Position of combining ogonek in sans serif types

James Puckett
James Puckett
in Type Design Technique & Theory
I’m trying to decide on a position for the ogonek in a sans serif typeface that has combining accents. For example, in h should the ogonek be attached to the right stem like in a or centered under the letter? In serif fonts they’re centered but in that case the ogonek attaches to the serif which looks a lot better than an ogonek just floating under the gap between the stems.
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson
    Realistically, ogonek is unlikely to be attached to anything other than a vowel. But I would always attach it towards the right side of a letter.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie
    Centered. It's used that way for an indigenous North American language but I forget which one.
  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev
    edited May 2020
    Ray Larabie said:
    Centered. It's used that way for an indigenous North American language but I forget which one.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language#Orthography :)

    sort of offtopic, but I can't help myself: I recommend Windtalkers, a heroic war movie about Native American involvement in WWII and the codes the US government based on Native languages.
    :)

    I generally turn to Wikipedia when I am uncertain what the right way is. Ogoneks there are attached in the bottom middle of O,o, for example, at least as far as I see.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogonek
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner
    Ray Larabie said:
    Centered. It's used that way for an indigenous North American language but I forget which one.
    Wait, if you are to support European usage of those ch.s in the first place (Polish, Lithuanian), then you need to attach it to the right side (ą, ę, ų), which most designers do, if I’m not wrong. It is a conflict, debated repeatedly; the only way out is to implement alternatives. Which is no satisfying solution, but perhaps the only viable one, if you don’t want to exclude the other user group.

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