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Ampersands
Posted by anonymous in
1 Apr 2003 — 6:15am
1 Apr 2003 — 6:15am
Can we make the rounds and have everyone post their favorite ampersands? Im really curious as to which faces have more quirky and expressive ones, and im sure most of you know a few gems out there... As for me, im still stuck on Scala. The whole way it doesnt connect is just so...sexy...mm.
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1 Apr 2003 — 12:12pm
What I most like is this piece of fine work.
The printer/setter tried and succeeded to make a colourful text without boring repeats.
Throughout the whole book he tried to use different ampersands whenever possible
(or better: whenever they were to close).
Very thoughtful work.
Michael
1 Apr 2003 — 12:53pm
Michael --> What is this text?
1 Apr 2003 — 2:03pm
It's from a book printed 1653 about ... my latin leaves me.
I think it's about the honestly and dignite habit of priests (my english leaves me too).
Here the title: (note the two ampersands in the line above the illustration!)
Michael
1 Apr 2003 — 2:07pm
Look at those long ss'.
_smc
1 Apr 2003 — 5:59pm
Here's an example of the Mother of All Ampersands.
This is the Tironian et sign, which is still used today in Gaelic text (it is known in Irish as agus). This sign derives from the Roman judicial shorthand system developed by Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero's scribe and namesake of a certain type foundry. The top of the Tironian ampersand is aligned to the x-height. Sometimes it descends below the baseline, looking like -- sometimes too much like -- an oldstyle number seven; in other examples it stops at the baseline. All Gaelic fonts should contain this characters. Note that it has its own Unicode codepoint, U+204A, to distinguish it from the usual ampersand, because it is sometimes found in texts used alongside the modern form.
1 Apr 2003 — 6:10pm
For a wide variety of approaches, check out Adobe's subset of Poetica that's all ampersands, all the time.
Another one: I was surprised and pleased by the ampersand that comes with Lux Sans
2 Apr 2003 — 3:39am
Some historical ligatures (including et)
http://gymn-benedictinum.de/san_projekt/augustinus/ligatur_1.htm
2 Apr 2003 — 7:45am
Wow.
Do_you/does_anybody know how comprehensive this is?
hhp
3 Apr 2003 — 8:43am
2 Apr 2003 — 8:05am
hrant: Do you mean the whole latin project page?
http://gymn-benedictinum.de/san_projekt/augustinus/
I`m sure other usefull sources like this are on the net. But mostly not in english. :-)
2 Apr 2003 — 8:25am
I can't read German (yet) so I'm wondering:
What is that list of abreviations, exactly? Just a collection from a single document, or from an exhaustive list of documents, or what? And what about the "parent" page?
Like if somebody wanted to put those in his font, how well would those two pages cover him?
hhp
2 Apr 2003 — 8:56am
Him, hope I can translate it right. This site is a school project of a christian monk monastery.
The letters and ligatures derived from historical hand written sources and help to read and decode the old latin scripts from the library.
The project was inspired by same samples from a book restorage. In the upcoming time of letter print, most of the original scripts used or cuted to repair the "new" and "better" printed books. Nowadays some of such historical samples will be found in such early printed books if they will be restored again.
Like yesterday or so, some new unknown samples of the "hildebrands lied" are found in an Austrian monastery.
So, these samples are for historical research only and not samples for new fonts designs. :-)
Back to the topic - It`s interesting to see such historical forms.
2 Apr 2003 — 8:58am
The list is far from comprehensive, although it does contain the most frequenly encountered scribal contractions. The standard texts on scribal contractions are:
Cappelli, Adriano. Lexicon abbreviaturarum: dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane.
Chassant, Louis-Alphonse. Dictionnaire des abr
2 Apr 2003 — 9:10am
Thanks to both!
> for historical research only
Or setting historical texts. Or showing off.
hhp
2 Apr 2003 — 9:24am
John,
Thanks for that bit of info on the Tironian et sign. I never made the connection. Here's a little more info that you may or may not already know.
The Tironian et sign was also used in Irish manuscripts as a shorthand form of 'et' and 'ead' when they constituted a whole syllable. (1)
If you tag on a 'c' you get 'etc.' (2)
It was also used for '
2 Apr 2003 — 9:30am
Hey, what's that font? ;-)
hhp
2 Apr 2003 — 9:33am
Hey, what's that font? ;-)
Historical and showing off
M.
2 Apr 2003 — 12:38pm
Dolly from underware (http://www.underware.nl) I like:
Dolly normal, Dolly Small Caps and Dolly Italic.
Michael
2 Apr 2003 — 4:02pm
Oh yes, the Dolly ampersands are splendid. We use the one on the right in the promotional material for the ATypI conference in Vancouver. Just the ampersand, mind you; everything else is in Matthew Carter's Fenway and Jeremy Tankard's Shaker.
3 Apr 2003 — 8:43am
there are some nice ampersand samples like this one designed by robert granjon in the article on the adobe website: http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/theampersand.html (which i'm sure many of you have already read)
3 Apr 2003 — 9:45am
Here's a rubbing of another Irish ampersand I'm very fond of by Michael Biggs:
and here's a photo:
Matha
3 Apr 2003 — 10:09am
Nice rub.
hhp
3 Apr 2003 — 1:22pm
this is nice, it just showed up in my office on a paper sample, can anyone identify it?
3 Apr 2003 — 1:28pm
wow you guys are slow today; )
1 Apr 2003 — 7:03am
Pascal 60 pt:
hhp