Focusing on the sea-change that occurred in the look of language around 1800, the Auld English fonts simulate the experience of reading prior to that great disruption, by diverse means.

Some two centuries ago the long-s character was abandoned, spelling became standardized, and tech innovation produced a new clarity in typography. This essay examines those three changes and describes how the Auld English project addresses them, straddling the divide and transporting the reader back to long before that time.

 

1. The demise of the long‑s

Today’s English alphabet is unchanged since the 16th century—with one exception: the long‑s fell from use circa 1800. Previously, there had been two forms of the letter /s: a long (tall) version at the beginning and in the middle of words, and another, our present-day /s, at the end of words. The reform used the terminal version throughout.

There are two theories as to why this occurred, neither satisfactory. Firstly, that it was caused by confusion of long‑s with the letter /f, which it resembles. Certainly, we are confused today, but we have nonetheless adopted Futura and other geometric typefaces in which lower case /o and /a are remarkably similar. And why was the problem not fixed in preceding centuries? Presumably, readers were quite familiar and comfortable with the distinction, slight as it was. In my own experience during the course of developing the Auld English typeface, I have, to my surprise and amusement, acquired some facility in reading the long‑s correctly, if not all the time!

Secondly, it is said that there was an economy to be made by printers in ridding their type cases of long‑s sorts, especially the many ligatures and fragile kerns that made life so tricky for compositors. Again, why was this improvement not made earlier? An answer is suggested by C. S. Van Winkle in his Printers’ Guide (New York, 1818), in discussing the 750 boxes of sorts necessary for the legion of fancy ligatures and abbreviations once required to typeset classical Greek,

“… it was the contrivance of letter-cutters to promote their own business.”

Indeed, catering to an erudite market that could read Ancient Greek was not only the epitome of professionalism, it was good business, as this was the same privileged book-buying class that possessed a classical education, which the less literate masses did not (there being scant public education at the time). Writing in English, authors would often emphasize a point—and their station in society—with a quote from Homer, Socrates, or the Church Fathers, in the original language and script. If being fluent in Ancient Greek was a mark of status, so too was reading English with the long‑s, which mirrored the two /s alphabet of Greek, demanding appropriate usage: short-s for terminals, long-s elsewhere—except before /b and /k and certain other situations. An affectation of intellectual propriety and property, a symbolic firewall, guarding knowledge.

In notebooks, manuscripts and correspondence, however, the most learned—Isaac Newton, for example—used the long‑s sparingly, despite it being de rigueur for typesetting and formal calligraphy. Leading intellectual Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independ­ence, wrote without the long‑s, and drafted the Declaration thus. (The final document, penned by Timothy Matlack, was a hodge-podge of /s usage, which was perfectly acceptable, as such was considered to be subject to the discretion of the calligrapher or compositor, if considered at all. For those who constructed the page, some flexibility in the appearance of /s was useful, to temper the tone of the piece.)

In as much as the long‑s was associated with the educated aristocracy, the progressive ideals of the late 18th century made it unfashionable, and this, dear reader, is why it was abandoned at that particular point in time. When Wordsworth and Coleridge’s epochal Lyrical Ballads was printed in 1798, articulating a poetry about the common person, in common, accessible language, the long‑s remained in the type case, if not already melted down.

From the Old Style to the Didone, the crossbar of /f suffered a diminished presence, making /f and long‑s less easy to distinguish.

Fashion cast another, quite different blow against long‑s, and here I’ll take back some of my argument against the “looks too much like /f” theory. There was a problem designing /f in the new Didone style, its crossbar required to be so fashionably slim as to almost disappear, and that look was already taken, by long‑s. The solution: short‑s, a ready substitute for its sibling. And this too is why long‑s was banished when it was.

How the Auld English fonts apply the long‑s

The long‑s occurs by default in the Auld English Spell fonts, according to the conventions of 17th and early 18th century English, with no extra typing required. In the professional Auld English fonts, the long‑s may be activated by an OpenType feature, adhering to the same conventions. In all the fonts, the full set of long‑s ligatures is set automatically, without need of selecting Discretionary Ligatures.

 

2. The standardization of spelling

Following the introduction in Great Britain of the world’s first copyright statute, the Copyright Act 1710, publishing flourished mightily, freed from the monopolistic constraints of the Stationers’ Company. At the same time, other factors, technical and cultural, contributed to the increasing literacy of the middle class—such as the habit of reading newspapers in coffee shops.

