AARoads Forum

It seems several forum participants have opinions and/or technical knowledge about typography, and I suspect this is not limited to fonts used on road signs.  So here's a thread for such conversations.  Have a strong opinion about a font and where it should or should not be used?  Has anyone (besides myself) actually created any fonts they might like to share?  Well here's the place.

My fonts on DaFont.com (http://www.dafont.com/vid-the-kid.d2390?text=Interstate+238+in+Alanland&af=on&psize=s%5B/url)

It seems a few of my fonts have enjoyed tepid popularity on that site.  The font I'm most proud of is String Literal, which contains over 300 glyphs.

Quote from: vtk on May 13, 2014, 12:52:08 AM
I had intended to release [String Literal] with manually-coded hinting, but a program crash and resulting partial data loss zapped my enthusiasm...

Partial data loss?  Considering I can't seem to find any copies of String Literal with any hinting whatsoever, I think I lost all of the hinting work in that crash, and possibly the last several glyphs I had drawn, which was probably the missing Greek letters.  The version on DaFont.com seems to be even older, though I'm not sure what's missing...

Hmm, that page has your full name, David K█████████.

Also, I like Engineering Plot the best. It looks like the Hershey fonts. I love those. :)

---

A few months ago there was a discussion of the Philippines re-adopting Baybayin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baybayin) as the national script. A few fonts of it already exist on the Internet, but none suitable for road signs. Most, if not all, of them were stylized versions, e.g. brush, handwriting, etc. Naturally, I decided to make one. :rolleyes: I don't remember how much I did, or if I even exported one. I might make one again.

I was trying to design British-style signs at the time, so the font I designed was based on Transport, and if I could find it in my hard drive I will show you. I might make another one now, but based on the Standard Alphabets (and the Thai sign font). We'll see how it goes. :)

EDIT: This is what the Thai sign font looks like. Baybayin has similar features to Thai, but with a lot less characters, so my font would turn out a lot like this one.

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thailandguru.com%2Fthai-english-roadsign-web.jpg&hash=b6ccffda9a60363bfef4efbac829ace4bfbaff88)

Quote from: sammi on May 13, 2014, 07:35:53 PM
Hmm, that page has your full name, David K█████████.

Also, I like Engineering Plot the best. It looks like the Hershey fonts. I love those. :)

It's not that difficult to find my full name, really.  Just one click in the right place on any of my forum posts would reveal it.  As for DaFont.com, I figured I might as well use my full name, since I put it in the copyright field of all the fonts I make.

Glad you like Engineering Plot.  It's based on the ideal lettering style I was taught to use in my drafting classes at Ohio State.  I frequently referred to one of my textbooks from the class while making the font – a textbook for whom one of my professors was a co-author. 

What's the aversion to full names? Mine's been known to everybody since I first got active on MTR. A few here on the forum even know what the initials stand for.

Those of us who were children in the 90s were all taught "never tell anyone your real name, your age, where you live, etc. on the internet". The key intent was to protect us from child predators, but many adults also followed the same advice, insisting on remaining anonymous as a matter of personal security. Today, thanks to social media, sharing your real name over the internet is now normal and "what's the aversion?" is perhaps a valid question.

But nonetheless, some people may choose not to reveal certain information to certain groups - if someone posts a link to something which contains their full name as a minor detail that could have been overlooked, and they have not ever visibly revealed their full name here, I can see the courtesy of alerting them to that fact in case it is a situation they wish to remedy.



On topic, though... I must admit that fonts are probably something I would never have thought too much about were I not a roadgeek or a railfan. The discussion about fonts on road signs has been the biggest thing fueling my interest in the subject, second is the discussion of fonts on NYC Transit signage (and Massimo Vignelli's map that everyone loves or hates).

Those are some pretty nice fonts, Vid. I downloaded a couple of them. What program did you use to create them?

My favorite type of fonts are traditional serif fonts, suitable for running text. Decorative fonts are a dime a dozen and are often of such limited utility that they don't hold my interest much. My favorite is probably Electra, which has gone out of fashion and isn't seen much anymore:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.identifont.com%2Fsamples%2Fadobe%2FElectra.gif&hash=6f73212ec97776e5000d5f4fea4f73f01b1c58ac)

Caledonia is a similar font that I like quite a bit:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.identifont.com%2Fsamples%2Fadobe%2FNewCaledonia.gif&hash=b6872dd2b4344dd3179e9ed058cb01e221bceda9)

As for sans-serifs, my favorite (after FHWA Series!) is most likely Futura, which I use for all of my small business's product, packaging, and branding design. I'm sure you've seen it before:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu%2Ftutorials%2Fprocess%2Ftype_basics%2Fimages%2Ffutura.gif&hash=f40fc79e5dab5229c3059316a1f9df8c43c8add8)

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 14, 2014, 05:27:02 AM
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu%2Ftutorials%2Fprocess%2Ftype_basics%2Fimages%2Ffutura.gif&hash=f40fc79e5dab5229c3059316a1f9df8c43c8add8)

You know what Futura reminds me of?

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogto.com%2Fupload%2F2011%2F01%2F20110117-subway_typeface.jpg&hash=84a67ddd8fb3d6e2be86153ee21914c3306943d9)

Of course it's not the same typeface, but you could see the resemblance. And when they released the subway font for computers, the lowercase (which previously didn't exist) was based on Futura.

I'm in the practice of law and I'm a bit of a stickler for the typography in my written work product to the extent court rules allow for it. The Virginia Supreme Court has a bizarre rule requiring submissions be in either Courier, Arial, or Verdana and no other font, so there's not much you can do there (you use Arial if you have much sense). Otherwise, for printed stuff like briefing and the like I'm partial to a font called Equity published by Matthew Butterick, who is the author of an excellent book called Typography for Lawyers (which, despite the name, is an excellent volume for anyone who does a lot of written work; he even uses a highway sign as an example of the importance of typography at one point).

I have a document due this coming Monday that's bumped right up against the page limit....all the typography tricks will come into play on this one, like using "Exactly 24-point" spacing instead of MS Word's "double-spacing" that's actually not double-spacing, turning on auto-hyphenation at the ends of the lines, etc. I much prefer the way the federal courts of appeals do it: If you use a proportionally-spaced font, you have a word count limit rather than a page limit. Makes it much easier, and you can also do things like using larger margins than one inch so there's less text on each page.

One of my real hang-ups is when people use a hyphen instead of an en dash or a spaced en dash when an em dash is required. MS Word's autocorrect is part of the problem here: A lot of people type two hyphens surrounded by spaces to get a dash. Word changes that to an en dash. 99% of the time the correct character for the context is an em dash, however.

I also hate seeing how many people get the leading apostrophe backwards, using an opening single quotation mark when they need an apostrophe. I thought I had a picture of a sign showing this error, but I can't find it, so here's a link. I see this error even in newspaper headlines, which is just embarrassing: http://practicaltypography.com/apostrophes.html

Edited to add: I found the picture. The character before the word "HOOS" is incorrect.

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi31.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fc378%2F1995hoo%2FApostrophe.jpg&hash=1d17c99e54a24f01c5b73bb9345f0c63204a490b)


Here are the two signs mentioned earlier followed by a link to the website. The pictures appear on the page titled "What is typography?"

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftypographyforlawyers.com%2Fpix%2Fhighway-bw.jpg&hash=e849eccdc0e77897d5bc15606e167f0bf04ae19d)

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftypographyforlawyers.com%2Fpix%2Fhighway-script-bw.jpg&hash=7da32900b79c3750d49ca3c36d51ef99a4a48c30)

http://typographyforlawyers.com/index.html (http://typographyforlawyers.com/index.html)

I would figure Courier would be the required font in all legal cases. It just seems entirely official, concise in appearance, without pretense, and quite legible...meant to be read slowly.

On that note, I prefer Georgia when writing emails and letters. I know it has really long serifs and you either love or hate the numbers (drop cap? I forget the term for those), but it has a certain charm without being over-played nor illegible.

Quote from: formulanone on May 14, 2014, 10:50:34 AM
I would figure Courier would be the required font in all legal cases. It just seems entirely official, concise in appearance, without pretense, and quite legible...meant to be read slowly.

....

Thankfully, almost nobody except the New Jersey appellate courts requires Courier anymore, and good riddance. It's an old-fashioned outdated font from the typewriter era. It also wastes huge amounts of space in legal writing due to the format used for legal citations. For some reason, the legal citation guides (with the exception of the University of Chicago's "Maroonbook") require lots of periods and extraneous symbols. Three examples:

"28 U.S.C. § 1292" instead of "28 USC 1292"

"Klayman v. Obama, 957 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2014)" instead of "Klayman v. Obama, 957 FS2d 1 (DDC 2014)" <----The use of "F. Supp." and "F. Supp. 2d" is particularly annoying because in some other situations they call for the abbreviation "S." for "Supplement." It's unclear why the extra three letters are needed in this instance.

"State v. Bellar, 217 P.3d 1094, 1110 (Or. Ct. App. 2009) (Sercombe, J., dissenting)"–what I find annoying here is the unnecessary abbreviation "Ct." called for by most legal citation guides. "Or. App." alone is sufficient to tell you it's the Oregon Court of Appeals because it wouldn't be published in P.3d if it weren't from a court! There is no reason to include "Ct." in these sorts of abbreviations.

The reason this matters in the context of the typography is that in a monospaced font like Courier, you waste massive amounts of space because every character has the same width. A period takes up the same amount of space on the page as a capital "M." If you're up against a page limit, using Courier costs you a lot of space. You automatically gain a bunch of room simply by switching to a proportionally-spaced font. This is one reason why the federal courts of appeals now prescribe a word limit if you use a proportionally-spaced font but a page limit if you use a monospaced font. (Note they also require text that is at least 14 points.)

