Where is Arabic italic coming from? We have cursive calligraphic styles in Latin but such styles don't exist in Arabic.
Found this on Wikipedia:
In the 1950s, Gholamhossein Mosahab invented the Iranic font style, a back-slanted italic form to go with the right-to-left direction of the script.
But I'm still not convinced if we design Arabic italic just for the sake of having italic style in Arabic or we really need that?!
Comments
https://yanone.de/fonts/amman/
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Is it fair to say that mechanically slanting letterforms might be a legitimate way to make Latin Italics but it is not the case for Arabic?
Edit:
.The video contains slides with english text. It could help non-natives to get some of the points he's trying to make.
.The link to the researcher's website if you want to ask more information on his research. He can speak english btw.
As a starting point, yes, but one also needs to bear in mind that some of these styles are also size-specific, so their distinction is like Latin text vs titling faces, e.g. naskh vs thuluth.
Including a different calligraphic style in place on italic or bold is novel idea, but is not what the users expect since they will look like completely different typefaces. That like using black letter as bold companion for a roman typeface. People expect a different styles of the same typeface to be still recognizably similar.
There is not also much history of emphasizing text in Arabic typography. I have seen Nastaliq used in old books but only for single words, overline or even underline is also used rarely. I have seen bold (usually a different typeface as well) in books from 70s/80s as well. So if people are using italic now why not?
Using other calligraphic styles could also be an option, and again it's not a novel idea, I've seen it done in many old Persian advertisements, but I don't currently have access to my collection and can't provide pictures. I've found that a lot of people tend to use a Ruqa' based style as an alternative to slanting, but then if you use that for text sizes it can truly disrupt reading and be more distracting than anything else.
When contemplating what an "Italic" in Arabic needs to be (with emphasis being a useful concept in any writing system) consider the reader, not Manutius's shotgun-wedding of Roman and Italic.
What to me is most relevant about an emphasis-style in Arabic is slant direction: some people strongly object to backslant (meaning "/" direction) while others point out that's how a right-handed person (most people) slant the letters the faster they write.* Needless to say this last bit of logic does not jibe with my own views, and I find the "\" direction more pleasing (and reader-expected) myself.
* In fact in the earliest know Qur'aan the writing is backslanted.
A similar discussion occurs in Hebrew, although there opinions seem more relaxed.
I can’t even tell from first glance which is the slanted one!
Initially, I saw this typeface and found the slanted directions really disturbing and wondered what the italic construction models, if there are!
I agree in Arabic typefaces, there must be a counterpart for Latin Italics because of these technical reasons, even though it's not that slanted.
Yes, it is not a novel idea and we've seen examples in history of Arabic typography but I'm curious if that's simply because there haven't been other options? Have we had Arabic Italic in early movable types?!
I agree that the shift in style can be really subtle. But (also responding to Hrant's comment) the calligraphic styles to choose as a starting point can be the ones that have the slant in their nature. I think in a multi-script context having a Latin italic besides an Arabic italic that is upright causes visual imbalance.
Zapfino Arabic is a good example of combining Nastaliq and Naskh to create that italic face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1KqyXH-K7g
1. Color — this has been used e.g. in blackletter manuscript (usually red was used for emphasis)
2. Size of letterforms — larger is emphasized
The last aspect is interesting because it effectively modifies the skeleton of the letterforms, usually following the following pattern:
• faster writing is more round and has more curves and fewer corners while slower writing is more “rectangular” and has more straight lines and more corners
In short, this can be reduced to a juxtaposition between static and dynamic.
Dynamic forms (rounder, faster, more cursive) look more human-made than mechanical, more emotional than rational, more informal than formal, more subjective than objective.
• Latin lowercase is more dynamic than Latin uppercase
• Latin italic is more dynamic than Latin roman
• Japanese Hiragana is more dynamic than Japanese Katakana (Hiragana is used for native Japanese words while Katakana is for foreign words so it's “more mechanical”)
I think in any writing system, contrasting a more static skeleton and a more dynamic (cursive) one will work. But the specific strategy how to achieve the cursifying will differ based on the script.
But my guess is that for every script, the reader will be able to tell the difference between the more formal, careful, static, mechanical forms and the more casual, quick, dynamic, human-made forms.
I’d recommend basing there “italicization” efforts on this strategy. Using naskh vs. ruqa is a good example. Or using other styles that are more cursive, meaning “quicker”, less static.
In other words: do you mean that we use cursive (italic) style to emphasize a piece of text because it implies faster/dynamic forms or just because it creates a contrast with regular/static (roman) style?
Which is also true for katakana vs. hiragana. My ad hoc theory regarding the two kana types is that they are inherently the same letters but familiar language elements were written quickly so in that role, the kana became hiragana (round and cursive) while foreign words were “spelled” with extra care so in that role, katakana (slow and more “rectangular”) evolved.
The same contrast exists in Latin lowercase vs. uppercase — in handwriting, Roman uppercase is sometimes used to spell out proper names (e.g. last names in French) because in handwritten use scribes slowed down and “drew” the capitals, which, by the sheer reduction of speed and the extra care put into the act made the portion of text more legible.
So probably going in the other direction may be useful as well — for example, using a more kufi-style emphasis within naskh flow text.
In Latin printing tradition, the pairing of roman and italic types and using the latter for emphasis was sort of accidental and came relatively late. I don't think it was a conscious choice.
But it became associated with some properties of the more cursive italic. For example, providing objective narrative in roman and quotes from people in italic works intuitively, because the italic hints at its closer association with handwriting, so text set in it may appear more subjective, personal.
But my main point is that the opposition between “static” and “dynamic” has a solid foundation in, I would say, many writing systems (because it roots in a very simple, natural distinction between “careful lettering” and “quick writing”, so it’s an inherent aspect of every act of writing). I postulate that mixing the two styles can be used for emphasis or to set apart “voices”. It can be done both ways (dynamic inside static or static inside dynamic).
Best,
Adam
Both hiragana and katakana evolved from the Man'yogana script of the Man'yoshu, and both initially functioned as syllabic representations of native Japanese words, but they develop ed from different calligraphic styles of Chinese lettering. If anything the distinction was by gender. Hiragana emerged as a simplified form of the full ductus of the character, and was used mainly by women in literature. Katakana was derived from the manyogana syllables not by simplification but by abbreviation (taking a representative part of the kanji) and used mainly by men.
Either way the foreignness doesn't really come into it.
The male-female opposition can also be made for Latin uppercase vs lowercase, or for Latin roman lowercase vs italic lowercase.