I have to ask, what do you make of "CalifornianFB?"

Baskerville has been a favorite of mine since the 1980s, but for such a classic font, it's a latecomer to being as widely available for free as Garamond was.

NOW I HAVE A QUESTION

I think Baskerville and Bulman are both nice, but they both telegraph as Anglican to me.

Garamond somewhat --- but only because of association, not because they look particularly English.

SO, I wonder:

Either because of intrinsic style or because of association:
What fonts do you all think read as particularly Catholic / Roman / Latin ?

Goudy Old Style seems very Catholic to me. But that might just be because it's what I use.

Goudy Old Style seems very Catholic to me. But that might just be because it's what I use.

I hate the G.

I switched from Garamond to GoudyOS in 2005.

But Wood doesn't like the G!

I too am a long time devote of Garamond however since last year I have switched to Crimson Text and I even though I have experimented with other fonts I keep going back to Crimson Text.

The lowercase Goudy "g" looks like it has half a waxed mustache. So maybe one's reaction to it correlates with one's feeling about waxed mustaches.

I stopped using Times New Roman, simply because the name reeked of Bugninian Modernism.

Jackson, could you please amplify your remarks concerning the CalifornianFB font, "It is rather, um, artless - clumsy, actually."? For the record, I didn't offer this font as an advocate for it, I just wanted to know Adam's learned and insightful opinion.

Can you tell me what font King's uses: I find the Italic "J" intriguing (c.f. In dulci jubilo, p. 18).

Nine Lessons and Carols 2014

That's Plantin.

Charles: amplify my remarks? This is difficult. Actually I was being sort of tongue in cheek and mock snide. The California FB font does, though, seem to me rather clunky and lacking in the elegant and rarified artistry of something like Goudy. The proportions of the formative elements of each letter are less than perfect, and the chisled appearance, which is doubtless a deliberate feature, does not contribute to the letters, individually or in groups, being a pleasant aesthetical experience. This is not a font which one would use for an edition of the Canterbury Tales or a treatise on the theology of Hugh of St Victor.

Bembo = Catholic:

What fonts do you all think read as particularly Catholic / Roman / Latin ?

Arial.

On newsprint.

Bembo = Catholic:

Dat kerning, tho.

Golden Cockerel was also designed by a Catholic, Eric Gill,

He is also responsible for Perpetua,

Gill Sans

the underrated Joanna

All nice Fonts. The Q on Golden Cockerel is awesome.

For all my chant typesetting, though, I use Constantia. It just seems ... seemly.

Can you provide a sample?

I love this stuff.

Here is a beautiful handwritten Book of Hours from the late 15th c., written in Humanist Miniscule, which is sort of the ur-script for all of these serif fonts we are looking at.

If someone has designed a typeface that looks like this, I want to know about it.

I'm going to have to rethink everything I know.

The W for Goudy Old Style seems to be identical.

Also the W is not identical. It is, similarly, built from overlapping Vs, but look (for example) at the top-right serif in each. Garamond is much more stable. Goudy looks like a comic-strip car driving away.

I do kinda like the Q in Goudy... (but I hate the G).

I like the font used by the Typographia Polyglotta Vaticana for liturgical books in the early 20th century, e.g. in the Antiphonale Romanum. It's one of their so called Elzeviriane.

Goudy looks like a comic-strip car driving away.

This is the most insane thing I've ever seen you write. And that is saying something. :)

I had truly never noticed the asymmetric serifs.
I love details like this.


The base of Garamond's T also has a nice little curve on the bottom, like the arch of a foot.
(This image is comparing -- I think -- Georgia on the right)

The serifs on the Garamond example shown by Charles just above are different from the ones shown by Adam just above. In Charles' example the serif on the right side of the T has an outer face that is quite vertical, whilst the one in Adam's example definitely slants outward from bottom to top. Also, in Charles' example the top of the T's right arm slants ever so much downward as it approaches the serif, whereas the same arm on Adam's specimen actually rises ever so slightly as it approaches the serif, which, itself, does not extend upward quite as highly as Charles'. Further, a close look at the outer face of the left serif will betray that it is noticeably different, Charles' being a tiny bit convex and somewhat more pendulous, Adam's being rather lighter and ever-so-sightly concave. One could be forgiven for thinking these T's were from two different fonts.

And, details such as Adam points out on Garamond are why such fonts are far more aesthetically joyful and pleasing to read than those which lack them. One could be excused for feeling that fonts such as Garamond are the work of poets, and ones such as Georgia are the work of engineers.

I just looked up High Tower Text, which is one of my favourites. It is a 1994 'up-date' by Tobias Frere-Jones of a 1470 Roman font by Nicholas Jennings. In addition to the letters, I prefer the style of the numerals, wherein certain ones, such as 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, dip below the line - as they are supposed to do!

Um, how do you like the 'g'?

It seems to me that upper case R's are amongst the most difficult and least succesful letters of most any font, even of those fonts one really likes. The R in Bembo, given far up above, is rather unusual and pleasing as far as proportion goes. Constantia's is pretty good. Baskerville's is excellent. But, the one in Palatino is probably the nicest one (perfect, really) illustrated in this conversation. The one in High Tower Text and quite a few others is, actually, somewhat lacking in grace.

And, Goudy? As a font, it seems to be in a class by itself. None can match its artful elegance, perfect proportions, balance of light and dark, and utter, aetherial, refinement.

I'm clearly struggling with MS Word as well! The second (blank) page shouldn't be there - and something funny appears to have happened to the staff lines in the course of conversion to PDF (using CutePDF Writer).