stylus on a banana leaf and the curves are less likely to run a split in the leaf.
My father was a southpaw, but he wrote with his right hand, because when he was in primary school, before WWII, he got his hand beaten many times, to encourage him to write only with the right hand.
Except for writing, for everything else requiring skill he used his left hand.
Marcin's attention to details, showcasing works that demonstrate the craftsmanship in what is typically considered mundane, is really amazing!
Yes, please continue to the Lord's work. Reading this site is always a pleasure.
I thought maybe to account for the origin of italics, it could be that it's easier to slant in that direction while writing left-to-right than the other way.
However, when people write Yiddish (which has a right-to-left script) they slant the same way[^1], whereas you'd expect the opposite if it were easier, so maybe it is just arbitrary.
[^1]: An example of Yiddish handwriting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_orthography#/media/Fil...
I’m a simple man. I see a post from Marcin about typography or keyboards and I upvote. He has such a passion for this and I’ve always loved his storytelling.
> This is Gorton and the letters are carved into the plastic, so this required some effort!
Having operated an old engraving machine and software I would have assumed it was a lack of effort in line spacing. Some of that old software was very primitive as it was a XYZ engraver which operates like a cnc from an origin point, each line needed an new origin offset you had to specify per-line. That happy mistake is when someone sets the line spacing to the font height.
There was a really good post here a few months back on Gorton:
https://aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan/
Discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49201953 .
A long read but well worth it.
> This is not italics. This is not even oblique. This is a side effect of how those displays work.
I think my brain might be autocorrecting for it because I see it straight by default and have to force myself to see the slanting.
> Instead of a whole rectangle of pixels being changed at once, the display is updated line by line, starting from the top one.
Isn’t it actually updating from the bottom? If the text is moving to the left and the bottom seems to be further left, those need to be processed first, right?
On the contrary, it needs to have been the most recent update (so that the text is further along in moving towards the left).
So pleasant to see elegance in such seemingly mundane places. Someone cared and took a little extra time. Bravo to them!
What a lovely example to end on.
Personally, I (guiltily) love using ol'fashioned contractions. I wish it were more normalised.
I wouldn't've thought that others shared that prediliction.
Woah, I've never seen a 24x2 HD44780 before! Only 16x2 and 20x4.
I went to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronovisor_(film) recently. If ever there were a film for typography nerds!
Interesting. I don't see any evidence that the stadium is 4 characters though.
Lovely photographs as well, great composition and the bold editing.
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