Dissatisfied with both the lack of objective system and inconsistent spelling amongst available dictionaries, a group of London publishers committed to a new master dictionary, along the lines of an ambitious prospectus by Samuel Johnson, that would be to their mutual benefit and the efficiency of the burgeoning trade in general. They prevailed upon Johnson, a writer well known to them for the breadth of his acquaintance with the English language and his prolific output for periodicals such as The Gentleman’s Magazine, to produce this definitive resource. The Dictionary of the English Language, 1755, nine years in the making, was promptly and universally acclaimed, and soon became the last word on spelling throughout the English-speaking world.

“The dictionary of Dr. Johnson is now looked up to as the highest authority; it has, in a great measure, silenced those pedantic clamours and divided opinions which distracted the attention of the compositor, who is now able to solve most difficulties by a reference to this excellent standard of English orthography. Authors of the present day seldom interfere with what is now deemed the province of the printer: they generally allow him, from his practice, to be a pretty competent judge of orthography, and therefore do not object to his mode of spelling, though it may vary from their own.” —C. S. Van Winkle, Printers’ Guide, New York, 1818.

There may be some wishful thinking there—it is, after all, a guide—but clearly the project had been a great success!—demonstrating that standardization and efficiency go hand in hand, which was the great foresight of the publishing consortium, as was Johnson’s contribution to culture at large—notably the semantic structure of his book, which was the first to illustrate definitions with example quotations, Shakespeare to the fore—in modernized spelling.

In America, the first of Noah Webster’s dictionaries was published in 1806, heralding the minor spelling reforms that would come to distinguish American English from British.

The Auld English Spell fonts “re-write” text into “old” English

The most remarkable aspect of Auld English is the Auld English Spell variant, which visually changes the text that one types, with archaic spelling, quaint lexicon and default long‑s combining to create a pastiche of Early Modern English, a veritable old English, a Mock Tudor, as it were, as if by magic spell. Such subversion of the canonical text in a document is independent of typeface design, as it is capable of application to any typeface, whatever the genre, being at the level of font. Similar “earlying up” translation is available online, but Auld English Spell fabricates its argot via the agency of a font.  This has been programmed at my own discretion, within the capabilities and limitations of the OpenType format—not according to any established orthography of spelling—compiling a bag of tricks to produce an effect that is both linguistic and typographic.

Techniques of archaïsm in the Auld English Spell fonts

• The long‑s character is the default /s, which is applied according to the conventions of the 17th and early 18th century.
• Ordinals for 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. are default.
• Spelling is altered systematically for certain word endings, adding an /e (e.g.“hee”), or with /i and /y changing place (“lyfe of the partie”), or with doubled consonants (“thatte”), etc. This creates plausible alternative graphemes for the phonemes represented, a phonetic system in which words may be read to sound as they usually do today, but with spelling that looks old-fashioned.
• Elisions containing an apostrophe. Mostly applied to words ending in -ed, so that “loved” becomes “lov’d.” Shades of Keats. Also, “ it is ” becomes “ ’tis,” and “never” “ne’er,” etc.
• Whole-word substitution. “You are” changes to “thou art,” “has” to “hath,” “your” to “thy,” etc. Indeed becomes forsooth and nevertheless withal. Girls become damsels, between betwixt, etc. Not a huge list, but enough to season the pot.
• Superior abbreviation. For “which” and “with,” only the /w is a normal lower-case letter, the rest are superiors. Similarly, Mr, Mrs, Ms and Dr are set with the appropriate superior characters.
• Ampersand. “&” replaces “and,” “etc.” becomes “&c.”
• De-Americanization. Present day American spelling is replaced by older English style, e.g. “colour” not “color,” “centre” not “center,” “offence” and “defence” not “offense” and “defense,” etc.

It should be pointed out that none of these modifications alter the canonical text in a document, only its appearance. Changing back to a normal font will display the original spelling and conventional typography.

These effects are laid on thickly and unapologetically, to adequately smother with auld-ness stretches of text which by chance would not readily suffer transformation, having, for instance, an absence of the letter /s. The spelling modifications are not uniformly “correct”; this is a feature, not a bug, because they allude to a time when there was no such thing as correct spelling, and every author had their own idiosyncrasies.

 

3. The new typography, 1800

As the discipline, so the occasion of its modernity. In art, the early 20th century witnessed the Modern Art movements of fauvism, cubism, dada, purism, constructivism, de stijl, expressionism and surrealism. In linguistics, Early Modern English began considerably further back, around 1500, with Modern English proper from the mid-17th century. And in type design the Modern genre is identified with the work of Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni in the late 18th century, from whom comes its synonym, Didone.

