Frederic W. Goudy by Peter Beilenson

I wish that this story were more interesting. I am willing to believe that the life of Frederic W. Goudy was prosaic and yet could be made heart-pounding. In this case, the complete lack of examples only delivered a dinner speech for those already in the know. Fonts and faces are cited by name and they are described as heavy or full but not strong and so on, none of which delivers a tenable image.

 

Composed in Village No. 2 by
the Lanston Monotype Machine Co.
of Philadelphia. Printed by Walpole Printing.
Paper from Quincy P. Emery. Bound by 
Russell-Rutter. 300 copies made.

Attribution: American Type Founders.
Digitisation is public-domain.via Wikimedia Commons

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Armadillocon 45 

Armadilloncon 44 Part 2 

Armadillocon 40 Part 1 

Armadillocon 39 

Words into Type

Sir Robert worked hard and well to make himself a king and then wanted to unite his realm under a single banner. So, he called his vassals into his great hall where they stood with their shields, escutcheons, and crests. Looking out over the array, he said, “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” (That fable was in a computer magazine from about 1987.) 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

I consider The Chicago Manual of Style to be the baseline. It is easy, direct, and common for American English. That volume is in my wife’s office. She edited over a hundred books for Bantam-Doubleday Dell and has several other style guides on her shelf. I have Chicago’s origin, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian, fifth edition revised and expanded by Bonnie Birtwistle Honigsblum, University of Chicago Press, 1987. Unless otherwise directed, I turn to that first.

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

When I worked at Coin World newspaper, we were given our own copies of the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. It was a revelation to learn what a newspaper can be sued for. The truth is not always a defense in a court of law. In Michigan, it is and that was written into the state constitution.

 

Microsoft PowerPoint

For science writing, I have the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fourth edition, 1994. 

 

The book that taught me first was Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. I still open it for random reminders and I pick up used copies to give to people who tell me that they want to be writers. But OMG it is over a century old. OTOH, the best style is conservative. Of course, YMMV. 

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

On that basis, I was happy to find Modern English Handbook, Third Edition by Robert M. Gorrell and Charlton Laird, Prentice-Hall, 1962. I bought it for 50 cents in 2001. It was the textbook for 12^th graders at Cleveland’s Lincoln High School when I was in the ninth and tenth grades 1964-65 and also on the staff of the school newspaper. My first journalism class was an eighth grade elective, but junior high pupils were not allowed to work on the Lincoln Log. At that time, I also had printing as a shop class elective. The Lincoln Log was not a school product but was contracted to a commercial printer which produced other school and community newspapers. With large ethnic communities, Cleveland had weekly papers in German, Hungarian, and other languages.

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

 

I actually never used Words into Type. It is in Laurel’s office. I just liked the phrase as a descriptive title for this blog entry. 

 

Accepted as an assistant editor for This Month in Astronomical History, an online publication of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society, I was promoted early to editor in the wake of the Covid crisis. Considering that my degrees are in criminology and social science, and that I am an Amateur Affiliate member of the AAS, it is an honor and privilege to be responsible for fact-checking, as well as grammar, syntax, and style. I collaborate with subject matter experts, researchers, faculty, and other astronomers. I recruit writers and also write features to fulfill the editorial calendar of monthly columns. I report to a senior editorial team that is chosen biannually. Find the series here: https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history.

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

 

I developed a style guide for HAD’s TMIAH. (Use endnotes not footnotes. The ampersand is not a word.) For AAS writing, the foundation is the style guide of the American Physical Society. However, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar amended that when he served as editor of the Astrophysical Journal (1952-1971). That perturbing force sent the AAS into a different path. Just for one example, we do not require that manuscripts be submitted in TeX/LaTeX.

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

I learned Donald Knuth’s programming language for typesetting mathematics publications back in 1985 when I was taking computer classes and teaching technical writing at Lansing Community College. The Arts and Sciences Division acquired a DEC VAX 11/785 and interactive terminals, overcoming the objections of the Business Division with their IBM 360 mainframe and punched cards in Cobol and RPG. I served as the editor of the newsletter of the DECUS chapter. I then worked as a technical writer for a medical information firm whose previous technical writer had the insight to acquire TeX. Consequently, I have almost 40 years of experience with HTML.

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Start the Presses! 

