Talk:History of Western typography

Educational assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 27 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thustall (article contribs).

Carolingian Minuscules discrepancy

This article is excellent, and I would love to see many of the other articles it links to meet the same standard. As a type amateur, I'm not qualified to make anything but minor edits, but one particular discrepancy I noticed was in Carolingian minuscule#Role_in_Cultural_Transmission. My specific concerns can be found on that talk page (Talk:Carolingian_minuscule#Role_in_Cultural_Transmission. (BTW - is there a better forum for asking about this? I didn't see anything in the talk page guidelines to specify. Perhaps Typophile is really the right forum...) Thanks!

Eeblet 16:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Corrected link: Talk:Carolingian minuscule#Role in cultural transmission -- Beland (talk) 20:34, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Quality of last two sections

The quality of the writing at the end of this article, in the "Hot Type..." and "Art Nouveau..." sections, is really poor. Not sure what happened there but those two need a rewrite at the very least. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.122.9.38 (talk) 04:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I concur as to the truly poor quality of these sections. I am not sufficiently expert to do this justice, but I write well and certainly know how to cite, so perhaps when I teach my Digital Multimedia course this Fall I will tackle them if they are still in such deplorable condition. The line "The 90 years between 1890 and 1980 coined typography until now" makes absolutely no sense to me at all, and I hesitate to venture a rewrite because it is unclear to me what the author was trying to convey. Citations throughout the entire article are weak as well. A final thought: I don't actually know Dr. Luc Devroye (http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html) but he would be my candidate to perhaps do the most justice to a rewrite of these sections. Ray Trygstad (talk) 05:05, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Writing Style ...

Just ran into this article on a random browse through Wikipedia. Very interesting review. However, the tone of the article comes off very flowery/gushy, to the point I'm concerned it breaches point of view (WP:NPOV) guidelines. Selected examples: "structurally-perfect design, near-perfect execution"; "its fullest refinement"; "a seamless fusion"; "become corrupted"; "The exquisite design". It's nothing overt, but there is a continuous subtle underlayment of implicit value judgments throughout the article.

The article is very well done, and would probably do well as an essay/paper in a university course. However, an encyclopedia should take a more distant and "dry" tone, as compared to an essay. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the article, I just think it could benefit from a more "neutral" tone. -- 22:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

...the tone of the article comes off very flowery/gushy, to the point I'm concerned it breaches point of view (WP:NPOV) guidelines.

"very flowery/gushy" is an exaggeration in itself. If you're so concerned about breach of NPOV please post your assertion(s) at the Wikipedia Village Pump and get some more opinions from registered Wikipedians. So far you are the only person to express such doubt over NPOV. Your view alone of the writing's qualities is insufficient proof of the merit of that view.

Please explain how, exactly, the following statements are very flowery/gushy: "structurally-perfect design, near-perfect execution"; "its fullest refinement"; "a seamless fusion"; "become corrupted"

Those are nothing more than articulate expressions of aesthetic qualities. In books about type design they are all standard expressions. All are verifiable published views of the type historians referenced. If they seem subjective that's because all published writings on aesthetics are subjective. The article merely reiterates these published views from reliable sources.

...a continuous subtle underlayment of implicit value judgments throughout...

That's the nature of writing on aesthetics. The value judgements you percieve are published, established views of the world's leading type historians. A typeface design cannot be described without value judgements.

...an encyclopedia should take a more distant and "dry" tone, as compared to an essay. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the article, I just think it could benefit from a more "neutral" tone.

That would render it useless, impotent and ineffective. Please read this: Talk:Aldus_Manutius#Overly flowery and unsubstantiated claims. Then read some more WP articles on the visual arts. You will find this kind of descriptive writing everywhere. Encyclopedia Britannica contains it too.

Arbo talk 11:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I think there is some merit in this complaint. For example, this whole paragraph looks to me as though it has been lifted from somewhere:

"The Jenson roman was an explicitly typographic letter designed on its own terms that declined to imitate the appearance of hand-lettering. Its effect is one of a unified cohesive whole, a seamless fusion of style with structure, and the successful convergence of the long progression of preceding letter styles. Jenson adapted the structural unity and component-based modular integration of Roman capitals to humanistic minuscule forms by masterful abstract stylization. The carefully-modelled serifs follow an artful logic of asymmetry. The ratio of extender lengths to letter bodies and the distance between lines results in balanced, harmonious body of type. Jenson also mirrors the ideal expressed in renaissance painting of carving up space (typographic "white space") with figures (letters) to articulate the relationship between the two and make the white space dynamic."

