Recently Commented
- 02.10.12
Equity
M. Busse: would love to use "Equity" but $120 for a single license is a bit stiff… - 02.08.12
Automated Kerning With iKern
Stephen Coles: Ahhh, I completely overlooked Kern Master (DTL has got to get their English pages up!). I wonder if this is the same technolo… - 02.06.12
Detroit
Luke Tonge: Chris, great to see Alex's Detroit face showcased here! It's a cracking piece of work and we were only too delighted to give … - 02.06.12
Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont
ceegee: Exactly what I thought when I saw it. Instead of creating a new typographic identity, they mixed fonts to make something "sta… - 02.05.12
Chartwell
AndrĂ© Mora: I really like Chartwell and have used it for editorial design. I'm impressed by its ingenuity and excited by what it may insp… - 02.02.12
Making Geometric Type Work
ltoshach: This was very interesting and helpful, I am a new graphic design student and am starting to become really focused on fonts I … - 02.01.12
Aria
Jessica Braun: I just would like everyone to know that I am a poor college student and I really want this font and I am accepting donations.… - 01.30.12
Neacademia
Florian Hardwig: Addendum: This review was not even published yet, when Rosetta already announced an update. This new version addresses my few… - 01.30.12
Sutturah
Maximiliano Sproviero: La verdad esta tipo es increĂble. Muy muy buena, te felicito Octavio.…
I agree, Stephen. So helpful and nifty. Those dang boxing wizards better watch their backs…
Who invented the boxing wizards, by the way? Or the quick brown fox for that matter.
I came out with this:
“greek chimpanzee djs qualify for web x-tv”
How does it sound in English?
I really need to thank Mark for this.
You’re welcome!
By the way, Stephen, it’s funny that you included a link to the Pangrams on NPR item. I got the idea for Pangrammer Helper shortly after posting that.
Six big quarks zip when my dot faces jive. -33
Quick, jump down before x-ray zaps the glove. -35
Wax moves, jerk. Faze grain chips quite badly. -36
Just a few of my contributions.
Is there such a thing as a pangrammatical error?
:->
Yes, I would say so! Example: for a while Emigre used “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” – which is missing the “s” in “jumps”. This is actually the most common pangrammatical error, I’d say.
Claudio: I don’t know about that one – sounds like it’s making fun of Greeks. :-/ Plus it’s inaccurate, since Greeks tend to be very laid-back. ;->
hhp
I just started with the word “Greek” to complement my little collection of transcultural pangams (two) I found some time ago, namely:
“Verily the dark ex-Jew quit Zionism, preferring the Cabala.”
“Six big devils from Japan quickly forgot how to waltz.”
I know mine does not make much sense, but it’s pretty short.
What does it mean “laid-back”? I thought “web x-tv” was a pretty nonsense thing, especially given its among the interests of Greek chimpanzee djs. I did not say “web xxx-tv”, nor meant anything pornographic.
Laid-back: Relaxed, laconic, easy-going, unexcitable, agreeable…
Oops. Strike laconic. I must have been thinking of some other word and failed to retrieve it. Add the word “casual” in its place.
> What does it mean “laid-back”?
I meant as opposed to what chimps are.
hhp
Former VJ liked Monique’s wild bargains on sexy czech pants.
Mr. Schwartz, just a question out of curiosity. When you all wrote all those pangrams for the Font Bureau, did you have any handy aids like this? (I expect not.) (124)
“Prowling frogs make a quick jazzy codes with verbs.”
That’s fun. Thanks for the great new toy, Mark!
Mr. Schwartz, just a question out of curiosity. When you all wrote all those pangrams for the Font Bureau, did you have any handy aids like this? (I expect not.) (124)
no, i used to write them in Stickies. i would have an alphabet in one and the pangram i was working on in another, and i would delete the letters as i used them. it was a lot like your system, but not automatic. Tobias Frere-Jones and Jill Pichotta wrote a lot of the ones we used for text in the specimen book, too. the rest are from Tobias’s extensive collection of old pangrams. unfortunately, nobody knows where most of them came from.
“Vexed, George W. Bush just zooms like crazy puffs with no I.Q.”
I wonder, what is the most efficient pangram?
I mean a phrase that includes all letters of the alphabet, with the lowest number of total letters.
A list of pangrams in order of efficiency.
BTW, according to the incomparable “Making the Alphabet Dance”, a true pangram is one where each letter is only used once! You have to resort to some pretty ridiculous stuff, but it seems it’s possible.
hhp
While it’s not possible to make a true pangram with letters, it is possible with figures: 439+587=1026.
I thought this might interest typophile and mathematician Luc Devroye, and he worked out a formula that creates all possible instances (hundreds).
Now, of course purists might object that the math signs get in the way, but the figures can be stacked in such a way as to do without them and still make sense.
Actually, Eckler’s book lists a few true (alphabetic) pangrams, although most of them are totally outlandish. But by allowing proper names and an abbreviation he does show this relatively reasonable one: “Meg Schwarzkopf quit Jynx Blvd.” – “jynx” being some exotic British bird, apparently…
hhp
A source for international pangrams would be great, like french, chzech or spanish ones that use a lot of accented characters, or danish pangrams that use those special character ć, ś, ř etc.
Here’s a german one that i tend to use a lot: “Zwei Boxkämpfer jagen Eva quer durch Sylt.” Unfortunately it’s missing the ‘ß’.
“Excited zealots quake with private joy for big money.”
“Zero laws forbid naming quack psychiatrists in vexing jokes.”
Nice job, Mark. This helper makes keeping track while creating pangrams a lot more convenient.
On a tangent: I once devised a time-wasting word game for myself by trying to create relatively meaningful (or at least, syntactically correct) sentences where each successive word begins with the next letter of the alphabet. For example:
“Are box crates disguising every feature? Good heavens! In Jersey, kind letters make nice, original phrases. Quit risking sweet time: useless vying with xenophobes yields zero.”
— K.
My wife and I made up a game years ago. We play it while driving and it involves car license plates.
Around here, there are normally three letters on license plates. The idea is to try to make words which contain those three letters in the same order. Proper names are not allowed, except as a last resort. For example, GRN would yield GARDEN, GREEN, GRIN, etc. Very short or very long words would get the most points if we kept score (which we don’t). It’s a lot of fun until you run into something like QJJ.
Here’s something I made once:
Aicher’s Bunkers
Caflisch’s Dervishes
Excoffon’s Francophones
Goudy’s Hotties
Igarashi’s Jabberwockies
Kis’s Luscious
Mandel’s Nouvelles
Ovink’s Probings
Quay’s Rays
Sassoun’s Typhoons
Unger’s Vectors
Weingart’s X-heights
Yarmola’s Zamboucas
hhp
My first pangram
Jade is the colour which quizzical gremlins find when looking to mix vermillion, purple, yellow and blue.
“A source for international pangrams would be great”
Well, you can rule out languages that have idiomatic character sets like Chinese and Japanese kanji – unless you want to see a 50,000+ character pangram!
For those a pangram could possibly be made up just of component strokes, of which I think there are very few.
hhp
Craig quickly realized his pangram, a very fat wax-job.
Ligature Counter: a similar tool for type designers.