Single or double story æ?

Adam Ladd

My primary design for the /a is single story (I do have an alternate double story /a). In the case of the single story, I've seen a mix of solutions for the /æ ... some use the single story /a, some switch to double story, some include both with an alternate.

I've not been able to find yet which of these solutions is most proper or acceptable, or if it's a matter of preference. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Vasil Stanev

Double for the upright, single for the italic. 

Chris Lozos

the trouble with the single story ae is that it can be confused with oe

Adam Ladd

That was part of my concern... so it seems a double story æ is perhaps preferable even when the a is single.

notdef

The pole perspective: https://medium.com/@frodefrodefrode/designing-the-letter-æ-862cffbe22b

Adam Ladd

Thanks Frode, will check out.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Real-life confusability story: I was checking out an issue of the Quærendo journal from the UCLA Research Library (this is back in the late '90s when I used to work in the Astrophysics department). Nobody had checked out that issue before, so the clerk had to make a new tag. Except she couldn't find the publication in the system. After ten minutes of her struggling, I noticed that Quærendo's cover title was set in some italic design where the "æ" looked just like a "œ"...  So I pointed out that it was actually an "a" in there, and was able to leave with it.

Peter Baker

Few readers of the journal Quærendo would ever make the librarian's mistake; to them, an italic that looks like a slanted roman æ might well look wrong, since the single-story shape is the one you see most often in classic typefaces.

So it's a difficult problem: offend the expert, or risk confusing the inexpert? When a user asked me for a two-story æ for Junicode, I supplied it as a stylistic alternate.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Of course a reader of Quærendo already knows what it says. But because legibility is not about one group of people, I could have ended up without the journal. Or getting a parking ticket (if I didn't have a long-term pass).

Peter Baker said:

to them, an italic that looks like a slanted roman æ might well look wrong

They need to better appreciate the beneficiary of Design.

Peter Baker said:

When a user asked me for a two-story æ for Junicode, I supplied it as a stylistic alternate.

Good, but I would flip that.

notdef

Ideally, Quærendo would use something more in the vein of Lexicon’s æ — especially since the word is italicized. It doesn’t have to match the ‘a’ exactly. The written lowercase ‘æ’ is, btw, one continuous stroke. (Have a look at the linked article, and accompanying images, above for the uppercase.)




I read once that an imported German typeface had to be changed because the ‘x’ was so similar to the ‘æ’, but I cannot find the source now.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Frode said:

It doesn’t have to match the ‘a’ exactly.

I would even say ideally it shouldn't.

I read once that an imported German typeface had to be changed because the ‘x’ was so similar to the ‘æ’, but I cannot find the source now.

Reminds me of Mistral's "x"...

https://twitter.com/hhpapazian/status/693196664832598016

BTW here's what Patria-Italic does:

Vasil Stanev

(When I was very little and just starting to learn English, I was fascinated by the bracketed IPA vocalizations and used to call it "the clover"in my mind  )

I think there is no hard and fast rule. What the eye dictates is right.

Peter Baker

Hrant: I'm very glad you didn't get a parking ticket. I have to admit that the æ on the journal cover seems designed to confuse. The one from Garamond Premier Pro seems less problematic:

However, the only shape I can think of that wouldn't confuse somebody is the two-story one.

Nick Shinn

Speaking of Mistral, does the mystery glyph have a Unicode point yet?

André G. Isaak

Quœrendo would be a fairly meaningless title for a Journal. And I think that, given the heavy weight of the title Quærendo, a two-story æ would look rather awkward.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Nick Shinn said:

Speaking of Mistral, does the mystery glyph have a Unicode point yet?

It's just the "x".  :-)

André G. Isaak said:

Quœrendo would be a fairly meaningless title for a Journal.

Well to me Quærendo and Quœrendo are equally meaningless.

Adam Jagosz

Well to me Quærendo and Quœrendo are equally meaningless.

I guess ‘Quaerendo’ must mean something like ‘query’. For one, Polish for ‘query’ is ‘kwerenda’. Thanks to this bias Quœrendo makes 0% sense for me while Quærendo does not. (I'm not an expert on Latin or all those Latin-derived digraphs but subconsciously, ‘æ’ feels more at home here.)

Igor Freiberger

Quærendo is geruntive of verb quæro, which means 'to desire', 'to sought', 'to aim', 'to target', and, in a more wide sense, 'to search' and 'to query' (it may even be the origin of English query and Polish 'kwerenda', but I am guessing).

Quæro gave origin to Spanish and Portuguese 'querer' (to desire, to want). Although Italian is closer to Latin, in some aspects Portuguese, Spanish, and Galician are the ones which preserved more directly its heritage. As a sample, Italian for quæro is vogliare, completely departed from classical Latin.

Thus, the Quærendo journal is something like desiring/wanting/searching for/willing to. It is an interesting title, although the more precise word for "searching/researching" would be investigatione. AFAIK, quœrendo does not exist in Latin.