Satisfyingly, schnapps is itself is a schnapps-word.

May 20, 2020 1:21 PM

Text for Proofing Fonts, by Jonathan Hoefler (previously). The allure and impracticality of pangrams, and proposed improved text for proofing fonts, based on the distribution of letters in English and various design considerations: a farewell to the Quick Brown Fox.

"Seven of the most visually awkward letters, the W, Y, V, K, X, J, and Z, are among the nine rarest in English, but pangrams force them into every sentence, guaranteeing that every paragraph will be riddled with holes. A typeface designer certainly can’t avoid accounting for these unruly characters, but there’s no reason that they should be disproportionately represented when evaluating how a typeface will perform."

(Don't worry, there's still inadvertent poetry and headscratching bandname fodder: Pneumo pneumo poncho for the dauphin opossum of the holdup bishop and supplies.)

posted by miles per flower (10 comments total)

Read them aloud! It’s a vocal exercise and a poem and a pronunciation quiz all in one.
posted by janell at 1:29 PM on May 20, 2020

"Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." Indeed.
posted by mikeand1 at 1:34 PM on May 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

Previous thread on Hoefler and his former business partner Tobias Frere-Jones.
Im noting that the "non-commercial" limitation in the licence for this panagram means that Tobias won't be able to use it.
posted by Lanark at 1:47 PM on May 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

I had a great high school history teacher who gave us an assignment to either: write a small essay, or guess correctly what a pangram was - he had put an example on the board that had no foxes. You could leave the class for the day after completing either one.

I just stared at that sucker for 10 minutes until it came to me...everyone else was still writing their essay when I left...
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 2:14 PM on May 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Watch Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek's fun TV quiz game!
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:45 PM on May 20, 2020 [12 favorites]

Hoefler seems to be the Anish Kapoor of typography.
posted by acb at 3:03 PM on May 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Hoefler seems to be the Anish Kapoor of typography.

Ja, quiz clue vexed us.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:52 PM on May 20, 2020

New band name: Nutmeg Isotope.

Cool, seems like a great tool, but while I get the complaint that normal pangrams overrepresent the "weird" letters, doesn't this underrepresent them in that you want to make sure the edge cases look good too?
posted by blue shadows at 10:07 PM on May 20, 2020

The lowercase one is legitimately good poetry. Dare I say very good?
posted by mokey at 12:03 AM on May 21, 2020

If you were asking yourself if it's OK to like Jonathan Hoefler, Hoefler and Frere-Jones settled out of court and the terms of the settlement were private. It doesn't seem like either of them has spoken publicly about it, but perhaps that silence is also indicative.
posted by fedward at 8:41 AM on May 21, 2020 [1 favorite]