Talk:History of Western typography

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of Western typography article.
Article policies

Uncivil talk, cranks, trolls & disruptive behaviour on this talk page will be removed on-sight.
Arbo talk 13:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

  • material added to the historical narrative must be citable and verifiable
  • this article uses advanced text typography and large pictures to illustrate its visual subject. Contributors are asked to preserve these features to keep Wikipedia's typography and related articles at the cutting edge of wikitypography. The text includes typographic devices like ampersands and emdashes—where appropriate and effective. Please do not over-use them. See: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules and Wikipedia:Use common sense.

Arbo talk 13:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Archive

[edit] Eurocentric Bias?

I don't see how an article called "History of Typography" can be the "History of Typography in Europe" (quoting from the opening line of this article), while the world's first typography inventions are in "History of Typography in East Asia". Can someone explain if Wikipedia is focused primarily on Europe and not the whole World? Mukerjee 11:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia is supposed to be focused primarily on Europe and not the whole world. But this is the english language Wikipedia, written largely by english-speakers and western Europeans writing in english. I haven't read many of the other language WP versions, but I'll bet the Japanese WP, for example, has a Japan-centric bias.
If the english WP has a Western-centric bias it stems from the language its written in and the english-speaking cultures who write it. Try posting your query at the village pump for a better answer.
I wish the article on moveable type in China and Korea was as long and comprehensive as this article. The problem is it only lasted a few hundred years in the East and did not succeed as it did in the west—as explained in this history—so there is not a long history of type in the East to write about. And much less material has been published about Eastern typography. Keep in mind WP is still in its infancy.
When the section on proto-typography, woodblock and movable type in China and Korea are broken out to dedicated articles, History of typography will only cover typography in Europe and the west.
We could move (rename) this article to "History of typography in Europe", but that's a long and cumbersome title. "History of western typography" might be okay. Or maybe we should turn this article into a disambiguation page with links to the three separate history pages?
Arbo talk 13:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
see my comment on talk (UTC) -- DGG18:51, 2 November 2006
See also this Village Pump discussion, where more editors are in favor of a wider perspective for this particular article and for moving the history of Western typography to History of Western typography or something like that. — mark ✎ 09:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Arbo,I like your idea for using this as a disambig page, linking to the 3 regional/temporal history of typog pages, with some appropriate see alsos. It will certainly solve the problem of what to put here. But perhaps then there should be 4:, EA, Eur Incunabla, Eur 16 17 18, Eur/Am/Intl 19 20. With refs, to block printing, prototypography, stamping, coining, etc .
Perhaps a scope note that discussion of the economic, labor relaions, & business aspects of printing is in printing--that's most of the unique content there now -- there's also a good deal which is dup. elsewhere and can be removed. DGG 00:44, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I'll get some time to conference with you later today.
Arbo talk 00:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] further discussion on VP

The questions discussed above and thought to be resolved have been brought up again on the Village Pump (Policy), three days ago, but not seen till now. I've commented there, although it does not seem the right place.DGG 05:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Systemic bias of English/Indo-Germanic European language WP

When I created the History article from Typography I was following WP's in-built linguistic systemic bias, not by choice but by perforce of pre-existing linguistic bias.

Now, do we move [[Typography]] and [[Font]] > [[Western typography]] and [[Western font]]?

Western typography sounds okay. Western font is starting to sound silly.

We don't have an articles on Arabic typography, Eastern typography or Cyrillic typography yet. We've got Yiddish typography, but no history of that. Editors with the requisite knowledge of these missing typo articles are at liberty to start writing them.

WP is still in its infancy, and editors who think the English WP has systemic Euro-centric bias should examine the other language WPs, which are far behind us.

The French, German, Spanish and Italian language WPs all have their own typography articles, their titles being the Latin-derrived word for "typography" in each language. All of them discuss European typography and its history only, making little or no mention of typography of other civilizations. They aren't far along enough yet to have split their histories into separate articles either, eg: Histoire de Typographie does not exist yet in the French WP.

