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comment by rjw
rjw  ·  4243 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Have you visited a Microsoft store?

Oh man, I just have to go to one of these stores now. But only as a curiosity - this sort of behaviour isn't going to persuade me to buy any of their products.

BTW, what's the deal with the joined up st and ct 's? It looks sorta cool, some old-fashioned typographical fancy? I've never seen it before.





StJohn  ·  4242 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Everyone seems to want to visit one now! What have I done?

The 'st's and 'ct's are a kind of old typographic convention. I use them because I like old books and I think they look nifty, although I'm still a bit unsure about how well they sit with modern readers. Here's an example from an old type specimen where you can see some 'ct's. There are no 'st's because they used a long s back then.

I'm ſane enough not to uſe long 's's on my webſite, though. I have ſome common ſenſe.

rjw  ·  4242 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Haha, yes I think most readers would interpret them as fs rather than ſs. I assume you're using some sort of CSS to achieve the st's and ct's, right? I think old conventions like this are a good thing to revive, it raises a few eyebrows and gets people thinking about typography. That can only be a good thing.

StJohn  ·  4242 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I do like a bit of fancy typography. I'm not a typography dork, but I know enough to appreciate it. It's very exciting that CSS and Web browsers are mature enough to support typographical features like these - and it really is just flat text + CSS. You can copy and paste the text into a text editor and you'll see discrete letters instead of a single joined-up glyph or an image.