“A monument of misplaced scholarship”

… is how a Guardian reviewer describes a new edition of the diaries of Cambridge don and “Pomp and Circumstance”/​“Land of Hope and Glory” lyricist A. C. Benson (1862–1925).

Having previewed the book on Amazon, I concur.

See, for instance, p. 267, n. 4 (the font is Fournier).

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Samuel will return to school this week. Tonight, he realized that he’ll go to school from August until June every year for the foreseeable future.

I told him I went to school for twenty-four years.

He can count much higher than twenty-four, and he can do other mathematical operations – he and Daniel made extraordinary progress this summer (his teacher will be shocked) – but, clearly, the concept of twenty-four years is beyond his reach.

The concept of an hour is barely within it.

He has the concept of living forever. He’s all for it. Like Wilbur the pig, he doesn’t want to die.

Body-text fonts, pt. 25: Berthold Baskerville

This is useful:

“Irish Names You’re Probably Saying Wrong and How to Pronounce Them” (CNN).

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This morning I was lured to a clickbait essay about Microsoft Office’s new default font, Aptos. The thesis: Aptos isn’t bad. The argument: (1) Aptos is wider than Calibri, and (2) the “l” has a curved bottom.

Gratuitous insults were hurled at Papyrus and Comic Sans.

The author, a breezy ignoramus, deserves no greater remuneration for this “analysis” than the cost of one McDonald’s double-cheeseburger.

I’d like to think that my own amateurish font discussions are better. But they, too, probably scrape the depths of witlessness. So I apologize.

Not all amateurs are hacks. John Baskerville was no seasoned pro in 1757 when he printed a book with his new typeface. The work was so good, Cambridge University commissioned more printing by him.

Alas, rival printers denigrated him, and he charged high fees, so his designs fell into disuse. But in the twentieth century, they became ubiquitous. Many variations were developed.

Here is a sample of Güntar Gerhard Lange’s 1961 version for the Berthold company.

The top-heavy “C” distinguishes Berthold’s from other “Baskervilles,” as does the less conspicuous “R” with its beautiful, flowing tail (compare with this later “Baskerville” by Lange).

See also Lange’s version of Garamond, discussed previously as URW Garamond (it was issued first by Berthold).

P.S. The above passage is from Lois Duncan’s Stranger with My Face, the creepiest young-adult novel I’ve read. One could do worse than to work through Duncan’s oeuvre. Beware, Hachette editions from the 2010s have been modernized; the protagonists use e-devices. Not cool.