If the english WP renames Typography to Western typography, what should we do with Typography?
Arbo talk 13:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

suggested d i s a m b i g p a g e

Typography may refer to:

Sensible feedback and suggestions are welcome, but please be patient as I am supposed to be on wikileave. Thanks!
Arbo talk 13:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] name change

In the circumstances, I support the rapid change to History of western typography, but isn't it usual to discuss such a change on the _article's_ talk page first? We might have found a better, such as History of typography in Europe or History of European typography might have been better--I think the use of eastern and western in this general sense is geographical bias. To me, western typography is typography in California. DGG 05:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I considered all the useful alternatives before chosing "western". "european" does not cover all western Latin typography, and "Latin" does not cover all western typography and indo-germanic languages. "western" covers most indo-germanic and Latin alphabets/scripts/languages.
First people complain about systemic bias in the english WP—of course it's biased, it's an english language encyclopedia, what do you expect? I expressed that answer softly when the question was first raised. Now we're complaining about the bias of "Western" v.s "Eastern". Of course it's biased—the bias is built into global geography. And typography really is divided into eastern and western. It's not a biased view, but a polarized reality. A title like "Western typography" or "History of western typography" is a reflection of reality. Either learn to live with that, or ignore it.
All possible choices of title are biased in some way, whether linguistic, geographical or something else. Physicist Werner Heisenberg proved we cannot observe a phenomenon without changing it, that is: the act of observation alters the appearance or behaviour of the phenomenon in some way, so a truely objective view is not possible. James Burke's conception is that all ways of looking at the world are subjective—and relative—but not neccessarily equivalent or equal.
Latin typography is the only other usable title. It covers most western Latin type scripts and alphabets.
This whole issue is playing out like a pointless linguistic/semantic/systemic bias quibbling. Changing the article title for the sake of NPOV has opened another can of worms. Who seriously thinks we should change Typography to "Western typography"? (keep in mind Typography and its largely western content is not yet finished, and other editors have asked me to include islamic typography but I'm not qualified to write on that subject).
Best regards to all, Arbo talk 06:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reposted from Village Pump

James - thanks! But perhaps moving the present article is too drastic. Clearly, most of what is typography today did happen in Europe, esp if we are talking English typography - so just a subsection or two on the antecedents in the main article would be all that is needed. That would be better than having a separate article on Western typography, and leaving some impoverished content for the global one, etc. But we can discuss this on the topic pages.
DGG, immediately after posting this comment here I had posted a note on James' talk page, who was the lead architect of the History of Typography article. Indeed, it is he who told me that such matters could be discussed on the village pump.
Thanks to the pointers to systemic bias. This bias may pervade many articles related to printing, where the Chinese/ Korean discoveries appear to be downplayed. For example, the lead sentence in the article on Johannes Gutenberg says
Johannes Gutenberg... invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.
which gives the impression that the technology of printing with movable type is European, or that it was completely different from any other, earlier, technology. But these things are better handled in the relevant pages. mukerjee (talk) 01:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
As I said on the Gutenberg talk page a few minutes ago, and now copy here, "I think the first sentence is exact: there is a European technology of printing from movable type, it differs from the Asian technogy for doing this, and Gutenberg did invent it. He obviously did not invent all the components, for example paper, or the use of engraving tools. Bias would be if the sentence read, Gutenberg was the inventor of printing from movable type." For further discussion, I refer to my comments there.
And for those who haven't been there to see it, the Gutenberg article has long had--and still does have--a rather longish section on "Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian printing?" But, as Mukerjee says, we can continue there--perhaps we've done enough over here.DGG 05:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Art & craft development v.s technical development

History of western typography is focussed almost exclusively on typographic style and practice as an art and craft, with almost no info on technical developments. That's what Typography, for the most part, is—an art & craft, involving type style and design. Perfect.

Typefounding are dearly written-about in as a separate subject in Movable type (thanks for your additions guys!) It covers the pre-history of typefounding and technical developments in the East, but has little on developments in typographic style as an art and craft—as you would expect. Perfect.

History of typography in East Asia is much the same scope as Movable type but with far less content. It's purely technical and has next-to-nothing on developments in typographic style as an art and craft, use, page effect etc, no names of typefaces or designers. Not so perfect. There is a whole new project for editors interested in filling in this gap in History of typography in East Asia. Thanks!