When I was in law school, the legal writing professors were concerned about people playing games with the fonts and getting too much space, so they set a page limit (the idea of word count limits had not occurred to them) and they required the use of Courier. But it backfired–they found that some printers output a different number of lines on the page than others, so they then passed a rule that said you were entitled to have 27 lines of text on a page and if your printer output fewer than that when you used 10 cpi Courier with double-spacing, you could adjust the spacing only to the degree needed to give you 27 lines.

Most attorneys nowadays default to Times New Roman. I've even heard some people say you are foolish to use anything else because that's the font judges are "used to" seeing. Rubbish. The key is to use a font that makes you work easy to read and legible. The US Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit actively admonish people NOT to use Times New Roman because it is too narrow. It's ideal for newspapers, where text is in narrow columns, but it's less optimum for larger-format text. See the Seventh Circuit's guidelines on page 140 of this document: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/Rules/handbook.pdf

That's not to say Times New Roman is BAD, of course. I wind up using it frequently, even though I prefer other fonts, simply for compatibility reasons. I know if I use that font that it will display properly when I send a document to someone else and the pagination will be the same.

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 14, 2014, 05:27:02 AM
Those are some pretty nice fonts, Vid. I downloaded a couple of them. What program did you use to create them?

An ancient piece of abandonware called Softy has been my tool of choice.  It's very primitive, maybe a step and a half above authoring a TTF file directly in a hex editor.  I coded a custom utility for calculating intersections and performing other operations on quadratic Bézier curves to assist in my outline editing.  For hinting work (which is not present in any of my DaFont.com offerings) I use a beta version of TTHMachine, which is similarly primitive.

Potential future font projects which involve drafting letterforms in CAD will probably be coded as SVG fonts using Wordpad and some custom software I write to help automate the translation, and then automated conversion to other formats using tools found on the Internet.

---

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 14, 2014, 10:28:46 AM
One of my real hang-ups is when people use a hyphen instead of an en dash or a spaced en dash when an em dash is required. MS Word's autocorrect is part of the problem here: A lot of people type two hyphens surrounded by spaces to get a dash. Word changes that to an en dash. 99% of the time the correct character for the context is an em dash, however.
...
I also hate seeing how many people get the leading apostrophe backwards, using an opening single quotation mark when they need an apostrophe.

I wrote a blog post (http://vidthekid.info/vspace/pt.php?bid=31) on this issue.  I believe the leading apostrophe problem is a Wordism as well; Word will convert every apostrophe to either an opening or closing single quote, even if it's semantically supposed to be an apostrophe.  (I may be guilty of surrounding em dashes with ordinary word spaces, though if I'm really making a point to do it right I know I need a nonbreaking hair space before and a hair space after.)

And then there's the misuse of quote marks as generic decorative sprinkles.  To me it's exactly the same as that episode of Friends where Joey didn't know when to use the air quotes gesture.  For example:

Quote

DESICCANT
"DO NOT EAT"

Quote

Safety
Do It
"Right"

And let us not forget every last on-screen label on The Bernie Mac Show...

Quote from: vtk on May 14, 2014, 10:13:14 PM
And then there's the misuse of quote marks as generic decorative sprinkles.  To me it's exactly the same as that episode of Friends where Joey didn't know when to use the air quotes gesture.

Reminds me of when I went to use the washroom restroom in the body shop in Ann Arbor, MI.

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fg3sf.x10.mx%2Fimg%2Fair-quotes.jpg&hash=0558f4f5f2725b0479fff40a9b5940db35ac352c)

OT: The door said this:

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fg3sf.x10.mx%2Fimg%2Frestroom.jpg&hash=7e5129ec1f443063d88ba0465acf19954342b2df)

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 14, 2014, 10:28:46 AM
I also hate seeing how many people get the leading apostrophe backwards...

I've gotten into the practice (on my Mac) of entering two single apostrophes to get an open/close pair, then deleting the first one.

Leave it to Beaver is an artifact of the '50s. Not the "˜50s, 50's, or '50s.

I'm also starting to get annoyed by the neutered Selectric-style straight quotes that default on my iPhone. But the workaround (holding down the quote key until the palette of alternates pops up) gets old quickly.

Quote from: briantroutman on May 14, 2014, 11:23:06 PM
Leave it to Beaver is an artifact of the '50s. Not the "˜50s, 50's, or '50s.

According to my high school grammar textbook, 50's is correct. When a word is meant to express instances of the word itself and not the word's actual meaning, the plural uses an 's ending, and apparently this rule overrides the contraction usage of the apostrophe.  On the other hand, my high school textbooks might not have presented the majority opinion on obscure rules like this.

Also, semantically, I contend that an apostrophe should always be the codepoint 39 apostrophe, not the codepoint 8217 closing single quote.  Graphically, the two characters should look about the same.  (Is there a codepoint for ambiguous single quote, distinct from apostrophe?)

Most style guides I've seen call for not using an apostrophe in usage like "1950s" or "'50s" (example: "Eisenhower was president during much of the 1950s."), but I've also seen a couple that acknowledge that in the past the apostrophe was standard. I wouldn't be surprised if one were to see something of a generational difference on things like that.

I wish the computer keyboard had maintained the cent sign ¢ that appears as Shift+8 on a typewriter. You seldom see the cent sign these days because people don't know how to type it, and I've even seen highway signs that omit it–the ones that most readily come to mind are in the Orlando area on Route 417, where some signs say things like "PAY TOLL $.75" (which, from a pedantic point of view, is incorrect because it omits the zero before the decimal point). I don't see why they can't use "PAY TOLL 75¢." Maybe they figure when they raise the tolls, ".75" is less text to "blue-out" than "75¢" is (the dollar sign would remain, as I presume they'd raise the toll to at least a dollar). Funny thing is, it's easier to type the cent sign on an iPhone or iPad as long as you're using the on-screen keyboard (simply hold down the dollar sign key) than it is on a PC (Alt+0162).

---

I'm curious how you guys feel about one space between sentences versus two. I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font. But I know for some people it's an ingrained habit they learned in their high-school typing classes. I never took such a class, though for a long time I did use two spaces because my parents had always taught me that was the standard and because I was required to use Courier at various times in school (as noted previously in this thread). I broke myself of the habit about 10 or so years ago.

I can see from looking at the other posts in this thread that "vtk" uses two and the others appear to use one.

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 15, 2014, 09:41:18 AM
Most style guides I've seen call for not using an apostrophe in usage like "1950s" or "'50s" (example: "Eisenhower was president during much of the 1950s."), but I've also seen a couple that acknowledge that in the past the apostrophe was standard. I wouldn't be surprised if one were to see something of a generational difference on things like that.

Ditto. Same thing my electronic publishing prof said in college. Even our firm's style guide (not that anyone else has taken the time to read it :no: ), forbids the use of the apostrophe when using acronyms, filetypes, and dates, unless they're showing ownership of something. PDFs not PDF's

QuoteI'm curious how you guys feel about one space between sentences versus two. I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font. But I know for some people it's an ingrained habit they learned in their high-school typing classes. I never took such a class, though for a long time I did use two spaces because my parents had always taught me that was the standard and because I was required to use Courier at various times in school (as noted previously in this thread). I broke myself of the habit about 10 or so years ago.

I can see from looking at the other posts in this thread that "vtk" uses two and the others appear to use one.

Unless you're using a manual typewriter, one space only. The afore-mentioned prof joked/threatened anyone caught using two spaces would, at the very least, fail the assignment. Two spaces causes "rivers of white space" to form when using full justification.

That class was arguably one of the most useful in my college career (in addition to civil engineering, I minored in technical communications). Rarely a day goes by where something from that class appears in my regular work. It was also the same class I learned Adobe InDesign (MS Word on steroids).

Quote from: DaBigE on May 15, 2014, 11:31:38 AM

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 15, 2014, 09:41:18 AM
I'm curious how you guys feel about one space between sentences versus two. I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font. But I know for some people it's an ingrained habit they learned in their high-school typing classes. I never took such a class, though for a long time I did use two spaces because my parents had always taught me that was the standard and because I was required to use Courier at various times in school (as noted previously in this thread). I broke myself of the habit about 10 or so years ago.

I can see from looking at the other posts in this thread that "vtk" uses two and the others appear to use one.

Unless you're using a manual typewriter, one space only. The afore-mentioned prof joked/threatened anyone caught using two spaces would, at the very least, fail the assignment. Two spaces causes "rivers of white space" to form when using full justification.

My mom always types with two spaces between sentences. I had a piece of text that I had her check once, and she replaced all single spaces with double spaces. :ded: Good thing I just had to sed -e 's/  / /g'.

Quote from: DaBigE on May 15, 2014, 11:31:38 AM
That class was arguably one of the most useful in my college career (in addition to civil engineering, I minored in technical communications). Rarely a day goes by where something from that class appears in my regular work. It was also the same class I learned Adobe InDesign (MS Word on steroids).

I think InDesign is a lot more like Publisher than Word. Adobe doesn't really have word processing software.

It really bugs me when a local sandwich shop or store sticks an apostrophe where it doesn't belong:

ALL YOU CAN EAT! WILD WEDNESDAY'S!!

Probably the same people who think your so special! ;)

I was taught the double-space after a period in typing class many years ago. Thanks to HTML's refusal to understand multiple continual spaces without the use of "&nbsp", I managed to wean myself off that practice.

Apple makes use of the double-space on the iPhone by (in)conveniently adding the period, if desired.