Technical improvement and progression of style from the Old Face to the Modern. Left: Garalde in The Life of King Charles, c.1650. Right: Chefs d’Œuvres de P. Corneille, stereotype by Firmin Didot, 1800.

In the preface to his Imperial Foundry specimen of 1819, Richard Austin acknowledged the role of new technology (harder metal, smoother paper, blacker ink) in fostering modernity:

“The modern … printing type at present in use was introduced by the French, about twenty years ago: the old shaped letters being capable of some improvement, it was judged expedient to re-model the alphabet to render them more agreeable to the improved state of printing.”

The precision and finesse of this technical advance informed the Modern aesthetic:

“Exact regularity is so pleasing to the eye that it is in itself almost sufficient to make any script appear beautiful.” —Giambattista Bodoni, Manuale Tipografico, Volume 1 (1818)

This is why, to capture the essence of the Old Style typeface, Auld English revives an example of the Garalde genre—very much a Garamond—discovered in a book published in 1648, well before Bodoni, and retains the rough finish and lack of consistency that were par for the course in the printing process of that pre-modern era, which it is customary to edit out of type revivals. Today, our appreciation of the Garamond has been acquired from 20th century interpretations, from Peignot to Adobe, possessing a neatness far beyond the ken of its originators. Auld English proposes historical authenticity, rather than latter-day optimization. High resolution digital mimicry of “original instrument” typography.

Harry Lawrence had the novel idea, in 1923, of printing a facsimile of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) with new type copied verbatim by photograph. The result was the Poliphilus typeface, thence able to infuse new writing with the spirit of the past. This was well received in the trade, but informed opinion was dismissive of such facile mimicry. Citing William Morris, Stanley Morison of Monotype later described Poliphilus as “faithful to the point of pedantry” (A Tally of Types, 1953), and after Poliphilus, revival of the Old Style at Monotype assumed the high polish of Centaur and Bembo. The Auld English fonts take a different tack, pursuing Lawrence’s concept of the simulacrum with the capabilities of digital media, warts and all.

The Auld English pro fonts create a pseudo-random analog effect, for immersive reading

All the Auld English fonts generate the well-used appearance of antique printing. This is especially so for the professional fonts which, in order to justly mimic ancient foundry type printing, with its vagaries of casting, dressing, wear, compositing, inking, pressure, paper stock and press work, have a full set of alternate glyphs, the two sets mixed in the OpenType format for a subtle, pseudo-random, antiqued patina. While there have been various typefaces employing a similar technique, their funkiness was conceived—so far as I’m aware—with a blown-up-in-size “pop art” vibe, for display and titling, emphasizing the trace of process as distress. Auld English, however, presents the idea that a classic, worn-in type is a subtle pleasure and optimal for immersive reading of body text set in Old Style types, the design of which was informed by the available technology. Consequently, it is provided with the sophisticated features of expert book typography: Small Capitals, Superior Numerals and Letters, Fractions, Ordinals, Discretionary Ligatures… and a Long-s feature.

Taking this concept a step further, beyond any particular genre of typeface, let us question whether it is to the benefit of readability—however defined—that each base character in a roman font should always be represented by the same glyph. This is an economy originating in the foundry type era, with no grounding in science. It also expresses cultural values such as the anti-elitism mentioned earlier, and the reductive ideology of modernism with its reverence for uniformity.

Variety is favoured in many areas, particularly for activities which extend over time. Humanity balks at the prospect of the straight road, the assembly line, the prison cell—we are designed to respond to stimuli which vary; inertia generates invisibility. Perhaps this is why the Old Style types, with their lively complexities, are still preferred for extended reading. It may well be that the principal of controlled glyph variation can provide improved readability, redefining efficiency.

 

The source

Eikon Basilike (1648), typical page, sextodecimo (4”x 6¾”).

To our eyes it looks messy, but that’s a consequence of the tools at the compositor’s disposal, not a lack of their attention to detail, which was fastidious: the page is filled with ligatures and kerns. The italic’s capitals and x-height are smaller than that of the roman, yet the extenders are the same length—to the limit of the line-height. The baselines of the two styles don’t align. However, in the Auld English revival, while I’ve matched x-heights and baselines, and increased the height of the italic capitals, they’re still shorter than that of the roman.

