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How to Design a Font that Really Sucks

If you had asked me, a few years back before I was heavily into incorporating text as an integral part of my daily routine of artsy what-nottery, if a font could suck, I mean really suck, suck to the point of drawing all goodness out of the project in which it was used and make me want to stick sharp objects in my brain as a result of its absolute unmitigated suckery, I would have said no. I would have likely said “pffffft, of course not, it’s just letters, it may not be exactly what you want but how can it actually suck?”

Little did I know. So very little. There are fonts in this world that exist at a level of sucking that Stephen Hawking, Stephanie Meyer and James Dyson can only dream of someday understanding.

But if you too dream of creating something that really really sucks, it doesn’t have to remain merely an impossible dream. You will be well on your way to Hall of Fame Sucking Greatness if you can design a font that includes any or all of the following characteristics.

- LARGE AMOUNTS OF REALLY FUCKING UNNECESSARY SPACE

Few things thrill me more, when I am trying to lay out a block of text as a single block rather than a dozen separate lines, than using a font with padding that exceeds the size of the letters themselves coded into it. Seriously. I love a 12px pad on 10px characters. It rocks. I have specially choreographed happy dances for just these little moments. To Ricky Martin songs, even.

Then there's...

- TOTALLY UNFUCKINGRECOGNIZABLE LETTERS

Go ahead, call me old-fashioned. When I type letters, I like the letters I type to look like the letters I type. So it’s a little wake up call for me, a much-needed nudge into the present, when I find a font that makes, for instance, a lowercase ‘k’ look exactly like a lowercase ‘f’, and the ‘f’ look just like a ‘t’, and the ‘t’ like an uppercase ‘I”. This is not a bad thing, in no way a flaw in the font. II’s me, clinging Io a pasI IhaI has no place in Ihe now, insIead of loofing torward inIo a brighIer Iomorrow.

And finally, a recently discovered favorite...

- EXTRA FUCKING CHARACTERS

When I first encountered the “craaazy” font that manifests its craaaziness in the form of adding extra characters to text, characters that the user didn’t actually type, my initial impulse was to drive to my mother’s house and slap her for not letting me know sooner that my life could ever be so good. It was like every wordy dream I never knew I had coming true all at once. Particularly when my text included a URL and I was just giddy imagining all the fun people would have trying to find my website! They wouldn’t know which of the craaazy mystery characters was the extra, it could keep them occupied for days! Why do we not play Hide & Seek on the Internet more often? What is this insistence on making businesses so easy for people to just waltz into? WHERE’S THE CRAAAZY FUN IN THAT?!


And that, boys and girls, is how you make a stupid font that really sucks.

This post is dedicated with gratitude to the creator(s) of Monotype Corsiva, my new go-to font. Mr. and/or Mrs. Corsiva, I heart you with all of my heart.

When Writers Cohabitate

I was in the kitchen, doing kitchen things, when that familiar voice called from down the hall, “I just used the penultimate Kleenex.”

Present facts? Check. Lay groundwork for escalating suspense and potential consequences for inaction? Check. Use big words? Check.

This is the Novelist’s Way. Never say “Hey, next time you’re at the store, buy some tissues” when you can instead say something like “I just used the penultimate Kleenex” and arrive at the same end.

My mind absorbed what had been said and what course of action was necessary, then began considering the possibilities created by the phrase ‘penultimate Kleenex’; that so blindly reached for to catch what you could not know was close to the final tear you would ever cry in this lifetime, the thing that holds the second to the last sorrow of the human heart.

This is the Poet’s Way. Needing to go to the grocery store to buy tissues is as much a part of the human condition as anything else, and should be immortalized in poetry as such.

This is what happens when writers cohabitate.

Or maybe it’s just us.

