Plus, bonus delight in re-watching the fanta-bulousness that inhabits the form of Bruno Ganz.

I’m sure this will have Impact.

That was very funny. My problem is I can’t spin that into a straw-man argument about how Pandagon bashes teachers.

Give me time…

Hm, good, but the Watchmen one was still better.

What makes this relevant is that Hitler did rail against fonts. He thought that Germany should replace the Fraktur typeface with the Latin and later (in 1941) some typefaces (Fraktur and Schwabacher among others) were abolished because they were ‘Jewish’.
Really.

agree x1000
Esp. about Zapf Chancery ALL CAPS.

The university I work for has a format guide that, unfotunately, changes with each new administration.

  Right now the “official” font is Stone Serif. The rebellious Arial contingent from the previous administration is not giving up without a fight.

I laughed so hard at some of those.  And immediately thought of this.

Papyrus is way overused, but I’m going to admit that I defend it’s existence. It’s not a BAD font.

“It’s not a BAD font.”

There are no bad fonts.  Just misunderstood fonts.

...and some fonts that should never see the light of day under any circumstances…

I’m with you, Xero. I rather like Papyrus in the right context.

Comic Sans, however, has no right to exist.

Hey! I like Papyrus. I don’t ever use it, but I like it. I usually stick to nice, crisp Arial.

Comic Sans:  The Emmanuel Goldstein of typefaces.

Arial?  Arial is a poor rip-off of Helvetica.  Use Helvetica, it’ll make you feel better.

(Helvetica is used frequently, but because it doesn’t try to be “cool” or “zany,” it doesn’t grate on the nerves.  If you want a nice crisp sans serif font for workmanlike applications, you can’t do better.)

(Also I believe it is the only font with a documentary about it.  Seriously.  Watch the documentary; it’s a whole lot more interesting than you think it is.  It’s on Netflix.)

As a book collector, what I’ve found interesting that the ‘traditional’ Gothic font for German pretty much bit the dust after WWII, the latest book I have using it is a German schoolbook for use in American classrooms printed here in 1941.

What’s really giving me the creeps is how much this Hitler reminds me of Bill Adama.

I’m a Georgia girl all the way.

Dark Avenger -

As JohnL mentioned above, around 1941-1942 the Gothic (Fraktur) typeset was abolished in Germany.  The ostensible reason was “Hebraic influences” but in reality it’s because a lot of people were having trouble reading the text.  I’ve got quite a few primary documents that have that ‘41 typeset split.  One of the interesting things is that on documents printed on porous paper (newspapers, for instance) ink-bleeding led to a lot of illegible words using the Fraktur typeset.

Yeah, I like Helvetica or Arial.
I don’t like Times New Roman. My boss has a love of it, sadly.

Geek fact: serif fonts are easier to read on paper, but sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen.

And that video was fucking hilarious!

Geek fact: serif fonts are easier to read on paper, but sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen.

Wow, thank you so much. I didn’t know it, and it’s goung to be very useful for my work.

I like Arial and Verdana… and, as a fancy type for posters and ads, Century Gothic. It’s round, neat and readable, which is all I like in a font.

My favorite initiation of the kill Comic Sans joke goes like this

Damn my Friday-fouled brain. “Iteration” of the joke!

Wow, I didn’t know that about Fraktur. Because in all the modern representations of Nazi stuff you see it. (And in some of the old stuff—the letterheads in my great-uncle’s correspondence with the district whoever all had fraktur letterheads…)

the kill Comic Sans joke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Connare

Our official font is Melior.  Problem is, it doesn’t seem to be installed much of anywhere outside of publications.  That makes editing things an adventure.  I personally prefer the readability of Verdana at small font size for most things, and like the look of mainandra (sp?) for stuff that is more artsy and short.

I seem to remember a crunchy feely font in the 90s that drove me batty.  Its natural habitat was natural food stores and announcements for community stuff.  It was ugly and unreadable, not to mention way overused.  I think it may have been a variant of helvetica?  Not sure, but it did suck.

Arial, TNR, whatever Word 2007 is making default . . um, Calibri?  it’s all cool on paper.  I do prefer my Mac system fonts though.  One thing of several keeping me from Linux or at least Ubuntu is that I don’t find the screen fonts very appealing.

I get severely constipated when doing anything more than the usual documents or memos.  In a different universe, I went and got a graphic arts degree instead of fumbling between art, architecture and scenic design.  Because of this, I frequently stumble through free and cheap fonts, eventually settling on something that marginally satisfies my needs.  I obviously have no taste.

Someday there will be a computer screen capable of rendering garamond properly…

tannenburg, it may well be that the last printers to use the Fraktur font were American.

The Nazis actually pushed the Fraktur/Gothic for awhile saying it was Aryan and traditional, but changed their mind in 1941. Germany was by far the last holdout of what used to be a more widespread usage. I haven’t seen a real explanation for why the Nazis stopped using it—I know I have trouble reading it, but the Germans had been using it for hundreds of years so it shouldn’t have been a problem for them (and they used different typesets for documents that were going outside of Germany).
So, perhaps there really was a scene like this in 1941. I wonder what fonts Hitler was considering.

I love Courier on paper.