Remember too that it doesn't have to be perfect, and you're encouraged to ignore all rules and use common sense if it results in a better encyclopedia :)
Arbo talk 12:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate Arbo's work in this. I might have organized it a little differently (in a way not at all related to recent discussions), & probably every would also have some personal preference, but I am reluctant to even mention how, because, as said, the important work before us is to add more & perhaps better content. I'll work where I know best (bibliographic & institutional & economic & general cultural aspects) and I very much agree with the priority mentioned for material on the design aspects in East Asia. But I think only those who know the relevant scripts can help much there.
I do have a strong preference for one manner of work: that the really detailed content, & especially paragraph-length quotations, should be written about in only one page, and only summarized elsewhere. Not that it wastes disk space, but it wastes time in editing it more than once, & I'd rather learn about and use new material. DGG 20:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks David. All of your work and suggestions on this material, Movable type and Printing press have been excellent and well-received. Now that some fundamental issues have been discussed and decided, I think we are making progress toward a common goal – The spirit of the rules is more important than the letter.

The penultimate official policy is: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. We are encouraged to do it if it helps create a better encyclopedia. Wikipedia:Use common sense: "The spirit of the rules is more important than the letter...Invoking the principle of "Ignore all rules" on its own will not convince anyone that you were right, so you will need to persuade the rest of the community that your actions improved the encyclopedia. A skilled application of this concept should ideally fly under the radar, and not be noticed at all."
Arbo talk 04:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ligature picture

Please see the discussion about possible inaccuracy of captioning of the s/i ligature picture at Image talk:Fi garamond sort 001.png

Notthe9 18:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Carolingian Minuscules discrepancy

This article is excellent, and I would love to see many of the other articles it links to meet the same standard. As a type amateur, I'm not qualified to make anything but minor edits, but one particular discrepancy I noticed was in Carolingian minuscule#Role_in_Cultural_Transmission. My specific concerns can be found on that talk page (Talk:Carolingian_minuscule#Role_in_Cultural_Transmission. (BTW - is there a better forum for asking about this? I didn't see anything in the talk page guidelines to specify. Perhaps Typophile is really the right forum...) Thanks!

Eeblet 16:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Writing Style ...

Just ran into this article on a random browse through Wikipedia. Very interesting review. However, the tone of the article comes off very flowery/gushy, to the point I'm concerned it breaches point of view (WP:NPOV) guidelines. Selected examples: "structurally-perfect design, near-perfect execution"; "its fullest refinement"; "a seamless fusion"; "become corrupted"; "The exquisite design". It's nothing overt, but there is a continuous subtle underlayment of implicit value judgments throughout the article.

The article is very well done, and would probably do well as an essay/paper in a university course. However, an encyclopedia should take a more distant and "dry" tone, as compared to an essay. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the article, I just think it could benefit from a more "neutral" tone. -- 22:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

...the tone of the article comes off very flowery/gushy, to the point I'm concerned it breaches point of view (WP:NPOV) guidelines.

"very flowery/gushy" is an exaggeration in itself. If you're so concerned about breach of NPOV please post your assertion(s) at the Wikipedia Village Pump and get some more opinions from registered Wikipedians. So far you are the only person to express such doubt over NPOV. Your view alone of the writing's qualities is insufficient proof of the merit of that view.
Please explain how, exactly, the following statements are very flowery/gushy: "structurally-perfect design, near-perfect execution"; "its fullest refinement"; "a seamless fusion"; "become corrupted"
Those are nothing more than articulate expressions of aesthetic qualities. In books about type design they are all standard expressions. All are verifiable published views of the type historians referenced. If they seem subjective that's because all published writings on aesthetics are subjective. The article merely reiterates these published views from reliable sources.

...a continuous subtle underlayment of implicit value judgments throughout...

That's the nature of writing on aesthetics. The value judgements you percieve are published, established views of the world's leading type historians. A typeface design cannot be described without value judgements.

...an encyclopedia should take a more distant and "dry" tone, as compared to an essay. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the article, I just think it could benefit from a more "neutral" tone.

That would render it useless, impotent and ineffective. Please read this: Talk:Aldus_Manutius#Overly flowery and unsubstantiated claims. Then read some more WP articles on the visual arts. You will find this kind of descriptive writing everywhere. Encyclopedia Britannica contains it too.
Arbo talk 11:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)