Font Wars

Jules, I'm thinking the important issue isn't the letter-shapes. I've been in typesetting only 32 years, but I still have a hard time telling, say, Bembo from Times Roman and its various offspring. I'm thinking the important issues are character-widths and letterspacing, not letter-forms. Do you recall back in the heady early days of phototype when the Linotronic V-I-P promoted *18-unit-to-the-em* letterspacing, and then the Lino 202 trumped that with *54-unit-to-the-em* spacing? And now we have, what, 4096-unit-to-the-em spacing in Postscript? I don't know what Word uses, do you?

That the character-widths and letterspacing of the Killian memos so nearly match default Word values for the ubiquitous (perhaps even "default") Times New Roman font is pretty clear evidence to me that these memos are of current origin. I can't afford this level of certainty, http://defeatjohnjohn.com/2004/09/10000-question.htm, but I'd be willing to bet US$20 that these memos are fake.

Jules, I couldn't get a 'Post a comment' screen on your "A Selectric Composer replica" thread, so I'm posting here.

You wrote: "As you see there are some anomalies, but it really does begin to look as if the memo could have been produced on a Selectric Composer with a font ball that had the superscript "th.""

I understood the thrust of the shapeofdays article to be that the Selectric Composer probably could not have produced the Killian memos. Did I misunderstand the quote: "Can we draw any conclusions from this? Well, there's always room for doubt, no matter how slim, no matter how slight. But in my opinion … yes. Based on the significant differences in letterspacing between the Composer font and the font used in the memos, the iffy nature of the superscript "th," and the unbelievable coincidence of the precisely centered headlines, I'm ready to say that the IBM Selectric Composer was not used to produce these memos."

Help me understand that you are not selectively quoting (misquoting) sources to show the opposite point from the original source.

On the other hand, there's this: http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000859.php

"I just interviewed Dr. Bouffard again, and he's angry that the Globe has misrepresented him. He's been getting hate mail and nasty phone calls since last night's story was posted, and he wants me to correct the record. He did not change his mind, and he and his colleagues are becoming more certain that these documents are forgeries."

I am directing you to his site so that you can examine his absurd conclusions for yourself. The statement I quote merely describes how he got the replica.

I'll fix the comments in the item. Thanks for pointing it out. And many thanks for your comments. I like people to be able to see all sides of the question.

"On the other hand, there's this: http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000859.php

"I just interviewed Dr. Bouffard again, and he's angry that the Globe has misrepresented him. He's been getting hate mail and nasty phone calls since last night's story was posted, and he wants me to correct the record. He did not change his mind, and he and his colleagues are becoming more certain that these documents are forgeries."

We'll see. Has he asked the Globe to correct the record?

Fonts from A-Z. Find one to make comparisons to most any printed word.

http://www.myfonts.com/Article.html