Electra Oblique


Colophon from Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, published in 1944 by Knopf. The entire text of this short book is set in the sloped roman of Electra, to the copiously-leaded specification shown here. (At the time, the “true” italic Electra was also available.) One would have thought that the sloped roman form of “italic”, used as the main style, would be more noteworthy than the modern/oldstyle categorization.

Comments

  • Craig EliasonCraig Eliason Posts: 1,397
    I'd guess the slope was the implicit source of its "fluidity, power, and speed."
  • Although better than a simply "slanted" roman, I still don’t like most of the sloped italics, even if optical correction is super-nice.
  • Nick: Indeed I would have mentioned that, although as Craig says they could have been talking specifically about the Oblique style.

    I generally prefer slanted-Romans (but yes, not mechanically obliqued ones) to "true" Italics because they avoid skewing (pardon the pun) the voice of the Roman. Which does mean however that when used on their own (like here) the two are nominally on equal footing.

    The Italics of Deberny's #16 and some fonts produced by Genzsch & Heyse are superb references for the slanted-Roman style (much better than the things Morison instigated). And here's an example of my Harrier, which is part of the Nour&Patria system:

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