[HN Gopher] Write it in Garamond
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Write it in Garamond
Author : prostoalex
Score : 96 points
Date : 2022-02-02 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| pseingatl wrote:
| Sabon. Vollkorn. Coelacanth. Satyr. LeMonde Livre. Bembo.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The font that's already installed on your computer called
| "Garamond" is not the only Garamond, and frankly not the best
| looking IMO.
|
| The original Garamond is of course from centuries ago. Now there
| are now multiple digital versions of Garamond from different font
| foundries.
|
| If you get the chance, I recommend instead "ITC Garamond Std" or
| "Adobe Garamond Pro" (both from Adobe Font Folio), especially the
| former. I especially enjoy the little curve on the serif at the
| top left of letters such as "r" or "n" which I found to be
| especially charming, but sadly missing from many Garamond
| implementations.
|
| A screenshot of a few Garamonds: https://imgur.com/a/dxWHsh0
| zarakshR wrote:
| And EB Garamond[0] if you want a free font.
|
| [0] - https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/eb-garamond
| perardi wrote:
| ITC Garamond and Adobe Garamond are very, very different
| typefaces.
|
| Adobe: https://www.typewolf.com/garamond
|
| ITC: https://www.typewolf.com/itc-garamond
|
| Adobe's version is closer to the original version, and by my
| contemporary aesthetics, better. ITC Garamond gives me
| "advertisement for a Mac II with Color LaserWriter". Very 1987.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Apple...
| pointlessone wrote:
| I don't know. Adobe looks closer to Apple Garamond than ITC.
| https://www.typewolf.com/apple-garamond
| perardi wrote:
| Apple Garamond was an optically compressed version of ITC
| Garamond.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Appl
| e...
|
| You can really see it in the x-height.
| Sunspark wrote:
| For body text, I would say the 1st and 4th in the screenshot
| are the best ones. Which ones are they?
| kstrauser wrote:
| That was a fun article, but this stood out:
|
| > I cannot start any document -- a novel, a letter, an invoice --
| without first clicking on the drop-down menu labeled "Font" and
| considering my options.
|
| This is why I do most of my writing in Markdown using something
| like iA Writer. The temptation to make my words look pretty
| before I've even written them is too strong, and I'm happy to see
| those decisions go away altogether. I can style things after I'm
| finished, but until then, I want to think about the words on the
| screen.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It sounds to me like the author is distracted when it's _not_
| in Garamond, and changing the font gets that issue out of their
| head.
| kstrauser wrote:
| In that case, if I were the author, I'd set my default
| template to _always_ be Garamond. Then it's one less thing to
| fret over when they sit down to write.
| ikawe wrote:
| > until then, I want to think about the words on the screen.
|
| The article is called "write it in Garamond" - the premise of
| the article is that the chosen font directs the words to be
| written.
|
| > creative output of any kind depends upon a steady stream of
| tiny self-delusions -- guardrails to keep yourself from veering
| into a pit of self-doubt and despair
|
| You're letting iA Writer choose this effect for you, which is
| also valid, but it doesn't "free" you from the effect (if you
| buy into the article).
| cgriswald wrote:
| It is a mistake to paint all writers with the same brush. To
| the degree that 'guardrails' are needed, they're not needed
| by all writers for the reasons the author needs them.
| Likewise, not all writers are affected by choice of writing-
| font in the same way or to the same degree. The way in which
| the GP is affected is to be overwhelmed by choice and the
| degree to which this occurs is high. We have no reasons to
| believe which particular font iA Writer uses has any effect
| on GP at all. This is not the case for the article's author,
| who claims to be strongly affected by font choice.
|
| Even if it could be proven that all writers are subtly
| affected by choice of writing-font, using the same font for
| everything all the time might dampen this effect to the
| degree that such a font is a blank slate as far as the mind
| is concerned.
|
| This certainly seems to be the case for me. I find many fonts
| off-putting when writing (poetry, prose, or code) to the
| degree that they break my focus; but otherwise they don't
| really seem to influence me. However, I typically use only a
| handful of 'not ugly' fonts and don't really 'see' these
| fonts at all. The degree to which they might influence my
| writing is tiny, at best. No one could look at two pieces of
| my writing and guess which font I used or even if I used a
| different font between them.
|
| I think, likely, the _way_ in which people write has a huge
| influence on how affected they are about any particular
| variable, including fonts. I write in a way that feels like I
| 'm constructing a building; structure first, then decoration.
