Should the bullet sign be slanted in italic?

Vasil Stanev

Talking about a standard circular bullet in a sans. Same question goes for similar shapes like the period, periodcentered and the bigger bullet which name I currently can't remember.

I reason the bullets relate to bigger units then glyphs, namely lines of text and paragraphs, so they shouldn't be slanted. Am I correct? 

John Hudson

Yes, because of their use as higher level and navigational elements, I don't italicise bullets. However, smaller punctuation such as period and midpoint (periodcentered) are normally italicised.

AbrahamLee

What about other non-alphabet characters? I’m thinking things like < > | ^ + # % etc. I’ve always wondered. It seems like sometimes they are italicized (not the faux-italic shearing that many apps do), sometimes they aren’t.

John Hudson

I generally don't italicise those except # and % (which is a form of fraction, so follows the italicisation of the numerals. Some clients don't even want me to italicise parentheses.

But I am almost always making typefaces for traditional text setting, not advertising types or packaging design types. In the latter, it is useful for have italicised arithmetic operators etc. to be able to set things like 2+2=5 as a snappy slogan.

AbrahamLee

Thanks @John Hudson. Do you have a fairly standard set of glyphs that don’t get italiced?

John Hudson

It depends what's included in the project, but typically it is bar, bullet, and any other meta-punctuation, then all math and logic operators, and arrows and other indicators.

Of course, bear in mind that just because a glyph isn't italicised doesn't mean that it might not need to be differently spaced and kerned in an italic font.

AbrahamLee

Great! Thanks for sharing that!

notdef

You might add: ^ ◊ ‖ ¦ ∞ ∏ ∑ ℮

∫ and √ can go either way, but should keep the same slant across all styles.

I’m partial to including the registered/copyright/published mark in the same logographic group as the ℮ symbol, but I can see them working nicely italicized.

Some marks, I believe, also require upright designs in all styles – such as the vertical line modifier: ˈ (U+02C8).

notdef

Well, that turned out well. Here’s a “translation”:
 

Another candidate for upright treatment: the dotted circle, ◌ 

notdef

The degree symbol is something I also tend to keep upright.

Michael Jarboe

Should the forward slash be slanted in non non italic styles?

John Hudson

Some marks, I believe, also require upright designs in all styles – such as the vertical line modifier: ˈ (U+02C8).

I don't agree regarding that one: I reckon it should be vertical relative to text, and corresponding to the treatment of the related combining mark in italic fonts (it's part of a set of modifier letters that derive from spacing forms of accents).

Yes to the degree sign and others you mentioned.

The full set of upright glyphs in the Brill italic is actually pretty large: I just picked some of the more common ones. A bunch more are being added in the latest updates.

John Hudson

Should the forward slash be slanted in non non italic styles?

Not sure what you mean by non non italic, but the forward and backward slash are usually slanted in the italic. This requires some care so that the backward slash doesn't end up too vertical. [This ones a touch too heavy.]

notdef

> Some marks, I believe, also require upright designs in all styles – such as the vertical line modifier: ˈ (U+02C8).

I don't agree regarding that one: I reckon it should be vertical relative to text, and corresponding to the treatment of the related combining mark in italic fonts (it's part of a set of modifier letters that derive from spacing forms of accents).

Thanks! There’s always more to learn. Would you say this is also the case for all of these?

Thomas Phinney

A list of glyph names that I came up with for upright-in-italic designs, years ago, when working on Hypatia Sans:

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

John Hudson

The asterisk is an interesting one. I don't slant it, but I do rotate it.

John Hudson

Frode, I italicise all combining marks and modifiers. They belong with the letters and should inherit the slant and style of the italic.

One set I am unsure about is the five tone bar characters and the associated large ligature set. In the Brill italics, I kept the tone bar glyphs upright. But I have seen them italicised in some texts. They're a pain in the neck to slant though, because of all the diagonal angles and weight adjustments to be contended with.

Vasil Stanev

I did not expect the thread to develop that much. Give yourselves a hand!
As for me, I slant mathematical operators by the logic that they are surrounded by alphanumerical symbols, powers (superscripts) and so on. I imagine this holds true not only for mathematical equations, but also for Physics and Chemistry, and so on, and the rules may vary between scientific jargons in ways we can't know. More importantly, non-italic versions are contained in the corresponding upright versions of the font, so better to go over the top than cut corners (same goes for the currency symbol). This is just my personal path, could be wrong, could be wrong.

I am interested in some light thrown on the musical notation. I have very limited experience with musical theory but I can't ever remember a friend asking for styles for musical notes (I do know a compositor). As far as I can tell, notes are never italicized.

Nick Shinn

I vary my practice depending on the typeface.
Usually, the bullet is round in both roman and italic, but in some, even the roman bullet isn’t circular:

notdef

Actually, # is often slanted even in the roman styles. With even more slant, it can start looking kinda silly.

Mark Simonson

# is a bit like @ in that it came from a generic "sorts" font in the metal days, and wasn't typeface specific until more recently, especially since PostScript. I guess if the font is meant to look traditional, stick with the slanted version. Otherwise, I think you can do what you think fits the design.

Vasil Stanev

http://typedrawers.com/discussion/2090/the-pilcrow

Mark Simonson

Dé jà vu!

AbrahamLee

Oh, that’s too funny! Thanks @Vasil Stanev for pointing out that thread.

Thomas Phinney

In most cases, I find a mechanically obliqued bullet just looks ugly, and would use a circular one, even in italics, and I would create the italic font that way in the first place. Clearly, it is a matter of taste/preference, though.