Helvetica Subway photo 1500

brain picking a few essential books on typography

I’VE NOT DONE THIS BE­FORE, but what the hey! To have ad­di­tional in­for­ma­tion tied in with my other posts on ty­pog­raphy, I have copied and pasted an en­tire ar­ticle from Maria Popo­va’s Brain Pick­ings web­site. I have edited it so that you can read just the book re­views here and move on to cer­tain books.

[Read more] “brain picking a few essential books on typography”
Comma photo 600 trim

where does the comma go with quotation marks?

WHERE DOES THE COMMA GO when it’s within a pair of quo­ta­tion mark? Some­times it’s within the quo­ta­tion marks, some­times it’s out­side those same quote marks! Same with pe­riods! And where do colons and semi-colons go? And en-dashes and em-dashes? And what about quotes within quotes? As the old man in Moon­struck says at the end of the movie, “I’m a-confused.” [Read more] “where does the comma go with quotation marks?”

Bringhurst Elements poster crop

robert bringhurst and elements of typographic style

EYE-CATCHING TY­POG­RAPHY has al­ways in­ter­ested me, even be­fore art classes in high school. Re­cently I did some re­search in hopes of adding some ty­po­graph­ical sparkle to my sites. I pulled sev­eral books from the li­brary, each of which was en­joy­able to read, ed­u­ca­tional, but of little as­sis­tance: the reason being that both Word­Press and the themes that I am using are lim­ited in how many of the ideas could ac­tu­ally be implemented. [Read more] “robert bringhurst and elements of typographic style”

JamesRandi cane skull 1500

skepticism is not a position (it’s a process)

NATRUAL-BORN SKEPTIC, that’s what I am! This is a word that is often misunderstood—and there­fore misused—by many people, es­pe­cially people in­tending it to be dep­re­ca­tory. Merriam-Webster de­fines skep­ti­cism as “an at­ti­tude of doubting the truth of some­thing (such as a claim or state­ment).” 1

This is true as far as it goes, it just doesn’t go far enough. [Read more] “skepticism is not a position (it’s a process)”

Hogarth Decimation print 1500 crop

the decimation of the language continues

A TALE OF TWO DIS­EASES was the attention-grabbing head­line of the fea­tured ar­ticle re­ceived in to­day’s Mother Jones email newsletter. It ad­dresses the dev­as­tating, life-shortening, ge­netic dis­eases sickle-cell dis­ease (SCD), also known as sickle-cell anaemia (SCA), and cystic fi­brosis. But I ig­nored the con­tent as my at­ten­tion was caught by a sec­ondary head­line: “We’re in the Process of Dec­i­mating 1 in 6 Species on Earth” by Tim Mc­Don­nell (April 30, 2015). [Read more] “the decimation of the language continues”