| Others make paintings. Still others, who knows. It is a
| strong claim to make that all these writers are thinking,
| feeling, and experiencing the same thing with regard to any
| particular variable.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm not convinced. Before we had computer fonts, we generally
| wrote with pen/pencil or a typewriter. Again, it's fun to
| think about, but I think there's lots of value in not making
| the decision at all. I get what you're saying that iA Writer
| actually made it for me, but after you use that kind of
| system for a while, the styling completely disappears. Your
| brain just accepts that "this is what words look like now"
| and moves past it.
| hollander wrote:
| Written in font-family: nyt-imperial,georgia,'times new
| roman',times,serif - no Garamond.
| gtufano wrote:
| well, it's the New York _Times_ after all... it can't use
| Garamond. It's in the header
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Different newspaper.
| pseingatl wrote:
| But in both cases, designed for narrow, columnar text.
| letouj wrote:
| A joke, yes, but note that Times New Roman was commissioned
| and first used by the LONDON Times, not the New York Times.
| e12e wrote:
| > I cannot start any document -- a novel, a letter, an invoice --
| without first clicking on the drop-down menu labeled "Font" and
| considering my options.
|
| I love taking the time to craft my invoices in Comic Sans. I like
| the idea that my clients pay with a smile.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I wish I could use Garamond, but it's not a "common" web font and
| its italics are dreadful, so I mostly adopted Georgia instead
| (with a fallback to whatever default serif the browser may have).
| enricozb wrote:
| Any time I am reading a new book, I use Calibre to change the
| font to EB Garamond [0] before moving it to my e-reader.
|
| [0]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/EB+Garamond
| robbyking wrote:
| That version of Garamond is gorgeous! My favorite, hands down.
| gjvc wrote:
| Garamond as used by Apple in the 90s had an 80% aspect ratio as I
| discovered by experimenting with the version of Garamond I had at
| the time as supplied by the Electronic Font Foundry for Acorn
| RISC OS, the font rendering of which deserves more exposure.
| (Sadly, the author of the font stuff, Neil Raine, passed away in
| the 00s in a hang-gliding accident. RIP)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If I'm using Bitstream Charter (or DejaVu Serif), am I missing
| out by not having Garamond? If I am, which of the many Garamond
| variants are worth buying?
| unixhero wrote:
| I can confirm.
|
| I wrote all of my papers in GARAMOND PREMR PRO, and they all
| looked amazing.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Substack needs to fix their serif font (Spectral). It is the
| worst offender. Everytime I see a substack post, it is with this
| typeface with extremely loose fitting. Substack has one and only
| one job - to present text to their audience and it is
| unbelievable to me that they messed up it. They need to hire a
| typographer to advise or just use Source Serif Pro for free.
| Spectral typeface needs to be nuked from the planet.
|
| Here is an example:
| https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/football-101-no-51-walte...
|
| Before: https://i.imgur.com/bFzKuJp.png
|
| After (Adobe Source Serif): https://i.imgur.com/YN6d6oo.png
| rbanffy wrote:
| For the same reason, I use a 3278 terminal font. Everything on
| the terminal seems more important, more imposing, with it. ;-)
| Archelaos wrote:
| "... let myself believe that my words are as beautiful as the
| typeface in which they appear."
|
| Perhaps it would be better when revising text to use Comic Sans
| to look at one' s own writing more critically.
| civilized wrote:
| If I wrote in Comic Sans I'd probably give less of a shit and
| just let it rip.
| dunham wrote:
| Simon Peyton Jones does his presentations in comic sans, but I
| probably wouldn't use it for running text.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Garamond is a fine font, but using Garamond Italic should be
| banned by law. I scream internally when I see it and how the
| different letters don't match visually. Printed books using
| Garamond Italic are the worst.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=garamond+italic&iax=images&ia=imag...
| AlanYx wrote:
| The worst offender is Monotype Garamond -- not all
| Garamond/Garalde/Aldine faces have such oddball italics. That
| italic isn't even based on a historical Garamond; it's based on
| a related face by Jean Jannon, which is part of the reason it
| doesn't match.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| I disagree. I love that Garamond italic is not a slightly
| cleaned-up oblique version of the Roman font, but an entirely
| different font of its own. I wish more typefaces would do that.
|
| In stately Garamond text, the italic stands out, which helps it
| fulfill its use in emphasis. However, I agree that because of
| this heightened visibility, its use should be limited to where
| it's truly needed. It's sort of like chili powder: used wisely,
| it enhances; used excessively, and it draws too much attention
| to itself.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I had to write dozens of long technical documents for a
| company that used Garamond as their standard font.
|
| Except that the guy who designed the templates used a Mac and
| had no idea how bad the Garamond font looks on Windows.
|
| The italic especially made my eyes bleed.
|
| My solution when I couldn't take it any more was to use an
| Adobe Garamond font and embed it in the document...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Do you recommend a font similar to Garamond with better
| _congruence_ between the regular serif and _italic_?
