From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Sun Dec 07 2003 - 00:29:17 EST
At 08:28 PM 12/6/2003, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>Height is a (the?) recognized distinction between upper and lower case.
>Width isn't. So a "wide capital" wouldn't be the most intuitive choice.
While I agree that a wide form isn't a good way to distinguish a capital
from an otherwise identical lowercase letter, I disagree that height is the
obvious or necessary distinction between upper and lowercase. Frankly, I
don't think there is a single distinguishing characteristic of uppercase
vs. lowercase letters for which you cannot find exceptions.
>What Ken says makes sense: lowercase is dominant, by far. Something
>that's caseless (in a script that otherwise has case) which suddenly
>acquires case has to be considered lowercase, since that's how it was used
>all along.
Largely true, although there is the example of the palochka (little stick),
which is an uppercase-only letter used in some Cyrillic orthographies.
>Yeah, but then we couldn't have the fun of arguing and making up stuff. :)
I accept the view that the existing glottal stop character is lowercase,
but the typical glyph form is not really appropriate for a Latin lowercase
letter: it breaks the simple ascender characteristic of the script. If I'd
been asked to design upper- and lowercase forms from scratch, I would make
the cap form the same height as e.g. P, and as massive, and I would make
the lowercase form a *descending* letter, with the bowl filling the
x-height and with a straight descender terminating like that of p. This
seems to me the only way you can insert the glottal stop into a Latin
alphabet in a way that harmonises with the other Latin letterforms and
which, importantly, gives a predictable model for all type styles.
This suggests variant glyphs dependent on whether the glottal stop is being
used in phonetics or as a letter in an orthography.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_
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