December 28, 2011 – 9:00 AM
With four days left to go, we’re jumping ahead to the number 3. Three, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, comes from a completely different tradition than our alphabet. The ten digits in question are about as Arabic as the Latin alphabet is English. They developed over hundreds of years under the hands of mathematicians in India, spread to Persia, and ultimately the whole of the western world during the middle ages.
Threes with a flat top, like in Miles Newlyn’s Rubrik are harder to turn into eights that those with a curved top.
December 27, 2011 – 9:00 AM
We almost lost Z forever when Appius Claudius Caecus dropped it from the Latin alphabet to make room for G. It came back about 200 years later in the 1st century BC because of the lasting influence of the Greeks and their zeta on the written records of the Romans.
Frieze by Julian Morey renders Z with dots set in straight lines.
December 26, 2011 – 9:00 AM
Ampersand isn’t a letter, it’s a character that comes from the Latin word et, which means and. Over time, the scribal hands that recorded these ands grew to think they should connect to form a ligature. While this practice dates back to first century Rome, the name ampersand did not gain popular use until the early 19th century.
Ampersand set in Williams Caslon by William Berkson reads Et to my eye with a kind of extravagance you’ll not find elsewhere in the Caslon Roman. Beautiful to think that these ‘fleurons’ could just be waiting for you in the middle of a block of text.
December 25, 2011 – 9:00 AM
Y this morning. The letter is a direct derivation of the Greek upsilon, which in turn comes from the Phoenician waw. As a side note, Y was seen by early English printers (presumably due to its similarity of form in blackletter script) as a suitable replacement sort for Thorn, Þ. This resulted in the ‘Ye Olde Ribbon Shoppe’ phenomenon, which has led some to believe that people actually talked like that. ‘Ye this; Ye that,’ They didn’t. They said ‘The’, same as us. Thorn was later thrown out of the English alphabet in preference of Th.
Bureau Grot by David Berlow can be credited as one of the first to bring back the now popular device characteristic in wood types of pushing past the curve extrema at the terminals. More recent examples include Parry Grotesque, Maple, and Supria Sans.
December 24, 2011 – 9:00 AM
X comes from the Greek chi. The Etruscans are credited with tacking this letter to the back of their alphabet, along with others, it later becoming the Latin alphabet. A similar mark existed in the Phoenician from which T has come.
December 23, 2011 – 9:00 AM
W slowly made its way into popular use as its own letter well into the 16th century. It was long written and even typeset as UU. In German, W makes the sound that we English speakers associate with the letter V. Keep this in mind next time you utter the words Weiss Antiqua. It’s Weiss, like Miami Weiss.
Ayres Royal by Gert Wiescher decorates the page with flourished initial caps.
December 22, 2011 – 9:00 AM
V shares its decendency with F and Y as coming from the Semitic letter waw, or vav, however you choose to say it. As mentioned previously, V along with U took on a kind of vowel sound for much of its history before arriving, in the 16th century, at the consonant sound we now give it.
Condor by David Jonathan Ross coolly renders V in a face all about controlled contrast of stroke.
December 21, 2011 – 9:00 AM
U’s present associations were more recent to develop. The Romans used U more or less interchangeably with V. This persisted through the middle ages, though rules developed for when to use one over the other. It wasn’t until the 16th century that the two parted ways, and U became representative of the the vowel sound we now pin on it.
U from Ulf Constantin Stein’s DYS.opia reminds me of Dr. Shinobu Ishihara’s tests for perception of color.
December 20, 2011 – 2:58 PM
T has held onto its sound through the years. In early Semitic alphabets such as the Phoenicians’, taw was the final letter of the alphabet, it meant mark, and it looked like a plus sign or x.
In FF Quadraat by Fred Smeijers, lowercase t’s crossbar softens prior to terminating, perhaps to avoid undue attention on the page.
December 19, 2011 – 11:05 AM
Really. S means the new year’s less than two weeks away. The Phoenicians rendered their S-sounding letter (one of them) more like what became the Greek Sigma, Σ. It meant teeth. The Romans were the first to apply the curve to the letter bringing about the shape that’s become synonymous with S.
As mentioned previously, the long-s is not an f, and double-s is not a b.
December 18, 2011 – 9:00 AM
R is for Roman. That’s who we can credit for giving us the R as we know it. Prior to the Etruscan civilization’s downfall, R looked much like P. The late Etruscans added a small mark descending below the bowl at the stem. To draw further distinction the Romans extended this tail to the baseline.
December 17, 2011 – 9:00 AM
Q concludes our set of letters that sound too much like K. It’s for this specific reason that Q has had difficulty staying in a given alphabet, like in Greek (Qoppa) where it serves as a numeral symbol only. The Phoenician Qoph seems to be the first discovered pairing of the shape and the sound. The tail of the Q in Mark van Bronkhorst’s Sweet Sans Hairline purposely and expertly pierces the plane of its round.
December 16, 2011 – 9:00 AM
Before we begin with today’s letter, a note on position: We’re to the heart of December. Sixteen days in and 16 days left until this countdown rings in the new year. It seems to have flown by.
The earliest discovered traces of P render the character as simply a bent line. The Greeks stylized the character into a completely different shape, Pi, while their Rho, indistinguishable in form from our P, went on to grow a tail. Thanks Etruscans.
FF Schmalhans by Hans Reichel gives us this playfully high-waisted P.
December 15, 2011 – 9:00 AM
Up next is O. The letter’s form has changed little from the Phoenician ’ayin, which depicts an eye. Yes, ’ayin starts with an apostrophe. The Greeks, who pioneered the concept of vowels, separated O into small and large versions (both capital letters) called Omikron and Omega.
O’s stroke freely flows and remains open in FF Mister K Informal by Julia Sysmäläinen.
December 14, 2011 – 9:00 AM
N historically represented the shape of a serpent. When the Romans introduced the broad serif to the alphabet, N developed a single serif pointing outward at its top left. In many inscriptions, this detail was ‘cleaned up’ by the letter cutter who finished the stone work.
FF Chambers Sans by Verena Gerlach introduces some looseness to an otherwise tight tech sans with its gestural swash N.