This may be what a historian of typography has written in a book on typographic history, but that does not necessarily make it ideal for Wikipedia, in which the writing style should aim to be as accessible as possible. Phrases in the paragraph which I think are not particularly accessible include "explicitly typographic letter designed on its own terms", "seamless fusion of style with structure", "component-based modular integration" and "artful logic of asymmetry". I think these phrases do not fit well with WP:BETTER in that they would not be clear to a reader who knows little about the topic. Putting over the ideas they contain succinctly but with greater clarity would be no easy task, I grant. Also, there is "descriptive writing" and then there is obfuscation and obscurantism, which sources may indulge in for their own reasons. Globbet (talk) 01:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The paragraph you quote looks to you like it was lifted from somewhere, but you won't find it in any publication because I wrote it from scratch myself using writing skills and ability honed from 20 years working as a professional copy writer. I'm also a professional typeface designer, so I understand the art and craft of typography and typeface design very well.

"seamless fusion of style with structure", "component-based modular integration" and "artful logic of asymmetry" are all original expressions coined by me specifically for the purpose of describing Jenson's roman type. These expressions are examples of literate English and literate writing of an advanced caliber. Readers need only be familiar with the meaning of each word in each expression to figure out what it all means. Once they've done that they will know much more about the topic than they did before reading the article.

"seamless fusion of style with structure" could be applied to any art where it occurs and is not specific to typeface design or typography. The same is true of "component-based modular integration" and "artful logic of asymmetry". I'm good at writing about aesthetics and arts, and did the best I could when writing the text of this article. The point of using such efficiently condensed descriptive writing technique was to cover as much ground in as few words as possible. Maybe I am too efficient in economy of means.

The first piece of advice to Wikipedians given by departing co-founder Larry Sanger was, "Use common sense. The first rule of Wikipedia is Ignore all the rules. If it makes a better encyclopedia, do it." WP:BETTER is a set of general guidelines. The point of guidelines is that they are not rules. Sanger's point was that guidelines can be and should be ignored if they are holding back the progress of Wikipedia. The box at the top of WP:BETTER says:

This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.

So I'm using common sense for this one.

Can you explain what you mean by this: "Also, there is "descriptive writing" and then there is obfuscation and obscurantism, which sources may indulge in for their own reasons."

That seems to be based on your incorrect assumption that the text was stolen from an existing publication. Interest in obfuscation and obscurantism sounds like your concern. They weren't my intent when I wrote the text, and you need to get more opinions on this to establish just how obscure or obfuscated the text is, or isn't. Arbo talk 14:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah. So you're the culprit! My apologies for suggesting plagiarism. You do indeed seem to have done a lot of very good work on this article.

I am not quite sure what more I can say about obfuscation. I think we both know what it is and why people do it. I would not dream of even hinting that you are guilty.

I still suggest that the writing style (about which you are entertainingly immodest) could be more easily accessible to a wider audience, even if that has to be at the expense of making it more prolix. However, I am happy to wait and see what others may think. I don't suppose this discussion gets much traffic, but I have no intention of canavasing support.

Your authorship of much of the text gives rise to another consideration. For an article composed with such erudition, it seems to me to be short on in-line references, to the extent that is open to the challenge of original research. I am sure you have the references to justify what you have written, but I think the text may need to be more liberally salted with citations. Globbet (talk) 00:22, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Stand by. I need to find time to work on it and add more inline citations.

Arbo talk 18:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It's been 13 years, but I think the original commenter was onto something. In my judgment, this language unambiguously violates MOS:EDITORIAL. BalinKingOfMoria (talk) 18:40, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

"Whiteletter" Note

"Whiteletter" A better history can be found in "Exploring Typography" By Tova Rabinowitz, chapter 3, page 81 Wapiti (talk) 18:38, 2 September 2011 (UTC)