(Personally, I'm not enough of a stickler to care which post-period style is used...there's so many other annoyances out there, and half my own sentences barely make sense, anyhow.)

The incorrectly-used apostrophe does bug me. Other than pluralized possessive goofs, I don't remember such widespread usage of  the "pointless apostrophe" (that is, added for no reason at all) until comparatively recently.

Quote from: KEVIN_224 on May 15, 2014, 12:12:38 PM
It really bugs me when a local sandwich shop or store sticks an apostrophe where it doesn't belong:

ALL YOU CAN EAT! WILD WEDNESDAY'S!!

Probably the same people who think your so special! ;)

How about Christmas cards? For years, my cousin and her husband have sent out those family-photo cards. They'd be fine except they say "Merry Christmas from the Swanzey's." None of us wanted to be the dick who pointed out the error, of course, so now they've continued to send those cards for years....and then maybe two or three years ago my cousin's brother and his wife started sending out a family photo card....you guessed it, "Merry Christmas! The Costagliola's."

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 15, 2014, 09:41:18 AM
I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font.

How the flying Frutiger does that make any sense?  I type two spaces between sentences because there should be more space between them.  Simply using a proportional font doesn't accomplish this.  In a monospace font like Courier, the spaces are already a bit wider than in a proportional font, and the period takes up way more space than it needs; really, this is the one case where one doesn't need an extra space between sentences!

Quote from: vtk on May 15, 2014, 12:54:06 PM
How the flying Frutiger

I love this. :-D

Seeing this thread reminded me of a newspaper at the home of a relative east of Dallas many years ago.  A car dealer there would run ads in it with their address as

Henderson, Hwy.

instead of Henderson Hwy.  This was despite the fact that the car dealer wasn't outside the city limits; it had a city address.  I don't know why they'd use the generic (and incorrectly punctuated) one.  I'm not sure how much of that was the fault of the car dealer, and how much fault rested with the newspaper.  I'm guessing the newspaper had the most to do with it.  They were always misspelling and pulling other printing stunts like the car dealer's ad.

(uhoh, just read the 2-spaces thing, shades of typing class I guess :D )

Quote from: vtk on May 15, 2014, 12:54:06 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 15, 2014, 09:41:18 AM
I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font.

How the flying Frutiger does that make any sense?  I type two spaces between sentences because there should be more space between them.  Simply using a proportional font doesn't accomplish this.  In a monospace font like Courier, the spaces are already a bit wider than in a proportional font, and the period takes up way more space than it needs; really, this is the one case where one doesn't need an extra space between sentences!

In professionally-typeset material, there are never two spaces between sentences. Never. People did that with typewriters because typewriter fonts do not use the same proportions as the fonts generally used by professional typesetters. People seldom use typewriters anymore and most people don't use typewriter fonts (such as Courier) unless forced to do so, although there are some oddballs out there who are exceptions. I am a strong proponent of the position that material one creates using one's computer should look as professionally typeset as possible within the constraints of whatever rules govern what you're doing (for example, a court rule requiring double-spacing).

The extra space is not needed between sentences with a proportionally-spaced font. With a monospaced font, the period being the same width as everything else makes it less apparent when the space is between sentences as opposed to between words, especially when the work you're doing involves the use of lots of periods in other places that may not be the end of a sentence–for example, a common short citation form for the Klayman case cited in my earlier comment might be "Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d at 14" (denoting the cited material appears on page 14 of Volume 957 of the second series of the Federal Supplement). In this case, there are multiple instances of a period followed by a space at a location other than the end of a sentence, but if you're using Courier, it's less apparent.

Thankfully, I almost never use Courier nor any other monospaced font except very rarely in a table if I need numbers to line up a certain way.

The discussion on this web page (excerpted from the book I mentioned earlier) addresses the issue. (http://typographyforlawyers.com/one-space-between-sentences.html)

Quote from: sammi on May 14, 2014, 09:57:13 AM
You know what Futura reminds me of?

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogto.com%2Fupload%2F2011%2F01%2F20110117-subway_typeface.jpg&hash=84a67ddd8fb3d6e2be86153ee21914c3306943d9)

Of course it's not the same typeface, but you could see the resemblance. And when they released the subway font for computers, the lowercase (which previously didn't exist) was based on Futura.

Futura was invented around the same time period (early 20th century) as these fonts, so they have a common heritage. They are all geometric sans-serif fonts. Another one that is considerably newer, but of the same style, is Gotham, which has become fairly popular in the last six years or so, after being the primary typeface for the 2008 Obama campaign. Gotham was intended to evoke the feel of typography on New York City public works buildings of that era.

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 14, 2014, 10:28:46 AM
I'm in the practice of law and I'm a bit of a stickler for the typography in my written work product to the extent court rules allow for it. The Virginia Supreme Court has a bizarre rule requiring submissions be in either Courier, Arial, or Verdana and no other font, so there's not much you can do there (you use Arial if you have much sense). Otherwise, for printed stuff like briefing and the like I'm partial to a font called Equity published by Matthew Butterick, who is the author of an excellent book called Typography for Lawyers (which, despite the name, is an excellent volume for anyone who does a lot of written work; he even uses a highway sign as an example of the importance of typography at one point).

Of the three choices there, I'd probably go for Verdana. It's probably the most attractive of the three, and is designed to be equally good on screen or paper. As for Equity:

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftypographyforlawyers.com%2Fpix%2Fequity.gif&hash=adb10a95ad442f484f8e62994aa5521ab69fde83)

Hot damn, that's a nice font. Too bad it costs $119!

Quote from: vtk on May 14, 2014, 10:13:14 PM
An ancient piece of abandonware called Softy has been my tool of choice.  It's very primitive, maybe a step and a half above authoring a TTF file directly in a hex editor.  I coded a custom utility for calculating intersections and performing other operations on quadratic Bézier curves to assist in my outline editing.  For hinting work (which is not present in any of my DaFont.com offerings) I use a beta version of TTHMachine, which is similarly primitive.

Potential future font projects which involve drafting letterforms in CAD will probably be coded as SVG fonts using Wordpad and some custom software I write to help automate the translation, and then automated conversion to other formats using tools found on the Internet.

I want to say I've toyed around with Softy before but don't remember it that well. You might consider trying Fontforge, which is probably a step up from that, but still free. As for SVG fonts, Inkscape has some sort of support for them, but I don't know to what extent.

---

As for Courier, nobody should be using it. Nobody should be using monospaced fonts in general other than programmers, since monospaced fonts are useful for spotting patterns in code, which makes writing it easier. And there are nicer-looking monospaced fonts out there than Courier.

For anyone else, a typical serif font will do much better because the varying character width makes words easier to recognize.

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 15, 2014, 10:28:41 PM
....

As for Courier, nobody should be using it. Nobody should be using monospaced fonts in general other than programmers, since monospaced fonts are useful for spotting patterns in code, which makes writing it easier. And there are nicer-looking monospaced fonts out there than Courier.

For anyone else, a typical serif font will do much better because the varying character width makes words easier to recognize.

The same guy who publishes Equity has a monospaced font called Alix. (Sample here (http://typographyforlawyers.com/pdf/font-sample-alix.pdf)) I think it looks pretty good for a monospaced font, though I haven't bought it. I believe the New Jersey appellate courts require a monospaced font but don't specify a particular one the way Virginia's Supreme Court does, so I'd buy Alix if I needed to file something in New Jersey.

Big issue is compatibility. Other people don't have Equity or Alix, so I have to embed the font in a document, but that still doesn't always work correctly unless I send a .PDF.

Alix is pretty nice, but there are far more attractive monospace fonts out there for free, thanks to programmers looking for ways to make coding easier.

If I were setting requirements for the formatting of documents submitted electronically, I'd be tempted to encourage a format that doesn't specify a font at all, so whoever has to read or print the thing will automatically get it in whatever font he's selected as the default.  And I encourage everyone to choose their own default font settings in whatever software has such a thing, rather than blindly concurring with the vendor's choice.

---

From Sentence Spacing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing) on Wikipedia:

QuoteOne of the most popular arguments against wider sentence spacing is that it was created for monospaced fonts of the typewriter, and is no longer needed with modern proportional fonts.  However, this argument ignores the historical record, where proportional fonts together with wide sentence spacing (almost universally an em quad in English language texts) existed for centuries before the typewriter, and remained for some time after its invention.

I like the appearance and tradition of wider sentence spacing.  Similarly, I believe true concert pitch has A=439Hz; it was only changed to 440Hz because technicians at that time could more easily produce the "round" number.  Of course, in that case I can't perceive the difference anyway.

Wikipedia as a conclusive source?

Anyway, I don't believe I ever said it's "wrong" to put two spaces between a sentence. I merely asked what other people here do. I mentioned you simply because I could see from looking at your comments that you use two and you appeared to be the only person in this thread who does so. What amuses me is that in my observation it is many "two-spacers" who are adamant about that practice and who will tell "one-spacers" that it is "wrong" or "unacceptable" to use one space (which, if true, would mean pretty much all professionally-typeset material is formated "incorrectly").

I have a brief to finish later today that is going to be close to the page limit. I may be pulling out some of the formatting tricks like hyphenation and the like. The thing I hate is when sometimes there's almost no way to avoid what we called an "orphan" at my college newspaper–a paragraph ending with one or two words alone on a line. Sometimes you simply can't avoid that sort of thing due to quotations or citations. Aside from being unsightly, the bigger issue is that those sorts of lines waste space.

