[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Typesetting rules in physics

> At 10:47 AM 11/18/98 -0500, Michael John Downes wrote:
> 
> >Does anyone have any idea how the convention developed that in
> >mathematics changing R from normal weight to bold means also changing
> >it from italic to upright? I hypothesize that bold italic fonts were
> >simply less commonly available in compositors type cases in the era of
> >lead typesetting, and the lack was resolved by the obvious
> >substitution of bold upright.

Berthold replied:

> Do we really know this?  Or is it that we have all been influenced by
> Knuth who in CM mostly focused on regular, italic and bold as styles.
> 
> Just about all fonts in Type 1 or TrueType format come in all four styles
> (and no, it's not because it is trivial to `manufacture' the fourth style).
> 
> Can we hear from someone who has been around the typesetting world
> long enough to know whether bold italic was rare in any of the various
> older technologies such as photo/film, mechanical typesetting machines etc.

>From "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst (1992),
section 6.5.3:

  Boldface romans, however, are a nineteenth-century invention. Bold
  italic is even more recent, and it is hard to find a successful
  version designed before 1950. Bold romans and italics have been
  retroactively added to many earlier faces, but they are often simply
  parodies of the original designs.

Also p 183 description of the Sabon typeface:

  Designed by Jan Tschichold. ... The series consists of a roman,
  italic and semibold

and p 181 about Palatino:

  Designed in 1948 by Hermann Zapf. ... There is a bold weight,
  designed in 1950. A bold italic was added, evidently to comobat
  existing forgeries, nearly thirty years later.

But beyond this I guess I was wondering if anyone had information
more specifically focused on mathematical typesetting.