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The Role of National Orthography in Font Design

This article was constructed from postings by Anders Thulin, Charles A. Bigelow, and ``fieseler'' from Jan 1994.

An open question: what role does national orthography play in the asthetics of a given font?

Given that uppercase letters occur more frequently in German than in English, are German font designs better for typesetting German (because the designer is more concious of the relationship between capitals and lowercase)? Similarly, are French designs better for typesetting French because the designer is more atuned to the appearance of accents?

Speaking of accents, there are apparently fonts in which the dots over the ``i'' and ``j'' are not at the same height as the dieresis over accented vowels. (Does anyone have an example of this?) Surely this is an error that a designer accustomed to working with accented letters is unlikely to make?

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Excerpted from The comp.fonts FAQ, Copyright © 1992-96 by Norman Walsh