As far as setting format for electronic submissions, courts that require electronic filing require you to submit in .PDF, so the font compatibility isn't really an issue. It will print correctly. The bigger issue I find is when I'm collaborating on a document. I either embed the font or use Times New Roman and then change it at the end of the process. For some reason, even when I embed fonts they don't always display properly, and it becomes a massive hassle when someone is citing page numbers over the phone but the material appears in a different place on their screen.

I think before the age of computers, typing was mostly done for professional reports, documents, etc.  In that age, those people that works at typists had specialized training in typing, and were taught the two space method after each sentence.  I took typing in the 9th grade and do it without a 2nd thought. (Of course, now that I'm thinking about it writing this, it's harder to do it!).

Most people today (and for the past 20 years) start typing when they're probably 2 or 3 years old, and just start using a style that works for them.  So when they are at work typing, they're just typing as they had been growing up. Most employers don't really care, as long as the report is clean and legible.

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 16, 2014, 08:09:53 AM
The thing I hate is when sometimes there's almost no way to avoid what we called an "orphan" at my college newspaper–a paragraph ending with one or two words alone on a line. Sometimes you simply can't avoid that sort of thing due to quotations or citations. Aside from being unsightly, the bigger issue is that those sorts of lines waste space.

I thought an orphan was when the last line of a paragraph falls directly after a page break.

Anyway, it sucks when you just can't pack the last word or two of a paragraph into the previous line.  I guess you just have to conclude it won't fit.  Then to make less ugly, maybe go less agressive with hyphenation and other tricks for that paragraph, to make the last line more full.

Quote from: vtk on May 16, 2014, 10:39:47 AM

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 16, 2014, 08:09:53 AM
The thing I hate is when sometimes there's almost no way to avoid what we called an "orphan" at my college newspaper–a paragraph ending with one or two words alone on a line. Sometimes you simply can't avoid that sort of thing due to quotations or citations. Aside from being unsightly, the bigger issue is that those sorts of lines waste space.

I thought an orphan was when the last line of a paragraph falls directly after a page break.

Anyway, it sucks when you just can't pack the last word or two of a paragraph into the previous line.  I guess you just have to conclude it won't fit.  Then to make less ugly, maybe go less agressive with hyphenation and other tricks for that paragraph, to make the last line more full.

The text in boldface is the reason why I said "what we called an 'orphan.'" The word processing software uses the words "widow" and "orphan" in the way you describe. But when you're doing newspaper work, you don't have quite the same issue with page breaks because of the way text is arranged in columns with multiple stories on a page. Of course you could still have an issue with a bit of a paragraph falling after the page jump, but we used the term differently for practical reasons. I didn't have a better expression to use in the context to which I'm referring here, so I said "what we called" figuring it was clear what I meant.

I am putting together a table of authorities right now and am taking a break because the TOA codes on my screen are making my eyes want to bug out....

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 16, 2014, 08:09:53 AM
Wikipedia as a conclusive source?

Anyway, I don't believe I ever said it's "wrong" to put two spaces between a sentence.

Someone else certainly did, and the portion of the article I quoted directly addressed the argument that had been presented.

And no, I did not intend to offer WP as a "conclusive" source.  It doesn't say one way or the other that one or two spaces is correct.  (It does seem to indicate that a majority of self-appointed authorities insist a single word space is correct, while a minority merely claims wide sentence spacing is a valid choice.)  But I didn't share the article to settle the argument.  I shared it because it offers a lot of information, and a history of the debate.  And honestly I don't expect traditional encyclopediae to have such a complete article on this subject, if they have one at all.

---

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 16, 2014, 10:47:36 AM

Quote from: vtk on May 16, 2014, 10:39:47 AM
I thought an orphan was when the last line of a paragraph falls directly after a page break.

The text in boldface is the reason why I said "what we called an 'orphan.'" The word processing software uses the words "widow" and "orphan" in the way you describe. ... I didn't have a better expression to use in the context to which I'm referring here, so I said "what we called" figuring it was clear what I meant.

Actually it was clear.  I just wasn't entirely sure my own understanding of the term had been correct.

No worries.

I like your use of the ellipsis character there, BTW. The legal citation guides demand that you use three spaced-out periods: . . . (this often requires hard spaces to avoid the risk of breaking an ellipsis at the end of a line) I routinely ignore this rule because it's stupid and outdated. Plus if you have a word limit, as opposed to a page limit, MS Word counts the three periods as three "words" but counts the ellipsis character as one "word." I'll be damned if I'm going to lose some of my word count over a chickenshit rule like that one!

I always used two spaces when I typed anything on a typewriter. I was taught to use only one space on the old-style Compugraphic phototypesetting machines because the machine would determine the correct spacing.

I always got "widow" and "orphan" confused.

Quote from: vtk on May 15, 2014, 12:54:06 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 15, 2014, 09:41:18 AM
I use one except in the rare instance where I have to use Courier. There's no real need to use two spaces with a proportionally-spaced font.

How the flying Frutiger does that make any sense?  I type two spaces between sentences because there should be more space between them.  Simply using a proportional font doesn't accomplish this.  In a monospace font like Courier, the spaces are already a bit wider than in a proportional font, and the period takes up way more space than it needs; really, this is the one case where one doesn't need an extra space between sentences!

I agree.  Professionally typeset books usually have a bit wider space at the end of a sentence than in between words.  It's an additional cue to the reader that a new sentence begins, and like a lot of typography is generally noticed only when it's absent.

I also appreciate Courier.  It's easier to tell the difference between similar characters in Courier than in most other fonts, and especially easier than most sans-serif fonts.  1 or l or I, O or 0, m or rn, etc.  It doesn't matter for most fiction, but when the differences are critical, like computer programs or legal writing, Courier has a place.

Also for a typescript like a paper at school, or a draft to go to a lawyer or client, the extra space in Courier gives room to write in corrections by hand.

Quote from: vtk on May 16, 2014, 01:33:11 AM
Similarly, I believe true concert pitch has A=439Hz; it was only changed to 440Hz because technicians at that time could more easily produce the "round" number.  Of course, in that case I can't perceive the difference anyway.

(digging music history out of deep recesses of brain)

I think the concept of "true" concert pitch doesn't really exist - there are several accepted standards for concert pitch - The US and UK have had it at 440 since the 1930s; Other European countries have it higher (442?). The general trend over the centuries has been raising of pitch standards; although in earlier times pitch standards could vary wildly from country to country (and within those countries) - for many, pitch standard was fixed to whatever the local organ was tuned to.

Our first-chair trumpet in high school could hear a tuner set to 436, tell you it was flat, then as you clicked up, would stop you when it got to 440 and tell you, "that's right."

My latest project:

Mainframe Serif
A scalable interpretation of 1990s-era PC 80×25 text-mode characters in TrueType

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fvidthekid.info%2Fimghost%2Fmainfrse-000.png&hash=035de62438236d3cde34719005ff521c43ae0241)

I'm sure there are already several TrueType fonts like this in the wild, but it seems unlikely any of them address the following details:

• 80 rows by 25 columns will form a block of text in a 4:3 aspect ratio
• There was variability in the character cell sizes; while logically 8 pixels wide, they were often displayed with an extra padding pixel, and the height could be 14 or 16 scan lines
• In 80×25 text mode, the pixels were never square (but nobody cared, because individual pixels couldn't be painted anyway)
• In order for a font like this to be useable on-screen, hinting is essential

My progress so far
I've determined the standard proportions for letterforms, keeping in mind how that will translate to pixels at various sizes.  I've drawn the glyphs you see above.  I've done hinting for the characters "˜The' and the missing-character glyph.  Progress will come slowly.

Pixels, font size, and ClearType
To match screen pixels to the classic font 1:1 vertically, you'll need to display the font at 12 PPEM (9pt at 96DPI) for the 14-scanline version or 13PPEM (10pt at 96DPI) for the 16-scanline version.  Character cells will be less than 8 pixels wide at this size; ClearType brings additional horizontal resolution to text display, abating this problem and simulating pixels that aren't as wide as they are tall.  To match screen pixels to the classic font 1:1 horizontally, display the font at 16PPEM (12pt at 96DPI). 

The all-important question: dotted zero or slash zero?

I've seen a font like this called Video Terminal Screen that seemed to work well enough. I don't think it attempted to fully vectorize the font, however. It's kind of weird seeing it with fully rendered curves.

What I'd really like to see is a TTF of the font used by the IBM 3270 terminal emulator, but that's pretty obscure, so...

Quote from: Scott5114 on July 14, 2014, 06:36:50 PM
The all-important question: dotted zero or slash zero?

I've seen a font like this called Video Terminal Screen that seemed to work well enough. I don't think it attempted to fully vectorize the font, however. It's kind of weird seeing it with fully rendered curves.

It's a dotted zero.  (Which is already done and hinted, but it just doesn't show up in that preview and I forgot about it.)  Unless the space inside the main loop is less than 3px wide, then it becomes a slashed zero.  For my older, related fonts String Literal and String Variable, I came up with a compromise: the slashdot (http://vidthekid.info/imghost/strlit-zero.png).

As for the curves, there's a pretty good reason for that.  If I just did a pixellated font, it would look really clunky if not displayed at just the right size, and using hinting to mitigate that could be a challenge.  By using curved glyphs and hinting, it's more likely that the finished font will at small sizes look like it was drawn natively for that specific size and resolution; at larger sizes, it won't look like a "pixel font", but it will still have the same flavor of the old text-mode characters.

Edit: slash vs dot, now adaptive

Update: moar hinting!

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fvidthekid.info%2Fimghost%2Fmainfrse-001.png&hash=b2c6adc94e52bf389c3d1dd91f50ad45b0b47c6a)

It's not looking so great below 10PPEM.  I could write more hinting code to fix it, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.  And I still haven't figured out what's making the T lopsided.

