Wrong way!

Hmmm - wasn't there a type of leftward-slanting calligraphy called Madisonian Hand popular in the colonies/US, c. 1770-1800?

backwards-slanting was also common on german maps of the 1800s. spiekermann showed me a bunch of this stuff once - i wish i could remember what the left-slanting italics signified, because it was something important. anyone else hear of this?

Here's one called English Back Slope in the Dover reprint "Old-Time Advertising cuts and Typography" from the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry catalog of 1832.

Quite a few 19th century British and American foundries showed backwards-leaning types in their specimens. But to call them 'reverse italics' might be misleading since there isn't much 'italic' about them. They're mainly romans oblique'd backwards.

Okay then. How about this? It's something I did as an experiment a while back, but never finished. It's a modified version of Century Expanded Italic.

dumb question: whose idea was the italic anyway? and why? just another way to mark emphasis, or something more than that?

I can't remember where I saw it, but there was someone who was proposing that backward slanting type be used as a way to indicate irony.

Sounds good to me. Maybe that way people will stop using those emoticons.

[:]

Being a lefty I like the idea of "reverse italics". If, in the early days of metal type someone had set some sort of precedent for the use of left-slanting italics then perhaps our typographic world would be even richer and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

PK:

I think italic type was invented by Aldus Manutius. But I don't know when they started mixing it with Roman.

this is one of the sexiest backward italics ever: cottingley by rian hughes/device.

we got a lot of "leaned back" letters used in store signage here in germany, most of them were created back in the 50s.

i think i'm in love....with cottingley

The printer Aldus Manutius commissioned the first “italic” type from the punchcutter Francesco Griffo, ca. 1500. It was based on a popular handwriting style at the time. (All early types were imitations of handwriting.) The significant feature for Aldus probably wasn’t the slope (in fact early italics are rather upright) as much as it was the narrower width. Aldus used the new types to get more words per line and thus publish smaller, more affordable editions of the classics — the first “pocket” editions.

Incidentally, there were no sloped italic capitals originally; the capital letters were still a separate species unto themselves.

The practice of mixing italics with romans on the same line began in the late 16th century and came into full flower in the 17th. Robert Bringhurst likens this development to the mixing of major and minor keys in music, which also began around the same time.

The term Italic refers to it's Italian origin.

I'm left-handed. Everything I wrote in grade school looked like reverse italics.

I also drew cars that looked like houses, so maybe it means nothing.

Very interesting. I believe it was the French that first mixed the italic and roman --- for a dictionary if I remember correctly.

---

I found this in "Early Advertising Art: Typographical Volume", Dover.

Letraset Isometric had two variants 30 and -30 degree angled.

From "American Wood Type, 1828-1900"

"Backslope. Letter slanted to the left. Referred to as 'Contra Italic' by Nicolette Gray. This style probably began in England with the Fat Face Romans. American wood type manufacturers cut Gothic, Antique, and Roman Backslope during the first half of the century, and there were only a very few styles of backslope issued by the founder. Most notable were some small romans by L. Johnson, small Ornamentals, Bulletin script and Grotesque Italian."

its used to order bullet list. e.g. if you have a CV:

you are searching for: a good speaker (it)
i offer: experience in public relation (rit)

a strong and friendly appearance (it)
a winning and confident appearence (rit)

etc. (it)
ect. (rev-it)

intented to save space and give an intuitve overview
:D

In Danish and Norwegian dialectology, text is typically written in italic style. There are some letters which, in the italic context, are written as upright. For this to make logical sense, it seems that in roman style, these letters-upright-when-italicized would have to be reverse italic.

Something similar(ish) happens with a and script-a in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. Italicized, a looks like a script-a. Italicized, script-a looks like a Greek alpha.