I scanned dozens of pages, at 600 dpi. From these I then selected promising examples of every character of the alphabet, plus ligatures and punctuation, and made separate Photoshop files of each (left), which I next autotraced in FontLab (right). Now you might wonder, how can one say “I” autotraced if the process is automatic; well, there are settings that can be adjusted for that, and the Photoshop files may also be tweaked beforehand, to modify the effect. The autotracing is, however, lacking in style.

Therefore I re-drew the outlines, with sinuous curves (left), on the principle stated by Eric Gill, that “Letters are things, not pictures of things,” and to put a little of my own stamp upon the quality of the undertaking. It also gave me a feel for the face, which proved helpful when drawing those characters not present in the source material, such as the Euro symbol.

In the picture above right, taken with a microscope, it’s possible to differentiate the shape of the type from the image it made, the extra boldness having been created by ink that was forced off the surface of the type, by the pressure of printing, onto the beard on the side of the glyph, which came into contact with the (dampened) paper as the type bit into it. There was a lot of press gain, back in the day. The dots in the character are artefacts of casting that should have been removed in the process of dressing; perhaps it was thought they would not pick up ink and print, if below the surface of the type, but they did. Or else it was someone’s little joke that the eye of an /e might possess an iris or pupil.

There are two versions of every character in the Auld English professional fonts, which are mixed into text pseudo-randomly.

A profusion of ligatures.

Why this, why now?

Progress in science and technology has far outpaced that in administration, and the pace is ever increasing. Hot on the heels of the social media disaster that’s destroying mental health and democracy, comes Artificial Intelligence. Preferring not to use it, my moral focus has turned to an area of design made possible by a previous generation of design tool. Slowing down, not putting the horse out to pasture while there’s still plenty of life left in it.

I began using the <calt> (contextual alternates) feature of OpenType in 2005, shortly after it was introduced, and explored its possibilities for a good ten years before losing interest. But now, with the passage of time opening up perspective, and with the attraction of it being an alternative to the grindstone of new tech, I’m developing fresh ideas of what may be done with contextual substitution. There’s lots of potential in what we have, it’s not exhausted, it doesn’t have to be repeatedly scrapped, sacrificed on the altar of Progress.

Last year I published two designs that use <calt> to switch glyphs around in a novel manner: Scotch Biplex, with alternating roman and italic letters, and Polypraxia, a four-alternate, punk rock, ransom-note design inspired by the work of Jamie Reid. So that’s the zone I’m in.

Eikon Basilike, 1648, title page, sextodecimo (4”x 6¾”), anon.
The swash /M and ampersand (see above) of Auld English are taken from this page.

Auld English is closely derived from type in a book published in England in 1648, which I found discarded in the cellar of a house my wife Karey and I bought in Toronto’s Beaches neighbour­hood in 1993. It was rather mouldy and the spine was split, but I was loath to discard such a treasure chest of 17th century typography, so I kept it for future consideration, which has now come due. Besides, King Charles I: The Life and Works is a fascinating document, being a collection of many different pieces by and about the doomed monarch—including a biography, letters and prayers (purportedly) by him, a transcription of the trial for treason that found him guilty, and his final speech on the scaffold prior to beheading. Many a book about Charles was printed during England’s republican period (1648-1660), much propaganda no doubt, but also catering to a general public obsession with the politics and personalities of government, heightened by the extreme circumstance of civil wars (1642-6 and 1648-9) fought over the power balance between monarch and parliament. Monarchy would yet return, its authority diminished.

At the time, well before the emergence of William Caslon some 75 years later, English typography was much in the thrall of Dutch letter founders, for both technical quality and style, and that section of The Life and Works from which my Auld English is derived, Eikon Basilike, shows roman and italic in the Garalde tradition then well established in the Netherlands, based on the re-use of punches and matrices by Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon and Jean Jannon, the main proponents of the style which dominated Latin letter typography in the 16th, 17th, and into the 18th century. This was also several decades before the famous Fell Types of Oxford University.

The Auld English, therefore, may not be entirely English. But neither is it Scottish, despite “auld” now being associated with Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne and proclaimed in the speech of cartoon character Oor Wullie. “Auld” is in fact an Anglo-Saxon word, from the earliest days of the English language, the trace of which may still be found in London’s Aldwych area (“old port”). I chose this spelling to distinguish the typeface from Morris Benton’s blackletter Old English (1910) and the related Olde English genre, to place it near the top of font menus, to allude to its source in an old English book, and to describe the Mock Tudor effect generated by the Auld English Spell fonts—which may be tried out at the Auld English web site. ●