Oh, I get why you're doing it that way. It's just that I'm so used to seeing the pixelated version of it that it's amusing to see it as a vectorized font. Kind of reminds me of ITC Clearface for some reason.

The reason why I asked about the 0 is because there are versions of this typeface floating around with slashed 0s as well.

Thanks to Saia LTL Freight, I have become aware of a font family that I think would work great on road signs: Beval (//http://).  Specifically, the "Regular" variant and heavier.  And of course significantly increased interletter spacing would be appropriate. 

This site has a lot of fonts which are presented as free for commerical use: Font Squirrel (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/find_fonts)

Among the fonts are Expressway, a single-weight font that looks like a lighter version of Blue Highway, and Overpass which comes in regular and bold and is fairly close to E and EM.  I also noticed Railway, which is a clone of the London Underground font whose name I forget.  Plenty of other useful fonts, and of course a bazillion gimmicky ones.

Futura is also lovingly known as the 'Sesame Street' font!

My class notes (http://gozips.uakron.edu/~wdonova/chem153/fonts.png) primarily use Times New Roman probably out of habit from old versions of Word, although I had first done computer word processing in WordPerfect 4.2 for DOS--yep, before the famous WP 5.1 even.  The headers use either Futura or TW Cen MT--I was and am absent-minded enough to switch between them because they look so alike.  I know I should get them all changed to the same font.  Roadgeek FHWA fonts also tend to appear here and there and are especially dominant in the syllabi (http://gozips.uakron.edu/~wdonova/chem153/fonts2.png) as headers.  I just like them.

Certain handwriting-type fonts are nearly useless.  I do find use for some monospaced fonts sometimes for URLs to be stylish if in the mood--OCR A Extended seems to look good to me (http://gozips.uakron.edu/~wdonova/chem153/fonts3.png) for such a use.

As I type this, my fingers automatically enter two spaces after every sentence.  Learned it that way and will never manage to unlearn.  I like my Oxford (serial) commas as well, and misplaced apostrophes piss me off.  When handwriting I cross my 7s and Zs and if needed to avoid ambiguity, slash my zeros.  Yes, this guarantees that no one will probably exactly copy me.  :P

Quote from: hbelkins on May 16, 2014, 11:55:46 AM
I always used two spaces when I typed anything on a typewriter. I was taught to use only one space on the old-style Compugraphic phototypesetting machines because the machine would determine the correct spacing.

Late to the thread here, but I default to two spaces between sentences, and only reduce it to one space when I'm thinking about it.

When I was practicing law, and composed my own briefs, they had page limits (later the limits were changed to micromanage fonts, line spacing, etc. before largely shifting to word limits, but by then I was letting paralegals handle the various format rules we had to deal with). One space rather than two between sentences was one of the first tricks we used to squeeze under a page limit.

There's a new font called Dyslexie that I'm quite fond of. It resembles Arial, but the letters are designed to be easier to read. The letters seem to have thicker strokes near the bottom.

I read much faster when this font is used.

Quote from: oscar on January 24, 2015, 01:58:08 PM

Quote from: hbelkins on May 16, 2014, 11:55:46 AM
I always used two spaces when I typed anything on a typewriter. I was taught to use only one space on the old-style Compugraphic phototypesetting machines because the machine would determine the correct spacing.

Late to the thread here, but I default to two spaces between sentences, and only reduce it to one space when I'm thinking about it.

When I was practicing law, and composed my own briefs, they had page limits (later the limits were changed to micromanage fonts, line spacing, etc. before largely shifting to word limits, but by then I was letting paralegals handle the various format rules we had to deal with). One space rather than two between sentences was one of the first tricks we used to squeeze under a page limit.

Ever run into a situation where different court jurisdictions had differing local rules? I have heard of instances in Kentucky where different judges have different rules for fonts, page margins, etc. in different judicial districts or circuits.

Quote from: hbelkins on January 24, 2015, 08:51:14 PM
Ever run into a situation where different court jurisdictions had differing local rules? I have heard of instances in Kentucky where different judges have different rules for fonts, page margins, etc. in different judicial districts or circuits.

My agency practiced primarily in Federal courts (which have a uniform set of procedural rules, but each appeals and district court can supplement them with its own rules on matters not controlled by the uniform rules), plus one administrative tribunal with a single set of rules. Once you decided where to file a case (sometimes you have a choice), it's time for one or more people on your team to memorize the local rules.

The local differences affect not just typography, but also page limits and other more substantive matters. One district court where we were frequent customers had unusually tight page limits, even for major motions like to block a corporate merger (yeah, the limits can be relaxed in a specific case, but since the courts imposing tight limits tend to be the ones least patient with lengthy briefs, best to try very hard not to ask for more space). So there we had to pull out all the typographic stops to meet the limits, and ruthlessly simplify our arguments since there's only so much typography can do. 

I had a boss that made me use two spaces in official docs and I decided it was clearer and kept doing it. 

But you can't tell in this post.

One thing I use to meet page limits is automatic hyphenation at the ends of lines. I know of no court whose rules prohibit it, so I don't hesitate to use it.

Even with word limits, you can play some games because you're allowed to rely on your software's count. MS Word counts hyphenated compounds as one word. US-50 is one word, US 50 is two. So if I'm tight on words and it's not incorrect to use a hyphen to join two words, I will. (Consider a brief relating to jurisdiction. If you use the words "federal question jurisdiction" frequently, saying "federal-question jurisdiction" can make a big difference!) WordPerfect counts words joined by a hard space as one word rather than two, so in some situations that can make a difference.

Writing style makes a huge difference. It's amazing how many words people waste. Overuse of "that" wastes space. "He said that he would drive to New York." "He said he would drive to New York." You don't need "that." Another example is people who use the "of the" form for possessives–"the order of the Court dated January 26, 2015." What's wrong with "the Court's order dated January 26, 2015"? Saves you two words. That's not much by itself, but when you do this repeatedly throughout a lengthy document it adds up.

I have a publication in the editing process right now that contains a chapter on these sorts of issues. There are a lot of seemingly trivial things you can do to decrease a word count without sacrificing substance. (Example: Instead of typing three spaced-out periods for an ellipsis . . ., use the typographic ellipsis character. MS Word treats the spaced-out periods as three "words" but the ellipsis character as one. Why the heck should I lose "words" in my word-count limit for something chickenshit like a style guide's old-fashioned typewriter-era ellipsis rule?)

Quote from: Pete from Boston on January 25, 2015, 08:54:50 PM
I had a boss that made me use two spaces in official docs and I decided it was clearer and kept doing it. 

But you can't tell in this post.

That's because HTML disregards most whitespace to allow the code to be arranged clearly without impacting the way it is displayed. Of course, these days, most HTML is automatically generated, but you know, hysterical raisins and all that.

Quote from: PurdueBill on January 24, 2015, 01:11:22 PM
...my fingers automatically enter two spaces after every sentence.  Learned it that way and will never manage to unlearn...

Mine too.  Don't know how or where I learned it (I think it was Mom), but forget about trying to un-teach me.

Quote from: PurdueBill on January 24, 2015, 01:11:22 PM
...and misplaced apostrophes piss me off...

Yup.  C'mon, it's not that hard...

Quote from: PurdueBill on January 24, 2015, 01:11:22 PM
...When handwriting I cross my 7s and Zs and if needed to avoid ambiguity, slash my zeros...

I started crossing my Zs in 8th grade algebra class because I had a hard time telling the difference between my 2s and Zs when I was writing a little too fast.  Plus I thought it looked neat, so I never stopped doing it.  Never have crossed my 7s and probably never will.  As far as slashing my zeros, I tried that once, also in 8th grade algebra.  The teacher told me that it was the symbol for empty set, which meant something completely different.  So that was something that never took hold.

Quote from: Scott5114 on January 26, 2015, 10:12:11 PM

Quote from: Pete from Boston on January 25, 2015, 08:54:50 PM
I had a boss that made me use two spaces in official docs and I decided it was clearer and kept doing it. 

But you can't tell in this post.

That's because HTML disregards most whitespace to allow the code to be arranged clearly without impacting the way it is displayed. Of course, these days, most HTML is automatically generated, but you know, hysterical raisins and all that.

Many websites convert two spaces in user content to a nonbreaking space and a normal space, so runs of spaces aren't collapsed.  I'm pretty sure this forum does.  No, the reason we couldn't tell in Pete's post is because there was only one sentence per paragraph.

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 14, 2014, 05:27:02 AM
Caledonia is a similar font that I like quite a bit:
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.identifont.com%2Fsamples%2Fadobe%2FNewCaledonia.gif&hash=b6872dd2b4344dd3179e9ed058cb01e221bceda9)

Late to the party here, but Caledonia has always held a sort of negative connotation to me. Well, it turns out the reason is that this font is the same font that's used on all of the dreaded New York State Regents Exams. Weird how I still remember the font and have bad associations with it (I was never fond of exams.)


iPad

It's a rather stern-looking typeface, I admit. (The 2 looks like you could use it as a weapon.) I associate it with Up the Down Staircase, as every copy of that book that I've seen uses it for most of the text. That book has some particularly creative typography in it, though.

I associate Clarendon with National Park signs and general happy times.

Quote from: kkt on June 24, 2015, 01:38:30 PM
I associate Clarendon with National Park signs and general happy times.

Unfortunately NPS has officially changed to a new font, NPS Rawlinson, though there is plenty of Clarendon still around. NPS explains why (http://www.nps.gov/hfc/services/identity/type-why.cfm).