The "Evolution" of Language

Ultimate – last, maximum, finest, not to be improved upon or surpassed

Penultimate – next to the last

Once upon a time, we had “ultimate”, “penultimate”, and a category known as “everything else”. Then, “everything else” started to get a bit crowded, and a new adjective was spawned:

Antepenultimate – third from the end

Okay, so there we had a 15 letter, six syllable word to use in place of a 15 letter, 4 syllable phrase that meant exactly the same thing. I guess that makes sense of a sort. The sort that comes in very handy when writing within specific word count limits. Just not the sort I choose to apply to my daily doings and about-townery.

Now it appears there are rumblings in certain circles to bring back into everyday use an obsolete little gem that takes this sort of sense just a bit further:

Preantepenultimate – fourth from the end

So keeping in mind that language is a fluid and constantly evolving thing, I just have one question:

Are you fucking serious?

Things that are Bugging Me More & More Lately: The Grammar Edition

We all have things that drive us crazy. And we all do things that drive other people crazy. It’s called “being human”. I for one am all over the being human thing, and do my best to let others be human in their own ways.

However, there are some things that people just really shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t do these things for two reasons. First, these things are wrong. Second, when enough people do these wrong things on a regular enough basis, they become accepted as right things.

I have given up on hearing the word “culinary” pronounced correctly outside of my own home. My sister is beginning to feel the same way about “foyer”. Granted, we were raised to set our sights high, but there comes a time when the towel must be thrown in for the sake of sanity.

So I let “kuhl-uh-naree” go when I hear it these days. It’s just not worth it. The rest of this post is dedicated to the things that I will let go only when my dying breath forces me to conserve my strength long enough to tell my loved ones how much they mean to me. The gloves are off now. I am far too annoyed to continue ignoring any of the following:

Things That Are Just Not Right

EVERYDAY – This is not the group of seven that forms a week. This is an adjective. It means “commonplace”. You can do something in an everyday manner, but you do not do it everyday, you do it every day.

ACCEPTED vs. EXCEPTED – Frankly I find it really disturbing to see these two words misused as often as I do since, not only are the spellings completely different, they do not mean even close to the same thing. You do not except things the way they are, you accept them. Or, you can take exception and not accept them. If you’re feeling particularly feisty, you can accept all of them except the exceptions which do not merit your acceptance.

DEFINATELY – This is not a word. Please stop using it as though it is. Whatever it is you are referring to is not definate, it is definite. Definitely definite.

IRREGARDLESS – Webster’s, Oxford, and Dictionary.com can all kiss my grammatically conscientious ass. This is not “nonstandard”, this is not “informal”, this is just wrong. Stop putting labels on it that make it sound like it’s okay to use under the right circumstances. It isn’t. Ever.


Words That Are Not Verbs

Here’s a hint to help you determine if a word is a verb; if you can’t add “ed” to the end of it to use it in the past tense, it probably isn’t. Now, this rule won’t always apply, but a little bit of common sense will take you a long way with words like:

WORKOUT – You can do an aerobic workout, but you do not workout aerobically. You work out. You did not workouted this morning. You worked out.

BACKUP – You make a backup copy. You have a backup plan. You do not backup your data, you back up your data. You did not backupped your data last week.

LOGIN – You have a login ID. You did not just use it when you loginned to your account. You logged in using your login. You will log in again tomorrow, using the same login.


Is That Your Welcome?

YOUR vs. YOU’RE – These are not interchangeable. One is about ownership. One is about a state of being. When in doubt, talk it out. Do you mean “YOU ARE welcome/great/silly/an asshole”? Then use “you’re”. I know, it’s another letter and an apostrophe. As you suffer through those extra keystrokes, take a moment to gloat. That’s your right when you’re right.

ITS vs. IT’S – see above.

THEIR vs. THERE vs. THEY’RE – A little more tricky, but really, how difficult is it to keep them straight?
Their – belonging to them
There – in that place
They’re – they are, again with the apostrophe being a none-too-subtle giveaway


This concludes today’s episode of Things that are Bugging Me More & More Lately. Please feel free to leave your own personal grammar pet peeves in the comments.