The Pilcrow

Paul Miller

In an italic font should the Pilcrow sign be italicised or not ?

Many fonts do not italicise the pilcrow but many do.

Is there any convention to follow ?

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

You don't want it staying the same.

Craig Eliason

I would italicize it. Better to give the typographer options.

Mark Simonson

In the metal type days, it was a separate "sort", a generic character not part of any particular typeface, and there was typically a single design. The first PostScript fonts included the pilcrow (it was part of the original Mac character set) and type designers began to adapt its design to fit the style of the font it was part of, including italicizing it.

If you want a font to look more traditional, leave it upright. But I agree with Craig that there are good reasons to italicize it.

AbrahamLee

So, what is the consensus, then? A single (upright) glyph in both upright and italic? Or two glyphs matching the upright and italic styles?

And what other characters does this concept apply to? I've often wondered this...

Mark Simonson

Anything that wasn't traditionally part of the standard character set, like math operators and other symbols. 

Also, I need to clarify my previous comment. I checked one of my old Linotype specimen books, and the pilcrow was part of the standard character set, at least in some fonts. However, it was always upright. They did make it bolder for bold fonts, and italic in italic fonts (but not always).

So, never mind.

Paul Miller

Italic it is then.

Josh_F

I think more and more the characters that previously were not italicized (at least in digital fonts) are being designed with italic forms. I don't think this is necessarily because more type designer are uniformed, but because stylistically it is more fitting as these characters have multiple typographic contexts.

Thomas Phinney

I vote “yes” and make an italic pilcrow. In general, my default is to make all letters slanted in an italic font. I have a specific list of glyphs to keep upright in an italic, originally based on Adobe’s practice in this area.

Note that if a glyph is maintained as upright in an italic font, it may still need sidebearings or spacing adjustment, especially if it has an unusual vertical position (asterisk, trademark, copyright, and degree, for example).

My list for a large font I am working on:

asterisk

plus

less

equal

greater

asciicircum

bar

asciitilde

trademark

copyright

logicalnot

registered

degree

plusminus

.notdef

revlogicalnot

uni2120

uni2117

estimated

uni2190

uni2192

arrowup

arrowdown

lessequal

greaterequal

approxequal

notequal

uni2213

infinity

lozenge

integral

radical

uni25A0

uni25B2

uni25B3

uni25B6

uni25B7

uni25BC

uni25BD

uni25C0

uni25C1

uni25C9

uni25C6

uni2610

uni2611

uni2713

uni2752

Ray Larabie

There was a time when slanting mathematical symbols was work. Now it's more work, not to slant them.

Andreas Stötzner

I tend to also slant mathematical operators and signs like integral. Seems more logical to me – and gives the user the choice.

Christian Munk

There is also the code point U+2761 for an especially swashy and decorative pilcrow.

Would it be an idea to include upright characters as a stylistic alternates set? That would give more control of correct spacing, as opposed to switching in and out of italic in a word processor.

Mark Simonson

I guess I slant most things with a few exceptions: bar, brokenbar, estimated, plus any dingbat-like glyphs, like stars and other geometric shapes. Also, directional arrows.

Nick Shinn

I italicize almost everything in italic fonts. If editors and typographers want to get picky about equations, they can use roman font characters at their discretion.

In a couple if types (The Modern Suite) I included roman parentheses as a stylistic set, suitably kerned, in the italic, but now I don’t bother, as I figure it is less work, for typographers who know and care about such things, to change fonts and apply optical kerning, than go digging around in the Stylistic Sets.