Quote from: 1995hoo on January 25, 2015, 09:22:46 PM
One thing I use to meet page limits is automatic hyphenation at the ends of lines. I know of no court whose rules prohibit it, so I don't hesitate to use it.

Don't the courts have specific fonts that they want used in documents filed with them?

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 24, 2015, 06:21:03 PM

Quote from: kkt on June 24, 2015, 01:38:30 PM
I associate Clarendon with National Park signs and general happy times.

Unfortunately NPS has officially changed to a new font, NPS Rawlinson, though there is plenty of Clarendon still around. NPS explains why (http://www.nps.gov/hfc/services/identity/type-why.cfm).

Aww.  I really liked Clarendon.

Quote from: NPS BS...among the barriers to a greater public understanding of the breadth and depth of our agency was a lack of consistency in the content and appearance of visual materials presented to the public...

Sounds like the perfect rationale for switching to new typefaces and thereby creating even more inconsistency.

...wait, what?

I did one of my student projects on Clarendon while going for my BFA. It's a timeless typeface.

Clarendon has free versions available.  Rawlinson is restricted to the NPS.  Want to use it on your sign ideas, models, or graphics?  Get permission from Manglement first.

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 24, 2015, 06:23:11 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on January 25, 2015, 09:22:46 PM
One thing I use to meet page limits is automatic hyphenation at the ends of lines. I know of no court whose rules prohibit it, so I don't hesitate to use it.

Don't the courts have specific fonts that they want used in documents filed with them?

Varies depending on the court. Most have no specific rule other than requiring serifs, though of course if you use a calligraphy font you do so at your own risk. There are exceptions, of course–for example, the US Supreme Court requires a Century family font, while the Alabama Supreme Court requires 13-point Courier. I use MB Type's Equity Text A for most of my filings.

But that's all separate from hyphenation at the end of a line. 

I sort of forgot that hyphenation exists. I'm so used to consuming online material, where page counts are irrelevant and line breaks always occur at the end of a word, that the concept just plain slipped from my mind.

Quote from: 1995hoo on June 24, 2015, 09:34:57 PM
Varies depending on the court. Most have no specific rule other than requiring serifs, though of course if you use a calligraphy font you do so at your own risk. There are exceptions, of course–for example, the US Supreme Court requires a Century family font, while the Alabama Supreme Court requires 13-point Courier. I use MB Type's Equity Text A for most of my filings.

Darned - I was hoping you could do a brief in FHWA Gothic or Clearview!  ;-)

New Century Schoolbook always has had a nice look. 

Courier?  Usually denounced as "old fashioned" and worse, but I always liked it.  First saw it on an IBM Selectric typewriter (with the "golf ball" element).

Quote from: 1995hoo on June 24, 2015, 09:34:57 PM
But that's all separate from hyphenation at the end of a line. 

Of course.

IMO, I don't like hyphenation - gets tiring on long documents.

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 25, 2015, 02:01:46 AM
New Century Schoolbook always has had a nice look.

It does. I use it when I want to talk down to the audience.   :-o

I turn on hyphenation on pretty much everything I print, and kerning and ligatures too (seeing "fi" with the dot sticking into the 'f' is a pet peeve of mine). My default Word template also defaults to justified alignment rather than left.

Most of my print documents use the Calluna (http://www.exljbris.com/calluna.html) and Calluna Sans (http://www.exljbris.com/callunasans.html) typefaces, usually with the serif version in body text, and the sans-serif version in titles and asides. One example of that is my Québec City road meet tour guide (https://www.dropbox.com/s/t5n0t6dmpldv731/Quebec%20City%20Road%20Meet.pdf?dl=0).

I always use FHWA (series D usually) or Clearview (3W or 5W) :sombrero:

Most cases, it looks great, although I wish it was a little thinner. Everything I write looks like it's bolded.

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 25, 2015, 02:01:46 AM
Courier?  Usually denounced as "old fashioned" and worse, but I always liked it.  First saw it on an IBM Selectric typewriter (with the "golf ball" element).

It's not just a taste issue and a matter of denouncing Courier as "old fashioned" . Courier truly is a functionally inferior typeface. Its primary deficiency is that it's a monospaced typeface, meaning that a broad capital W takes up the same width as a gaunt lowercase i.

Monospacing was necessary with early typewriters so that every letter would line up perfectly, allowing tabs, spaces, and line lengths to be set at conveniently even intervals. But monospacing was a concession to the limitations of the equipment and is certainly not a desirable characteristic.

If you like the slab look of Courier, American Typewriter is a proportional typeface (used in Milton Glaser's  I ❤ NY graphic) that has a similar typewriter-y feel but doesn't have the drawbacks of monospacing.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, part of the reason I dislike Courier is that legal citations are replete with annoying periods. (Example: West Publishing's South Eastern Reporter, Second Series, is cited as S.E.2d even though SE2d would do perfectly well. Then you have to add a reference to the court issuing the opinion and that adds further periods.) In a monospaced font, the periods take up the same amount of space as a capital "M" and therefore use of such typefaces wastes a lot of space if the document is subject to a page limit (as opposed to a word-count limit). This is part of the point briantroutman made, of course, but it's a particular nuance of that point that's specific to a particular type of work.

Quote from: 1995hoo on June 25, 2015, 07:55:59 PM
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, part of the reason I dislike Courier is that legal citations are replete with annoying periods. (Example: West Publishing's South Eastern Reporter, Second Series, is cited as S.E.2d even though SE2d would do perfectly well. Then you have to add a reference to the court issuing the opinion and that adds further periods.) In a monospaced font, the periods take up the same amount of space as a capital "M" and therefore use of such typefaces wastes a lot of space if the document is subject to a page limit (as opposed to a word-count limit). This is part of the point briantroutman made, of course, but it's a particular nuance of that point that's specific to a particular type of work.

I read someplace that footnotes do not count toward the limit on words in briefs filed with the courts.  No idea if that is true or not. 

Speaking of filings with the courts, this (http://mdappblog.com/2014/10/01/your-type-may-be-ripe-for-review/) is from the Maryland Appellate Blog (by the State Bar Association) about fonts, and is pretty recent (2014) and pretty amusing,

Quote from: briantroutman on June 25, 2015, 04:31:10 PM

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 25, 2015, 02:01:46 AM
Courier?  Usually denounced as "old fashioned" and worse, but I always liked it.  First saw it on an IBM Selectric typewriter (with the "golf ball" element).

It's not just a taste issue and a matter of denouncing Courier as "old fashioned" . Courier truly is a functionally inferior typeface. Its primary deficiency is that it's a monospaced typeface, meaning that a broad capital W takes up the same width as a gaunt lowercase i.

No disputing any of your factual comments above. But monospaced fonts are (IMO) great in spreadsheets with lots of numbers.

Quote from: briantroutman on June 25, 2015, 04:31:10 PM
Monospacing was necessary with early typewriters so that every letter would line up perfectly, allowing tabs, spaces, and line lengths to be set at conveniently even intervals. But monospacing was a concession to the limitations of the equipment and is certainly not a desirable characteristic.

Also needed on computer [impact] line printers, which used "print trains" with slugs to transfer ink to "printout" paper.

Quote from: briantroutman on June 25, 2015, 04:31:10 PM
If you like the slab look of Courier, American Typewriter is a proportional typeface (used in Milton Glaser's  I ❤ NY graphic) that has a similar typewriter-y feel but doesn't have the drawbacks of monospacing.

Agreed.

Quote from: cpzilliacus on June 25, 2015, 10:24:52 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on June 25, 2015, 07:55:59 PM
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, part of the reason I dislike Courier is that legal citations are replete with annoying periods. (Example: West Publishing's South Eastern Reporter, Second Series, is cited as S.E.2d even though SE2d would do perfectly well. Then you have to add a reference to the court issuing the opinion and that adds further periods.) In a monospaced font, the periods take up the same amount of space as a capital "M" and therefore use of such typefaces wastes a lot of space if the document is subject to a page limit (as opposed to a word-count limit). This is part of the point briantroutman made, of course, but it's a particular nuance of that point that's specific to a particular type of work.

I read someplace that footnotes do not count toward the limit on words in briefs filed with the courts.  No idea if that is true or not. 

....

That would depend on the particular court, but in general, I am pretty certain it is not normally the case because it would present a HUGE loophole: An attorney could simply write "The District Court's opinion should be [affirmed/reversed]." and then put unlimited argument in a footnote. I've never heard of any court in which the footnotes don't count. Certain other things (tables of contents and authorities, for example) aren't part of the word limit, but not counting footnotes would be a huge loophole!

I'll check out the link later.....my lunch just came....



Edited to add: I got around to reading the article you linked. Good stuff. I agree with pretty much everything the guy wrote.

Bumping a very old thread because I recalled we had a typography discussion and my question belongs there. My current boss likes to use Century Schoolbook 14-point type because he has weak eyes. Problem: When you form the possessive of a word ending in "f,"  the apostrophe bumps into the "f."  See screenshot below.

Does anyone know how to fix this, short of the difficult option of trying to avoid using an apostrophe after an "f" ?

(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200206/110730accc5bddd9170bb292337a6cc6.jpg)

Put a space (' ') before the apostrophe?

Mike

Use FontForge to edit the font file to correct the f/' kerning pair.

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2020, 04:01:15 PM
Use FontForge to edit the font file to correct the f/' kerning pair.

How easy is it to do that?

Since it's just the one kerning pair, not that hard. The hard part will be convincing IT to install the amended file onto your boss's computer.

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2020, 06:54:49 PM
Since it's just the one kerning pair, not that hard. The hard part will be convincing IT to install the amended file onto your boss's computer.