| jancsika wrote:
| > I scream internally when I see it and how the different
| letters don't match visually.
|
| What's wrong with it? You mean stuff like the vertical part of
| "j" and "p" having slightly different angles?
| jakub_g wrote:
| Most letters look like at 20% angle, while a few others at
| 10% angle. Compare uppercase I vs lowecase t. Also m and a
| few others.
| jordic wrote:
| Perhaps we need an expert on design history. Typefaces are
| a complex thing with lot's of design decisions behind.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| Not the OP, but I can see why they don't like it. Just
| looking at "Garamond Italic" written in Garamond Italic, the
| "m" jumps out for having a completely different angle to its
| surrounding letters in the word (apart from the "n", which is
| similarly super-slanted. The effect of going between the
| angles of "I" and "t" is similarly offensive.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Georgia does italics better and is more widely available
| chungy wrote:
| Oh man, that is _awful_ -- you weren 't kidding.
|
| I don't know what's wrong with plain ol' Computer Modern (as
| TeX uses by default).
| vngzs wrote:
| Computer Modern looks terrible on computers (ironically!).
| It's only tolerable on relatively high-DPI printed documents
| which are capable of rendering the intricate, narrow parts of
| the legends. I wish people would stop using it for digitally
| distributed PDFs.
| howinteresting wrote:
| I think Computer Modern looks fantastic digitally (even on
| a 110ppi screen), and lends an air of seriousness to the
| text.
| chungy wrote:
| I agree with this. I've never really seen it as
| objectionable.
| neysofu wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if that's subconsciously learnt
| by association of the typeface with (La)TeX and academia
| rather than based on the sole merits of Computer Modern
| itself. If we're just looking at the typography, Computer
| Modern is quite average and its screen legibility is
| horrible (vertical strokes are way too thin).
| chungy wrote:
| Exposure to Computer Modern primarily via PDFs in the
| late 1990s-early 2000s was the reason I became interested
| in learning what produced such documents in the first
| place; I don't remember how, but it wasn't hard to learn
| about TeX after that.
|
| The outstanding quality of Computer Modern even on the
| low-res screens of those days is what appealed to me (to
| be fair, TeX's ability to produce professional-quality
| kerning, hyphenation, line density, et al, also
| contributed). I fell in love with it even before I knew
| what TeX was.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Computer Modern is IMO way too thin and has huge, pointy
| serifs. I like Palatino (Latex: mathpazo) best, but Garamond
| - a similar style - is fine, too.
| empthought wrote:
| Have you tried Charter?
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Charter seems OK, the thickness variation seems somehow
| strange to me (couldn't decide whether to vary it or
| not?), but I like that it doesn't vary thickness quite as
| much as Palatino on numeric digits.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| For TeX typesetting Utopia (and derivatives like Fourier
| and Erewhon) is also good if you want something that was
| designed for book (not journal or newspaper) body text but
| has a less mediaeval feel (and more Cyrillic, sigh).
| brimble wrote:
| Good lord. Is there a _reason_ it 's like that, or is it simply
| extremely poorly-made? That looks like a not-very-good machine
| learning algorithm tried to make a font variant.
| egypturnash wrote:
| _Whether designed by Garamond, Jannon or someone else,
| Garamonds share a few central characteristics. Their serifs
| -- the little extra strokes on letters like "i" and "r" --
| are often sloped or slightly scooped. They have low
| "x-heights" -- that's the height of a lowercase letter like
| "e," "a" and, obviously, "x" -- and high crossbars, or
| horizontal strokes, on letters like "e." Garamond's strokes
| are widely varied and full of character -- they were
| originally made, after all, to resemble handwriting. The
| italics tend to reveal some of their most idiosyncratic
| strokes, such as the loop on a lowercase "k," or the upward
| flick at the bottom of a lowercase "h."_
|
| - from the article
| brimble wrote:
| Thanks, that illuminates some of it, but the main thing
| that stood out to me was the extreme differences in slant
| on some letters. Those simply look like (very obvious)
| mistakes--but surely aren't? That aspect doesn't really
| make it look more like handwriting, to me, but kinda
| ransom-lettery.
| [deleted]
| jsmith99 wrote:
| The Harry Potter books in many countries are all set in Adobe
| Garamond and the italic really makes the spells stand out in a
| spiky, sizzly, and slightly sinister way that works well.
| barrenko wrote:
| Interesting, thanks.
| jdrc wrote:
| Well i 'll try using this bookmarklet:
| javascript:void(document.body.innerHTML+='<style>*{font-
| family:Garamond,serif!important;}</style>');
|
| Let's see if it makes me believe your comments
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What would be the equivalent string to include in a
| chrome/userContent.css file?
