Typography Art Paul Renner

Accents have enhanced the basic 26 letters of latin alphabet since the Middle Ages. They delimit the way a word is pronounced and they help distinguish between words which would otherwise look the same. This is necessary, for all European languages have more phonemes than the 26 basic letters. Another option of increasing the number of characters is more old fashioned, but still in use: it is the diphthongs or two following letters, which are read as one phoneme (for example ch in Czech). In some languages one phoneme may be represented by more than two characters (for example by three, in German: sch). In certain languages there exists more than one character for the same phoneme: in Czech these are i-y or ú-ů. There is also the possibility of creating a completely new character, such as Old English þ and ð adapted by Icelandic. However, the easiest and also the most practical away of extending the latin alphabet are the accents. That is why they are the most commonly used. Although the basic shapes of the accents have been standardised during the 20th century, the accents do develop — permanently and almost invisibly. For example, in Czech, there is a tendency to abandon a decorative style in favour of something neutral and less eye-catching: the previously common caron with sharp contrast is being abandoned nowadays, in favour of the version symmetrical along the vertical axis. In some languages, the readers are very sensitive to the proper shapes of the accents; in others, the shapes are more varied. In Czech and Romanian, it is not acceptable to interchange a caron with a breve; in Turkish, the two shapes are freely interchanged. Accented characters are often perceived as individual letters. This is reflected in thealphabet order — sometimes the accents are ignored, but in other cases, accented characters are placed following to the non-accented ones, or they are placed at the very end of the alphabet.

Digitalisation

Original accents designed by Paul Renner (Futura T, URW++) and their redesigned version (Futura BT, Bitstream)

When digitalising an existing face, the typographer has to make an important decision: whether it is better to use the original shape of the accents, although it might seem out of date, or whether to design new accents. Both ways are possible. For the digitalised version of Preissig’s antiqua, František Štorm has prepared two versions: one with the original accents (very unusual from the contemporary point of view), and one with modern ones. Well known is the example of Futura, whose accents were designed by Paul Renner. Some foundries have adopted them, some have replaced them by more conventional ones. I believe that with the most common faces, the reader gets accustomed to a certain shape of the accents. If these are replaced by new, unconventional ones, it might cause difficulties with the fluent reading of the text, even if the new version is typographically better.

One of the most common errors is using accents which do not harmonise with the character of the face and which are constructed differently than the face, such as the accents of a sanserif face used with an antiqua, or, even worse, with decorative italics. Accents must be constructed in harmony with the way the face was built. The designer’s indifference to the shape of the accents is typical for a number of type foundries. Appaling ignorance is exhibited for example by the North American Emigre foundry. In such faces one of the common errors is interchanging a caron with a breve or including a useless ogonek. Sad example of faces with incorrect accents is unfortunately provided by the ones most commonly used: the Times New Roman and the Times typefaces supplied with MS Windows and Mac OS operating systems. I fear that here one might wait for the rectification in vain…

The distance between the glyph and the accent constitutes another problem for the typographer. The reader perceives the accented character as a whole and a wrongly placed accent may lead to a wrong interpretation. If the accent is placed too close to the character, it could merge with it, especially in small lettersizes or during cursory reading. This makes reading more difficult and it can even lead to mistaking a character for another one. An accent placed too far above the character makes smooth reading nearly impossible. The same problem is encountered in cases where the diacritics is placed on the side of a character (ď); here one also has the added problem of proper kerning. The distance between the baseline and an accent should be, within one face, constant. It is necessary to take into account that some glyphs (such as the ones with round strokes, like c or s) might be taller or shorter than others. In exceptional circumstances, it is unavoidable to alter the shape of the character, if an ornament gets in the way of an accent.

Examples of contemporaneous individual accents in Písmo v propagaci (Type for advertisment), book by Bohumil Lanz and Zdeněk Němeček (Merkur, Prague 1974)

Assymetrical caron and wrong shape of the ogonek in the system face Times New Roman (MS Windows); better shaped caron, but in varying height above the glyphs and, again, wrong ogonek in the system face Times (Mac OS X)