I think that there may be a reason not to bother. Thanks anyway.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 06, 2020, 12:36:41 PMBumping a very old thread because I recalled we had a typography discussion and my question belongs there. My current boss likes to use Century Schoolbook 14-point type because he has weak eyes. Problem: When you form the possessive of a word ending in "f,"  the apostrophe bumps into the "f."  See screenshot below.

Does anyone know how to fix this, short of the difficult option of trying to avoid using an apostrophe after an "f" ?

(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200206/110730accc5bddd9170bb292337a6cc6.jpg)

In a professional typesetting context, I suspect this would be fixed with recourse to ligatures, which are presumably accessible in Word (provided the font actually has glyphs for the relevant codepoints).  But I don't think the game is worth the candle.  Using LaTeX, for example, would be even more hassle than avoiding possessives with f-terminal words.

After typing the word, highlight just the apostrophe.  Then...

Alt+O
F
Tab
Tab
21
Alt+P
Enter

:bigass:

(https://i.imgur.com/88ygKt4.jpg)

(only works in MS Word)

I think I've found the solution, or at least an easy workaround: I highlighted the second "f," right-clicked to bring up the "Font" box, went to "Advanced," and expanded that character by one point. The apostrophe moved to the right just enough that it no longer touches the "f," but the text appears otherwise unchanged.

There has to be an easier way to do this, short of editing the font (which I don't think I can do because of IT security policies).

You could just put the apostrophe under the s by setting a rule to replace all instances of "f's" to "fş".   :-D

(https://i.imgur.com/Qhw5Srn.jpg)

I thought about starting a new thread for this, but it fits within the existing typography thread, so I decided it made more sense to bump the current thread.

This link leads to a 66-page .PDF (it will either download or open in your browser depending on how you have it set up) consisting of a motion filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, an opposition to that motion, and (on the last three pages) the judge's order denying it. (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiTsNOA0siCAxX-FFkFHWO6AucQFnoECBQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmatthewbutterick.com%2Fpdf%2Fjones-line-spacing-motion.pdf&usg=AOvVaw39tTAKv5J3qCpkLGqua4E9&opi=89978449)

The issue will appeal to some folks here and is an example both of pedanticism in the extreme and of motions that should not have been filed. The issue: What does it means to use "double spacing" when formatting a document that the local rules require to be "double-spaced"? The local rules require double-spacing, with a few exceptions, and counsel were mad that opposing counsel set the spacing to "Exactly 24-point" instead of what the software designated as double-spacing, thereby "enabl[ing] Plaintiffs to have approximately 27 lines on each page, rather than the approximately 23 lines per page that would result from formatting using standard double spacing." (Why the court imposes page limits instead of the more sensible word-count limits is not addressed.) The motion takes up the first two pages of the .PDF (plus three pages of signature blocks and certifications). Then the 16-page opposition has a load of exhibits taking you all the way through page 63, followed by the judge's order that doesn't decide what "double-spacing" means but denies the motion because 24-point spacing "does not violate Local Rule 7.1."

The judge's order is remarkably calm and measured, all things considered.

The part I find most damning about the defendants' argument that "double-spacing means what Word says it does" is the plaintiffs' exhibit establishing that Microsoft itself changed its own definition of what double-spacing means. That alone is a reason to deny this sort of motion.

I would think that's a spurious claim anyway, considering that the Microsoft Corporation has not been granted by the court or Congress any  authority to determine the legal meaning of the term "double-spaced", and they have not claimed such authority. But this argument is the most persuasive to me:

Quote
Third, and perhaps must fundamentally, the Local Rules of courts should not require the use of any specific commercial product, such as Microsoft Word. Access to courts is a fundamental right. And access to courts should never be conditioned on using a particular commercial product. If courts mandated line-spacing based on the behavior of any specific word-processing program, access to courts would be conditioned on purchasing a license to that program. Fortunately, the Local Rules do not require the use of Microsoft Word or any other specific program. Nor do the Local Rules state that "double-spacing" is defined by the behavior
and arbitrary choices made by specific word-processing programs. The Local Rules simply state that papers filed with the Court must be "double-spaced." Defendants invite the Court to issue an order holding that "double-spacing" under the Local Rules does not mean what i has always meant in plain English and must instead be interpreted consistent with the proprietary behavior of Microsoft Word or other programs. Defendants' invitation should be rejected.

The stupidest thing is that the defendants' counsel is assuredly billing them for the time spent dreaming up and arguing this bullshit.

Quote from: 1995hoo on November 16, 2023, 08:55:54 AMThe judge's order is remarkably calm and measured, all things considered.

The claws come out in the footnote:

QuoteIndeed, Plaintiffs' twelve pages worth of prose, two declarations, and multiple other exhibits filed in opposition to this Motion, while interesting, displays both sides' tendency toward overkill.

Most (all?) courts have rules about how submissions to them are formatted, and they are famous for being picky about it and not even necessarily being exactly the same from one court to another.  The point of double spacing is that there's lots of space between lines, so they don't have to dink with the formatting in order to print it out and have space to handwrite emphasis on certain phrases or dispute them.  It's part of the job of both counsels and their staffs to submit the filings in the way that the court likes.

Of course it's stupid to consult Microsoft's opinion of what is "double spaced".  Double spacing was a thing for typewriters for years before Bill Gates was even born.

Quote from: Scott5114 on November 16, 2023, 10:32:46 PM
I would think that's a spurious claim anyway, considering that the Microsoft Corporation has not been granted by the court or Congress any  authority to determine the legal meaning of the term "double-spaced", and they have not claimed such authority. But this argument is the most persuasive to me:

Quote
Third, and perhaps must fundamentally, the Local Rules of courts should not require the use of any specific commercial product, such as Microsoft Word. Access to courts is a fundamental right. And access to courts should never be conditioned on using a particular commercial product. If courts mandated line-spacing based on the behavior of any specific word-processing program, access to courts would be conditioned on purchasing a license to that program. Fortunately, the Local Rules do not require the use of Microsoft Word or any other specific program. Nor do the Local Rules state that "double-spacing" is defined by the behavior
and arbitrary choices made by specific word-processing programs. The Local Rules simply state that papers filed with the Court must be "double-spaced." Defendants invite the Court to issue an order holding that "double-spacing" under the Local Rules does not mean what i has always meant in plain English and must instead be interpreted consistent with the proprietary behavior of Microsoft Word or other programs. Defendants' invitation should be rejected.

The stupidest thing is that the defendants' counsel is assuredly billing them for the time spent dreaming up and arguing this bullshit.

I agree with you, and there is also the related point made in note 4, which appears after the first sentence you quoted:

QuoteIndeed, the Local Rules do not require the use of any commercial word processing software at all. Under the Local Rules, parties may submit typewritten materials. If a lawyer desires to submit typewritten papers, it would be impossible for them to use a commercial word-processing software's "double" lien setting. They could only employ true "double-spacing," which would be exactly 24-point line spacing. Defendants' strained position does not take this into account at all.

I don't know of any attorneys who use typewriters these days, but I would not be at all surprised to hear that some pro se parties (people representing themselves) still do so.

I have both Word and WordPerfect available on my work PC, so now I'm tempted to copy a full page of text, paste it into both, and see if there's any difference in the spacing. Edited to add: I just tried that. I had to make sure the formatting was identical, including the margins, hyphenation being active, etc., but the odd thing is that while the text took up the same number of lines, the lines didn't break in the same places and WordPerfect didn't hyphenate any words despite that feature being active, which tells me it's doing something else with the formatting (adjusting character spacing differently, perhaps?). I'm not inclined to try to figure out the reason for the difference. It's been too many years since I last used WordPerfect on a regular basis (1999), so it would just take too much time to re-learn it.

Seems like if one needs a definition of double spacing, this should suffice: double-spacing is the line space setting that has the effect of allowing half as many lines of text per page as would using single spaced lines, or the closest approximation thereof possible with the typesetting technology in use.

Then if a definition of single spacing is needed, it's time to bring in actual measurements.

The best solution, in my view, is to use a word-count limit so that minor differences between, say, "double spacing" and "Exactly ## point" spacing don't have any meaningful effect. (The main reason for requiring "double spacing" is that it leaves room for judges and their law clerks to make notes on the briefing.) A side benefit of using a word count is that it allows for a larger type size—the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, for example, require a minimum of 14-point type.

A word limit sounds very inconvenient if anyone is using a typewriter, which they seem to be trying to accommodate still.

Quote from: 1995hoo on November 18, 2023, 10:32:32 AM
The best solution, in my view, is to use a word-count limit so that minor differences between, say, "double spacing" and "Exactly ## point" spacing don't have any meaningful effect. (The main reason for requiring "double spacing" is that it leaves room for judges and their law clerks to make notes on the briefing.) A side benefit of using a word count is that it allows for a larger type size—the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, for example, require a minimum of 14-point type.

I must not be understanding what you intend by "word count".  The objective is easily legible type size and generous space between lines and margins for making notes  The number of words that fit on a page will follow from those choices, right?

Quote from: 1995hoo on November 18, 2023, 10:32:32 AMThe best solution, in my view, is to use a word-count limit so that minor differences between, say, "double spacing" and "Exactly ## point" spacing don't have any meaningful effect. (The main reason for requiring "double spacing" is that it leaves room for judges and their law clerks to make notes on the briefing.) A side benefit of using a word count is that it allows for a larger type size—the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, for example, require a minimum of 14-point type.

