Let's chat about Trademark, Registered & Copyright Symbols

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Comments

  • Posts: 1,452
    Letraset sheets came with a tiny, free copyright symbol at the bottom before LETRASET INTERNATIONAL LTD.
  • Two weights, even!
  • My preferred alignment, achieved manually with baseline shift:

  • Posts: 2,256
    edited April 2021


    Here is why I make © cap height.
    With regards to the page as a whole, it’s a category of glyph that aligns with capitals, not as you theorize a category of its own, aligning with the centre of the x-height and with extremities that correspond to little else.
    With regards to acuity, the critical “counter” distance between the C and the circle is very tight, so requiring the eye to disambiguate the two (because your C presents as an x-height letter + circle), rather than just see one big symbol, is unnecessarily demanding, semantically excessive and redundant.
    In the layout above (yes, it’s been a while since I designed a book!) I like the way the © works as part of the capital set; it would have been demeaning for it to be smaller.
    If one is going to equate the C of © with a small cap C, then I would explore the idea of making a much larger circle, perhaps even out to extender distance, rather than just shrinking the whole thing. But perhaps there is already a typeface that does that?

    As the © generally accompanies figures, Craig’s idea (elsewhere) of different ©s to go with different figure styles, automatically activated in OpenType, might be the only way to keep everybody happy!
  • Yeah, I think in the end it has to look good (and in this case, clear), and with text figures it’s probably going to be better (to me) if © is shifted down a bit (and maybe scaled or otherwise adjusted).

    One factor is I’ve always thought the word “Copyright” is superfluous here; one can simply write “© 2021 Christopher Slye”. (The symbol has the legal meaning and does the heavy lifting.) I doubt including “Copyright” does any damage though, and maybe it helps a little.

    In any case, the appearance and alignment of © changes a bit if it’s not preceded by lowercase letters.
  • Nick, I kind of like your idea. This is Dante, with the normal small cap C, and a circle added around it.

  • Posts: 686
    edited April 2021
    Nick, I kind of like your idea. This is Dante, with the normal small cap C, and a circle added around it.

    I think both you and Nick have good points.
    The page typeset by Nick has the oldstyle numerals for the date, so they look quite bad to me with the uppercase-height ©. Clearly the ideal solution would be to have two: one when you have lining numerals and one with lowercase/small caps height for the inner /c. I will implement that!
  • Here’s how I implemented them now:



  • Posts: 2,256
    Well played, Claudio!
  • Well played, Claudio!
    Thank you! :-)
    I spent way too much reasoning on this. I implemented ® as well, so it takes back its full cap-height form when the feature 'case' is applied, but I am not sure whether I should include it or not. Of course, when I will go ahead with De Vinne Text (soon) I will make the base ® (superscript) larger, as my De Vinne for now is designed to be used at display sizes 60-70pt, while the Text version is 6-12pt.
  • @Claudio Piccinini  How about trademark? Does it have the same size with superscript ®?
  • Posts: 686
    edited May 2021
    @Claudio Piccinini  How about trademark? Does it have the same size with superscript ®?
    I am still thinking about how to finalize it. Initially I made it at the same height of ordinals ª and º (my ordinals have an underscore, being “old fashioned” in line with period use of De Vinne). But now that I have made the smaller, superior form of ® the default I think I will either keep the ® baseline (letter form, within the circle) or the full ® circle height as the ™. I wish to systematize so I’ll try to have a look at various common digital fonts: everyone seems to interpret the dimensions of these (® and ™) quite freely.
  • Posts: 784
    My approach is to keep them clear and simple, but harmonious to the style of the font. 

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