A Man Who Cares: Joe Fore

Joe Fore on Twitter does something I love:  assess typoographical choices of the legal profession.

(Thread) There’s been a lot of #legalwriting typography content lately. After seeing @BobLoeb’s great graphic showing font choices by federal circuit, I wanted to explore each circuit’s formatting choices in more detail, and, hopefully, draw out some broader themes.

— Joe Fore (@Joe_Fore) May 18, 2020

He dings the First Circuit for their use of monospaced type, one of my pet peeves.

Wake Up, Professional Transcription Service.

There's no excuse for continuing to use pica or elite type fonts in the 21st century.

The impeachment inquiry transcripts.

Beating My Drum

The "transcript" of the POTUS-Zelensky phone call has been released.  I note the Trump White House still uses monospaced type fonts.  Don't they know better?

(My pet peeve is people who've stuck with elite or pica typefaces now we're into the era of laser printers instead of using the more readable proportional spaced fonts.

Trump's White House Stuck in the Past

Powerline blog reproduces Trump's Executive Orders on immigration.  Based on the images, his staff is still stuck back in the typewriter era, using Courier or Elite typefonts.   I don't know how many times I have to repeat this: proportional spaced fonts are easier to read.  (Presumably if and when published in the Federal Register they will appear as proportional spaced--I'm assuming the Powerline image is the document Trump signed.)

A Fellow Obsessive on All Caps

Lena Groeger posts on the Weather Bureau's movement away from all-caps. Her objections are similar to my comments about mono-spaced type, but more general. She points out the life-saving impact of the change, and extends the topic from the Weather Bureau to the Surgeon General's warning, the fine print in legal documents and warranties, traffic signs, and NASA.  As I grow older and my eyesight declines, I find these matters of typography more and more important. Some magazines and websites like to use white/light type on a dark background; very artistic I'm sure, but hard on the older people among us.

Courier All Caps Is No No

One of my pet peeves, which I may have mentioned before, is the failure of people to take advantage of the possibilities the computer has given us: specifically the failure to use proportionally spaced type and lower case when communicating.

Back in the early 70's my boss gave me a research project: see if I could find a replacement for our IBM MT/ST typewriters.  As part of the research I read a paper on the benefits of proportional spacing: more legible, easier and faster to read, less misunderstanding.  That's why for hundreds of years printed material was in various proportionally space fonts. 

At that time, typewriters were limited; the usual choices were 10 pt courier and 12 pt. elite, though the IBM Selectric offered more variety, but only the IBM Composer offered proportional spacing for print shop/forms design use.

Meanwhile we still had telegraphs going, which mostly were all cap and monospaced. IIRC even in teletype terminals which used CRT's, that was true. 

Anyhow, places like the State Department and Weather Service which had the telegraph system incorporated into their bones have continued to use monospacing and all caps well into the 21st century.  State may have transitioned off.  And now Brad Plumer at Vox tells us that the Weather Service is going half-way, abandoning the all-caps, but not the Courier font.

IMHO this is a fine case study in bureaucratic inertia.

Obama Greatly Disappoints Me

I think over the years I have mentioned my near-obsession with mono-spaced type.  To summarize: in the old days typewriters mostly were either pica or elite, using the same amount of space for each letter.  Once we moved to word processing, particularly with inkjet and laser printers, we could easily produce proportionally spaced type. There's now no reason to use monospaced type.  Readers do much better with proportionally spaced type.

So what does President Obama use for his War Powers Act letter to Congress?  See here.

Shame on Starbucks

Yes, I'm talking about the ad the founder of Starbucks ran in today's Post and NYTimes in which he asks his customers to leave their guns at home, son, don't take your guns to Starbucks.  (Sorry, briefly channeled Mr. Cash.)

No, I'm not upset by his position.  The company can do anything they want, within the law.  Personally although there's been some open-carry demonstrators around in VA, I've not seen anyone with a weapon except police.  I don't think I particularly care one way or another--I don't go in bars which in my mind is where people, arms, and alcohol are a combustible mixture.  Starbucks usually not so much, though I did see one very heated exchange between a customer and a clerk in my local Starbucks a year or so ago.

So if I don't care about guns, why do I call "shame"? 

Because the letter is printed in monospaced type, probably elite.  And I've a personal peeve against such type: it's less legible than a good variable spaced typeface and with modern technology there's not a reason in the world to stick with elite, or pica.

Another Appeal for Typography in the FAA

James Fallows has blogged about the Asiana crash.  This is the last bit from one post:

"* Here is the text of the "NOTAM," or Notice to Airmen, announcing the limited ILS status. The opaqueness of the terminology is unfortunately typical of the Telex-era legacy coding of aviation announcements, but professional pilots would know what it means. In essence it says that at SFO airport the ILS glide path would be OTS WEF -- "out of service with effect from" June 11, 2103:

"SFO 06/005 SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359

CREATED: 01 Jun 2013 13:40:00 

SOURCE: KOAKYFYX"

Now I've great confidence in the ability of professional pilots: I'm sure evolution over the years has created a breed of super beings who don't need any of the aids us ordinary humans need to understand a message.  And this breed inhabits all the corners of the world, and regardless of native language is thoroughly schooled in acronyms. 

But please, give me a break.  We don't use Telex these days.  People under 50 have never even heard of it.  We have lots and lots of bandwidth, so there's no need for concise messages, if conciseness comes at the expense of clarity.   It really is true that upper and lower case are more legible than all upper case, that words are clearer than acronyms, and brevity is not always a virtue.

I'm not up to doing a lot of research, but there's a link there to the FAA website.  I wonder whether pilots could, by clicking a cursor on a map, pull up all the messages pertaining to a specific airport which are still in effect?  Seems like a simple application of technology.

I believe the State Department has finally abandoned all caps; it's time for FAA.

[Note:  this is one of my pet peeves, I don't see my label for it.]

A Question of Type

To a bureaucrat, Richard Clarke's Jan. 25, 2001 Memo to Condi: is interesting on a couple of points.

First is evidence of scrambling to get the ear of the new administration, using any opening available. That's standard. It fits one picture of Clarke, as someone sharp, with sharp elbows, who pushes his position and himself. It's not clear from the press reports, nor from the fast read I gave his book, whether he's the stereotypical staff person, skilled in holding meetings and coordination, or someone who can get something done. (Note my biases--I view myself as the latter, not the former, though I held a hell of a lot of coordination meetings. The problem with coordination is that you end up dealing with human inertia, which leads to the second point.)


Second is that the memo is monospaced type, not proportional space. This is an obsession of mine. The tipoff that Rathergate's documents were forged was the fact that they were proportional spaced, rather than the monospacing typical of typewriters and most early word processors. It took the laser printer to make proportional spacing really feasible. So it's been 15 years or so--why is Clarke still using monospacing? (Proportional spacing not only looks better, it's more efficient, readers comprehend text in well designed fonts faster and better.) Answer: inertia. And the lack of competition to trigger a change.