Limits framed in word counts have the disadvantage of being more difficult and costly to enforce.  I've done graduate study at an institution that (at the time) limited theses to 100,000 words and allowed them to be submitted either with typical manuscript formatting (double-spacing for body text with single-spacing for footnotes and block quotes), or with layout similar to a "well-designed book."  We were required to state the word count when submitting, but colleagues would often speak of sneaking in an extra 5%-10% and hoping it wouldn't trigger a full page-by-page tabulation that would catch them out.

It seems to me that part of the federal courts' problem is that they are trying to regulate presentation in an adversarial environment.  If the judges don't want to rule on claims that any parties are violating formatting rules, then they need to make it clear that such motions will not be heard.

I would also contend that it is challenging, but not impossible, to construct a specification for formatting such that readability is preserved, no use of proprietary products (such as specific computer fonts or word processing/typesetting programs) is required, the doors remain open to litigants without computers, and compliance checking is cheap and easy for the judges' administrative staff.  The problem is that such a specification would not be simple--it'd have to take into account page margins and certain aspects of font metrics that are not normally mentioned in formatting instructions.  It would also need a consistency requirement (i.e., no games like changing from 12-point to 11-point midstream to make things come out right) and probably also an incentive to submit an editable original file (if one exists) for easy clearance.

Quote from: J N Winkler on November 18, 2023, 01:40:01 PM
Limits framed in word counts have the disadvantage of being more difficult and costly to enforce. 

On the other hand, a word-counting program is simple enough to be used as one of the example programs in The C Programming Language by K&R, where it is used to introduce the else statement and the || (logical OR) operator. Granted, this assumes that counsel is submitting machine-readable documents and not using bad-faith tactics like submitting a PDF with text converted to paths to frustrate attempts by the clerk to run a word counter on it.

Quote from: J N Winkler on November 18, 2023, 01:40:01 PM
It seems to me that part of the federal courts' problem is that they are trying to regulate presentation in an adversarial environment.  If the judges don't want to rule on claims that any parties are violating formatting rules, then they need to make it clear that such motions will not be heard.

I think this is a situation where the presentation rules are intended for the more efficient operation of the court, but one of the parties subject to  the rules is complaining about a supposed infraction of them in an attempt to gain advantage. This is really no different than an employee complaining to management that some other employee was late for work—it's not really the complainant's business because the rules are not there for their benefit and it's not their job to enforce them.

Quote from: J N Winkler on November 18, 2023, 01:40:01 PM
I would also contend that it is challenging, but not impossible, to construct a specification for formatting such that readability is preserved, no use of proprietary products (such as specific computer fonts or word processing/typesetting programs) is required, the doors remain open to litigants without computers, and compliance checking is cheap and easy for the judges' administrative staff.

One approach that has seen some success in other arenas of government is to standardize on open-source software and open file formats, as these are perpetually freely available to anyone who has a computer running one of the big 3 operating systems. The state of Massachusetts, for instance, has a policy of conducting business in the OpenDocument formats, which is supported by both open-source free software and Microsoft products, and thus serves as many constituents as possible.

I could see success in formatting rules specified in terms of how OpenDocument Text defines them, as that would be referencing an authoritative standard (ISO 26300) that is freely available to all comers. The difficulty would then be in the rules for typewriters not being unnecessarily duplicative and cumbersome.

Quote from: kkt on November 18, 2023, 12:17:01 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on November 18, 2023, 10:32:32 AM
The best solution, in my view, is to use a word-count limit so that minor differences between, say, "double spacing" and "Exactly ## point" spacing don't have any meaningful effect. (The main reason for requiring "double spacing" is that it leaves room for judges and their law clerks to make notes on the briefing.) A side benefit of using a word count is that it allows for a larger type size—the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, for example, require a minimum of 14-point type.

I must not be understanding what you intend by "word count".  The objective is easily legible type size and generous space between lines and margins for making notes  The number of words that fit on a page will follow from those choices, right?

I mean a word count. A rule says you can have no more than x number of words and you use your software's word count feature to calculate it, making sure to check the box to count footnotes. Rule 32(a)(7) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure is probably the best-known example. See below. My point about a word count is that the amount of text on a page becomes relatively unimportant if you get a certain number of words because you don't have to worry about fitting that number of words into a specified number of pages. It also frees you up to use reasonable typefaces instead of defaulting to Times New Roman because it produces a small glyph.

Quote
Rule 32. Form of Briefs, Appendices, and Other Papers
(a) Form of a Brief.

(1) Reproduction.

(A) A brief may be reproduced by any process that yields a clear black image on light paper. The paper must be opaque and unglazed. Only one side of the paper may be used.

(B) Text must be reproduced with a clarity that equals or exceeds the output of a laser printer.

(C) Photographs, illustrations, and tables may be reproduced by any method that results in a good copy of the original; a glossy finish is acceptable if the original is glossy.

(2) Cover. Except for filings by unrepresented parties, the cover of the appellant's brief must be blue; the appellee's, red; an intervenor's or amicus curiae's, green; any reply brief, gray; and any supplemental brief, tan. The front cover of a brief must contain:

(A) the number of the case centered at the top;

(B) the name of the court;

(C) the title of the case (see Rule 12(a));

(D) the nature of the proceeding (e.g., Appeal, Petition for Review) and the name of the court, agency, or board below;

(E) the title of the brief, identifying the party or parties for whom the brief is filed; and

(F) the name, office address, and telephone number of counsel representing the party for whom the brief is filed.

(3) Binding. The brief must be bound in any manner that is secure, does not obscure the text, and permits the brief to lie reasonably flat when open.

(4) Paper Size, Line Spacing, and Margins. The brief must be on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper. The text must be double-spaced, but quotations more than two lines long may be indented and single-spaced. Headings and footnotes may be single-spaced. Margins must be at least one inch on all four sides. Page numbers may be placed in the margins, but no text may appear there.

(5) Typeface. Either a proportionally spaced or a monospaced face may be used.

(A) A proportionally spaced face must include serifs, but sans-serif type may be used in headings and captions. A proportionally spaced face must be 14-point or larger.

(B) A monospaced face may not contain more than 10 1/2 characters per inch.

(6) Type Styles. A brief must be set in a plain, roman style, although italics or boldface may be used for emphasis. Case names must be italicized or underlined.

(7) Length.

(A) Page Limitation. A principal brief may not exceed 30 pages, or a reply brief 15 pages, unless it complies with Rule 32(a)(7)(B).

(B) Type-Volume Limitation.

(i) A principal brief is acceptable if it:

• contains no more than 13,000 words; or

• uses a monospaced face and contains no more than 1,300 lines of text.

(ii) A reply brief is acceptable if it contains no more than half of the type volume specified in Rule 32(a)(7)(B)(i).

...

(f) Items Excluded from Length. In computing any length limit, headings, footnotes, and quotations count toward the limit but the following items do not:

· cover page;

· disclosure statement;

· table of contents;

· table of citations;

· statement regarding oral argument;

· addendum containing statutes, rules, or regulations;

· certificate of counsel;

· signature block;

· proof of service; and

· any item specifically excluded by these rules or by local rule.

(g) Certificate of Compliance.

(1) Briefs and Papers That Require a Certificate. A brief submitted under Rules 28.1(e)(2), 29(b)(4), or 32(a)(7)(B)—and a paper submitted under Rules 5(c)(1), 21(d)(1), 27(d)(2)(A), 27(d)(2)(C), 35(b)(2)(A), or 40(b)(1)—must include a certificate by the attorney, or an unrepresented party, that the document complies with the type-volume limitation. The person preparing the certificate may rely on the word or line count of the word-processing system used to prepare the document. The certificate must state the number of words—or the number of lines of monospaced type—in the document.

(2) Acceptable Form. Form 6 in the Appendix of Forms meets the requirements for a certificate of compliance.

I see, thank you.  So it's word count rather than page count that's the indicator of whether it's too long, subject to the 30 or 15 page limits in (7)(A).

But if the point is an attorney or clerk can print it out and have enough white space to make notes on the page, they'll still want it 14 point and double spaced.

Actually, it looks like the rule is structured such that as long as it complies with the word count, the number of pages is irrelevant.

Quote from: Scott5114 on November 19, 2023, 02:36:51 AM
Actually, it looks like the rule is structured such that as long as it complies with the word count, the number of pages is irrelevant.

Essentially, if it is the stated number of pages or fewer, it's compliant; if it's longer than that number of pages, you certify the word count and the number of pages becomes irrelevant.

Thread bumped to link Judge Easterbrook's opinion issued this past Monday, which I figure may be of interest to the people who find this thread interesting—or at least the latter part of the opinion beginning with the second full paragraph on page 4. I enjoyed this, although calling out counsel by name is perhaps over the top and unnecessary.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/OpinionsWeb/processWebInputExternal.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2024/D06-03/C:23-2495:J:Easterbrook:aut:T:fnOp:N:3218701:S:0

Bernhard Modern isn't that bad. I've had to read worse fonts at work while being paid far less than a federal judge.

I'm gonna use Comic Sans in legal cases out of spite.

Quote from: Scott5114 on June 07, 2024, 04:45:16 PMBernhard Modern isn't that bad. I've had to read worse fonts at work while being paid far less than a federal judge.

You're much younger than most Federal appellate court judges, which skew toward the "old fart" end of the scale.

Yeah, they're paid more. But if you want them to buy what you're selling, best to use fonts easy on their (old fart) eyes.

(speaking as a retired lawyer, whose pre-retirement job included writing briefs for which Federal judges were the target audience)

Quote from: oscar on June 07, 2024, 06:43:55 PMYeah, they're paid more. But if you want them to buy what you're selling, best to use fonts easy on their (old fart) eyes.

I'm gonna use Clearview in legal cases out of spite.