Snout-fair means “good-looking person,” throttlebottom is a “dishonest public official,” and “ejectamenta” refers to “material ejected from a volcano.” Christine sent 31 such rare and obsolete words from Delafield, Wisconsin. She belongs to the...
Poet and teacher Frances Klein reports that a friend refers to the “overemphasized voice people use to read poems” as spoken Garamond. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Declamatory Font” I saw a tweet I...
Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames (Bookshop| Amazon) relates the amazing tale, told many places, of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, a bookbinder who developed the famous Doves Type. To prevent the moveable type from...
A Montreal, Canada, woman wonders why sometimes in old manuscripts the letter s looks like the letter f. A great resource on this topic is Andrew West’s blog Babelstone. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Why Did They...
Why does everyone hate the Comic Sans? Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of people dislike it. In fact, graphic designer David Cadavy gave a whole Ignite Chicago talk on the topic. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Comic...
How do you indicate sarcasm in a text message or an email? If winky emoticons aren’t your thing, try left-leaning italics, as recommended by sartalics.com. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sartalics” There’s...