Art & Copy 

Art as Ordered Narrative 

Innovation and Discovery 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Hola Yeah, mama was kill, but I record our child. I'll find appointment wait I'm in bed for stuff on your list and at Quadro qua de la Carte look at Santos on moose. If they are Jagger, semi not Santos de audio programmed required for Seguro identification Conforto, El Pago un they may come into actual, El Pago un they may come into actual actual

Was this transcription useful or not useful?

(This was the Spanish translation of an original voicemail message with an accurate English transcription. It was from a doctor's office confirming an appointment. The only glitch in that, going back three years, is that it speaks "Covid-19" as C-O-V ... I-D nineteen.") 

Machines that mimic life originated in Alexandria about 100 BC to 100 AD. The initial input was a coin dropped into a slot and the result was a spoken prayer. In the Middle Ages, certain entrepreneurs seeking patronage built mechanical chickens that ground grain and water into exrement. Windmills and water mills worked at more productive tasks. (See L. Sprague de Camp's Ancient Engineers.) 

The Jacquard machine and the steam engine created the context for Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Thea von Harbou's Metropolis, and then Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The dream was the nightmare.

On the Cloudy Nights discussion board, which is mostly dedicated to chat about observational astronomy, in the forum for “Science! Astronomy, Space Exploration, and Others,” a topic title was the question “What can’t artificial intelligence do?”  The introductory post started: “We have made machines that can play chess better than we can. We are close to making machines that can write novels better than we can. Threshold question. Is there a limit? I can see no reason that there should be. The interesting question. What happens when we can make machines that can do everything better than we can?” In 100 replies, I was the only person who pointed out that while an AI could write a better novel, the novel itself was an invention. I received just one "like" for the comment. (On NecessaryFacts here.)

The Eliza computer program took your input, parsed it into a question, and then carried on a conversation with you. The program was created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum as an example of what natural language computing could be capable of. He was shocked to find people actually conversing seriously with the program, opening up to it about their personal lives. (See Computer Power and Human Reason.) 

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BSides Austin 2023 

Documentation is Specification  

Ruby Methods the Ruby Way 

John Kemeny Knew: We Shall Have Computed 

A Musical Joke

I found the book by serendipity, misshelved among works on Typography in the UT Fine Arts Library. I brought it home and then opened it to read:

“I often find that the humorous, joking aspect of music is missing in many performances, even in those of accomplished artists. It seems that people feel uncomfortable allowing the great wok of music to be anything but sublimely serious.”  

“… crescendo does not automatically mean either agitato or accelerando. In many cases, quite to the contrary crescendo is an indication of the music becoming broader, more majestic, more dignified. If an alteration of timing is justified, such instances may call for allargando rather than an accelerando. Similarly, diminuendo should not always be taken as an indication of calming down, connected with rallentando. I can think of many examples of diminuendo that indicate, in fact, an increase of activity, albeit of a fantastic, visionary order, sometimes accompanied by an accelerando (see passages in a variety of works by Scriabin, for example).” Boris Berman, Notes from the Pianist’s Bench, Yale University Press, 2000,  pages 146-149, passim.

About 1988 or so, as a local newspaper reporter, I attended a concert duet for harp and voice. It was nice and all, a range from “classical” (perhaps Bach and others much later), and at least one modern piece, probably two. The last was “The Owl & the Pussy Cat.” I did not know the piece then and had to search for it now. It was the Edward Lear poem. I am not sure if the music was Stravinsky or another. The audience did not entirely suppress its giggles as the soloist sang about her lovely pussy. Not knowing the Lear poem, I, too, was surprised but having grown up with the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of George Szell and his assistants, Louis Lane and Robert Shaw, I learned well to suppress all emotions while in the audience. After the concert, the harpist replied something like, “Nonsense. After all doesn’t ‘scherzo’ mean ‘joke’?”  A light went on – Es gang mir ein Licht an: In German, das Scherz means “joke.” The word must have come from Italian because the Germans would never have invented the word on their own.

Well, that’s not quite fair. Google “Haydn joke” - https://www.therightnotes.org/haydn-s-humour.html Other composers also used the unexpected to surprise the audience. For one thing, from the chamber music of the Enlightenment to the huge civic halls of our time, many of the listeners are players if not performers themselves. When the Beethoven Sonata op. 31. No. 3 opens with a cadential harmonic progression, they get the joke, or so wrote Boris Berman. I don't understand it. 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

 

Rachmaninoff 

Music Makes You Braver 

Austin at Night 

World War II Sweetheart Dance 2019