pnictogen-wing

The Pnictogen Wing

@pnictogen-wing

  • they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)

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pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing
chimerror
@chimerror
two
@two

In typography it seems to be the standard that italics functions as a toggle switch; if there's text within a longer italicised passage that should itself be italicised, it's unitalicised.

Just who are these Five Guys, and why haven't I heard of them before, she thought to herself.

This has always seemed suboptimal to me. It takes me a moment to parse that the suddenly un-emphasised text is meant to be on a second layer of emphasised, and it can make it confusing to tell where an icalicised passage ends if it's got some second-layer-italics right at the end of it. I'm here to propose the obvious solution:

mintexists
@mintexists

how far can we push this. Can I have fully horizontal italics

polymath
@polymath

Early computers could not render italics directly but simulated them by moving the letters horizontally during the horizontal blanking period

pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing

amusing thread

but if you wish to emphasize something within an italicized passage, why not simply use emphasis (i.e. bold letters) within the passage? ~Chara

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in reply to @two's post:

rbohrer
@rbohrer

I wasn't there in the beginning, but I believe he was one of the founders. If not a founder then certainly the most influential person, was the MC for many years until Jim McCann took over (also a complete sweetie poo and bovik legend!) Though to be fair, sigbovik is not about any one individual, it is about the community and our DESPERATE NEED FOR A NEW COVER ARTIST FOR THE PROCEEDINGS (seriously if any artists read this and are interested in helping the community, please email the organizers, they will pay you TWO banana)

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two
@two

Hah, nice! Surely this means at least one type designer has had this exact thought at some point. The true "obliquer italics" must be out there somewhere...

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sarksus
@sarksus

Yeah the use of unitalicized words in italicized passages to indicate emphasis is frustrating to read through. A single unitalicized word in an italicized passage does not stand out as well as a single italicized word in an unitalicized passage so I always do a double take before realizing it’s unitalicized. I do wish they would just do what you did here, or just completely discard the concept of italicized passages to indicate inner thoughts.

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xenolon
@xenolon

This is something which likely could be solved by better typographic distinction between italics and oblique type. The two are often conflated, both by the layperson and by design software.

True italics should be reserved for very specific applications, or in this case, the second-level-down distinction treatment.

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4gateftw
@4gateftw

But I feel like it's so hard to see the difference especially if you're just glancing at it, also it's so confusing to be like "wait what does more italic mean vs less italic oh god" as you read

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in reply to @polymath's post:

tomforsyth
@tomforsyth

You're going to run out of tilt room eventually and the text is just going to be _____________. So we're going to need to use the reverse direction and lay the letters the other way. If italics are emphasis, these would be, like, totally de-emphasised, dude. Just like, your opinion man.

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in reply to @DecayWTF's post:

in reply to @atax1a's post:

vogon
@vogon

yeah the technical term for what people think of as italics is "oblique" and you 100% can generate it procedurally.

it just so happens that italics tend to be leaning over like that because the letterforms were originally intended to mimic calligraphy -- and most people's calligraphy leans to the right because most people are right-handed, especially in Proper European Society in the 1500s when italics were originally invented.

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vogon
@vogon

as to why CMU Serif Upright Italic exists, which a) holy shit b) I didn’t know until atax1a posted about it?

well CMU Serif is a derivative of Computer Modern, which is generated from source by a procedural type system called METAFONT. since it’s procedural, I think the cost to generate even, shall we say, Marginally Useful styles like upright italics might be reasonable — and, horrifyingly, bringing this back full circle, I think I even see the non-comedy use case: since italics are contrastive in math writing, and METAFONT-based typesetting systems were designed by and for nerds, Upright Italics gives you the ability to write a math symbol inside a prose paragraph set in italics and have it have both the correct slant to work like normal prose, and the correct letterform to be easily identifiable as the symbol.

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in reply to @pnictogen-wing's post:

gnar
@gnar

imo bold and italic communicate similar, but slightly different types of emphasis. i think one example is that sarcasm isn't possible with bolding, but is with italics.

(ex: "Oh, I'd just love to trek through the desert with you. That sounds so fun" versus "Oh, I'd just love to trek through the desert with you. That sounds so fun". first one seems like it could communicate sarcasm, but i'm not sure what the second one would communicate? maybe genuine excitement? but certainly not sarcasm)

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