Category: Typewriters

Read The Typewriter Revolution blog: Analog College by Patrick Rhone (The Cramped)
What we believe in. If I was of college going age, such an institution would be at the top of my list. Also, I was not aware of this blog before the e…
This would be an interesting college!

ᔥ patrickrhone in @c @macgenie What we believe in. ()

👓 WordPress is a Typewriter by Jack Baty

Read WordPress is a Typewriter by Jack Baty (baty.net)
Using WordPress makes me feel like that boy at the Type-In. I feel like the words are going right onto the paper. Sure, the metaphor is a little thin, but the point is that when writing with WordPress (or any CMS, really), the distance between what I’m typing and what I’m publishing is very short. The only thing closer is editing HTML directly on a live page, but that’s something only crazy people do. On the other hand, publishing a static site is like sending a document to a printer. I have to make sure everything is connected, that there’s paper in the machine, and then wait for the job to finish before seeing the output. If something needs editing, and something always needs editing, the whole process starts over.
I’ve never thought of it in these terms, but there is a nice immediacy and satisfaction to WordPress for this reason. (Though naturally one shouldn’t compose in their CMS in any case.)

I might submit that his issue is a deeper one about on which platform and where to publish though given that he’s got almost as many personal websites as I do social silos. The tougher part for him is making a decision where to publish and why in addition to all the overhead of maintaining so many sites. However, I’m not one to point fingers here since I’ve got enough sites of my own, so I know his affliction.

👓 Butterick’s Practical Typography

Read Typewriter habits by Matthew But­t­er­ick (Butterick’s Practical Typography)

I’ve claimed through­out this book that many bad ty­pog­ra­phy habits have been im­posed upon us by the type­writer. Here, I’ve col­lected them in one list.

  1. Straight quotes rather than curly quotes (see straight and curly quotes).
  2. Two spaces rather than one space be­tween sen­tences.
  3. Mul­ti­ple hy­phens in­stead of dashes (see hy­phens and dashes).
  4. Al­pha­betic ap­prox­i­ma­tions of trade­mark and copy­right sym­bols.
  5. el­lipses made with three pe­ri­ods rather than an el­lip­sis character.
  6. Non-curly apos­tro­phes.
  7. Pre­tend­ing that ac­cented char­ac­ters don’t exist.
  8. Us­ing mul­ti­ple word spaces in a row (for in­stance, to make a first-line in­dent.)
  9. Us­ing tabs and tab stops in­stead of ta­bles.
  10. Us­ing car­riage re­turns to in­sert ver­ti­cal space.
  11. Us­ing al­pha­bet char­ac­ters as sub­sti­tutes for real math sym­bols.
  12. Mak­ing rules and bor­ders out of re­peated characters.
  13. Ig­nor­ing lig­a­tures.
  14. un­der­lin­ing anything.
  15. Be­liev­ing that mono­spaced fonts are nice to read.
  16. Abus­ing all caps.
  17. Think­ing that the best point size for body text is 12.
  18. Ig­nor­ing kern­ing.
  19. Ig­nor­ing let­terspac­ing.
  20. Too much cen­tered text.
  21. Only us­ing sin­gle or dou­ble line spac­ing.
  22. Only us­ing the line length per­mit­ted by one-inch page mar­gins.