| jdrc wrote:
| i m not sure but i think just the css will suffice:
| * { font-family: Garamond,serif!important; }
| pseingatl wrote:
| Agreed. Times Roman was designed for narrow newspaper columns. It
| has no business anywhere else.
| twic wrote:
| Garamond is very nice, but will always be associated with Apple
| for me; i avoid it for that reason.
| brirec wrote:
| That's kind of silly. They haven't used Garamond for 20 years,
| and when they did it was a highly tweaked version. (Apple
| Garamond is very condensed, for one).
|
| But that said, I think the point the author is trying to make
| is more about drafting in a font that makes you feel good about
| your writing. If Garamond doesn't do it for you, don't use
| Garamond.
| ellegriffin wrote:
| I am EXACTLY the same way. I write each of my novels in a
| different font depending on the aesthetic of the novel. The font
| helps me stay in character as I write it.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Write It in Doves Type, imo - https://typespec.co.uk/doves-type/
| pseingatl wrote:
| No italics, unfortunately.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Not yet!, https://twitter.com/thedovestype/status/83657584651
| 3147905?s...
| devindotcom wrote:
| I have a related habit - when I start a new book on an e-reader,
| I mess around with the font settings until I get the right feel
| for that book. Sometimes it's just a basic match: a 19th-century
| novel will need a heavier serif, while recent sci-fi will have a
| modern non-serif. But you can mess with the weight, spacing,
| margins, add new fonts for variety, all sorts of things. It helps
| each book feel more like a book instead of just a long text
| document.
| copperx wrote:
| One cool thing about the new Kindle (at least the Paperwhite
| that I have) is that you can load your own fonts. The fonts
| only work with KFX books, though. But that's a Calibre
| conversion away.
| neves wrote:
| Hey, I didn't know. Here how to add a font family:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/734645/how-to-install-custom-
| fonts...
|
| Which fonts are good for e-ink readers?
| devindotcom wrote:
| Nice, I've been adding fonts to Kobo and Boox devices for
| quite a while and crowing about it, glad it's happening on
| Kindle too now.
| makach wrote:
| some of the fonts used in the article;
|
| nyt-magsans,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; nyt-
| imperial,georgia,'times new roman',times,serif;
| scroot wrote:
| Ten years ago, Errol Morris conducted a "study" in the NYTimes
| about which typeface is the most believable [1]. Turns out it's
| Baskerville.
|
| [1] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-
| ye...
| Tagbert wrote:
| And please avoid Time Roman. It might be suitable for newspapers,
| but it's legibility on screens is poor.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| If that's true at all (this article itself is in a TNR
| variant), then it's only because Times has a small x-height,
| and it is smaller retaliative to other common screen fonts at
| the same point size.
|
| This is true for Garamond, too. And Baskerville, and virtually
| EVER classic serif font before Matthew Carter started designing
| for screens with Charter and Georgia.
|
| TNR is a fantastic font, it's just overused. That can actually
| be an _advantage_ in many contexts, where you 're not trying to
| be novel, and want your body text to project an orthodox and
| familiar feeling. I've seen great results with TNR on screens,
| with just a simple touch of CSS to make letters and line height
| larger, and the color to be a dark grey rather than pure black.
| Telling people to "please" boycott a font is more than a bit
| peremptory.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _Dressed in gentle serifs and subtle ornamentation, my words
| swelled with new life, and I saw hidden in the screen behind them
| the reflection of someone else, someone whose presence commanded
| respect.
|
| It's a little ridiculous to have to trick myself into believing
| in my own work, and even more ridiculous that I can be tricked so
| simply, like a child enraptured at a magic act. But creative
| output of any kind depends upon a steady stream of tiny self-
| delusions -- guardrails to keep yourself from veering into a pit
| of self-doubt and despair._
|
| Similarly, I automatically believe your math 50% more if you
| typeset your document in Computer Modern. I know this is
| nonsense, but it's true nonetheless.
| [deleted]
| jacobmartin wrote:
| I did all of my homework in college in LaTeX for this exact
| reason (and would liveTeX lectures). I had a setup where my
| input was side-by-side my output and the compilation time was
| very fast, so I could almost see what I was writing in real
| time. It actually became easier after freshman year than
| writing things down.
| q_andrew wrote:
| People have some very intense opinions of computer modern. I
| stumbled into a thread where many claimed it was the worst font
| ever made, and others saying it was the best thing to happen to
| digitally published academia. You may have just opened a can of
| worms...
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Those who claim CM is the worst font probably mean using it
| as a screen font. Which to be honest, is not far from truth
| on low PPI displays and/or subpar font renderers.
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(page generated 2022-02-02 23:01 UTC)