Snowed in, pt. 3 — “Effingham”
Three days of tutoring; so far, no tutees. :) And today, no work for me …
… or for Stephen (unemployed) …
… or for Mary & Martin (last night, Martin came downstairs and announced that because of the weather, school was canceled for him. Then he laughed maniacally and removed his trousers. … Mary anxiously peered at the TV until, several hours later, her school was canceled).
I finished reading Iris Murdoch’s book, The Unicorn. All along, I wondered: How should it have been typeset?
One major character has this sequence in his name: f-f-i. This, in itself, is unremarkable; but the resulting ligature leaps out. In Times Roman — what I was reading — the name looks like this:
… or for Mary & Martin (last night, Martin came downstairs and announced that because of the weather, school was canceled for him. Then he laughed maniacally and removed his trousers. … Mary anxiously peered at the TV until, several hours later, her school was canceled).
I finished reading Iris Murdoch’s book, The Unicorn. All along, I wondered: How should it have been typeset?
One major character has this sequence in his name: f-f-i. This, in itself, is unremarkable; but the resulting ligature leaps out. In Times Roman — what I was reading — the name looks like this:
Which, reiterated, is distracting.
Earlier this week, at IU, I found an edition set in Fairfield:
Would Palatino have improved the name? (I wondered, walking home through snow). The fs and is are discrete:
At body-text size, they pose no obstacle to readability:
And then I considered that the person, Effingham, is pompous and self-important, and no doubt deserves to carry such an ostentatious marker in his name.