This made my laugh. Mr. Prairie is a web experience designer/information architect and typography is a big deal in our House! My personal favorite is American Typewriter. Now, if I could just rig my laptop to sound the same way my old, manual typewriter did.

Last time we went to the Ballpark in Arlington, home of the regrettable Texas Rangers, they had programs printed in all Copperplate Bold, which is a big caps/small caps font…it was hideous. But they thought it looked “basebally” so they slapped it in body text too… the horror. 

Ms Kate, there are many fonts that could fit that description; in general they tend to look “hand-drawn” or as though they were stamped with renewable soy inks on hemp paper, right? Or slightly scrawly and uneven. I think Whole Foods may have perpetrated many of them, and also places that sold aromatherapy oils and healing soaps…

Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/590/

I have done this to people in emails and over IM, just to get on some nerves.

Someday there will be a computer screen capable of rendering garamond properly…

One can only hope.

Before my eyes reached middle age, I used to love Courier, since it has a nice, earnest, typewritery look to it.  Then I had to turn in a manuscript in “house format”, which for Random House in 2002 was Courier 12pt., double-spaced.  Actually, the production bit was fine—I used the lovely, easy-to-read Helvetica for my writing and editing and at the last moment, did a select-all-change-font thing.  But then the copyediting and query-answering had to be done on hard copy, and that was all in Courier.  Bleargh.  I got my first glasses shortly thereafter.  I still cringe at the sight of that font, though, especially if it’s extra-tiny.

I totally agree with other Papyrus-dislikers and Comic-sans critics: I think must be a law in effect that says all small restaurants and day spas in Florida must do their menus in Papyrus.  Ugh.  And emails that have more than one Forward in the subject line are almost guaranteed to be Something Inspirational Rendered In Comic Sans, so off to the bin they go (sorry if anyone reading this has sent me such a thing, though I seriously doubt that’s happened.)

(Ugh! “I think THERE must be a law” and “almost ALWAYS guaranteed to be”.  That will teach me to attempt reading online without the aforementioned glassses.)

litbrit, I’m not even middle aged, but I refuse to edit galleys in mellior typeface that is less than 12pt.  I just can’t deal with that!

Since we’re on the subject of jokes about fonts, I must bring to your attention this:

Sans Serif is also, famously, the subject of one of the all-time-great April Fool’s jokes played by a broadsheet newspaper.

On April 1 of 1977, The Guardian, London, brought out a seven-page travel supplement in honour of the 10th anniversary of Sans Serriffe (capital: Bodoni), a small republic located in the Indian Ocean, consisting of several semi-colon shaped islands the biggest of which were Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its leader? General Pica.

A series of articles described the geography and culture of the place.

Accompanying advertisements too turned it on (Kodak: “If you have a photograph of Sans Seriffe, Kodak would like to see it.” Guinness: “How Sans Seriffe turned Guinness upside down.” Texaco: “Win two weeks in Sans Seriffe as a guest of James Hunt“).

Hundreds of readers began calling their travel agents for bookings and the newspaper for more information.

The Guardian even received a letter from a group calling itself the San Serriffe Liberation Front, which took the paper to task for the pro-government slant of its report.

Till…

Till it dawned on everybody that it was all an elaborate hoax to mark All Fools Day. Everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology.

The success of this prank, devised by Philip Davies, is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April foolery that has gripped British tabloids ever since.

You can find that article, and a picture of the map of Sans Serriffe, here:  http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/what-is-sans-serif/

Ms. Kate, you may be thinking of Lithos, my own particular pet peeve.
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/lithos/

What surprised me is that the film this clip is taken from, Der Untergang (Downfall), is available in its entirety on YouTube. It’s chopped into 14 or 15 segments to comply with YouTube’s ten-minute limit. I clicked on one just to check it out and, before I knew it, I was going through one after another until I’d watched the whole movie. Fascinating stuff. The actress in the main role as Hitler’s secretary, Alexandra Maria Lara, gives a perfect performance (and is heartbreakingly beautiful to boot).

Alas, to my eternal art direction shame I once used Zapf Chancery ALL-CAPS on a theater poster in college…the play was “AS YOU LIKE IT.”

The fact that Parker Posey was in that play only compounds my sin—I’d love to hang it on my wall, but it’s so damn ugly!

I write all my memos and e-mails in Wingdings.

Norsecats, my son and his friends have tired of my husband’s reading of Nick’s e-mails, so they have started doing things like translating into different languages and using symbol fonts.

I do Macintosh support for a living, so my job requires me to know a lot about fonts. It astonishes me how many there are, and how there are some people that make a nice living designing them.

Favorite name for a font: Catholic Schoolgirl. It’s a handwriting font, with stereotypical cheerleader-girl handwriting. Big swirly loopy letters with the “i"s dotted with open circles.

My teen son has informed me that the dot on an “i” is called a tittle.

This discovery has provided endless hours of 7th grade entertainment.  I think it gets more cred than the time he asked the French teacher what the French word for shower is.

how there are some people that make a nice living designing them.

In the early 90s I was in a residence in San Francisco, CA, which had enormous stained-glass hanging lamps that made a Tiffany lampshade look like something you’d find over a pool table in the Tenderloin.

I was told that they were made by the guy who wrote the software for “Printer’s Devil”,  he having made his fortune with said program, turned to making the lamps as an artistic task and challenge.