Did this last week - it's a quote from a free writing course I've been taking - Self-Editing for Writers, with Joan Dempsey. I've taken a course with her before, and like last time, it's been a good learning experience - she's great at giving me another way to look at how I'm writing - in the current course, for instance, I thought I'd been doing editing wrong for years, when it turns out that doing my editing while I write? Perfectly valid! She's also got a masterclass on the subject - sadly, I can't afford that, but I can at least say that if you want a good learning experience to help smooth out your writing problems, you can't go wrong with Joan. Anyway, this quote really popped out to me as something that I could do a cool calligraphy thing* with. It's just... well, the structure of the sentence is perfect for two columns: There is/EMPHASISED WORD/segment/segment/segment, repeat. And it seemed to me that the it'd be easy to do it as a sort of right/wrong thing: the first column, you see, is really plain. The paper's basic white, and each script is very basic: a serif script mimicking standard serif fonts; big, bold, and plain NO; next line's the lowercase of the first line (with right over-decorated in the middle of the phrase - so it's kinda like a bulls-eye, you see). Next two lines are what I call my "school" hand: it's what you learn in school, nothing more. The second half is aged (with tea, naturally), and there's a wider variety of scripts: First line is based on a font, Pfeffer Simpelgotisch, which I used to use as my computer's font when I was in a big steampunk mood (these days, I'm more into retro sci-fi, so I'm doing Sierra Madre), and which is the first font I sought out and downloaded, back when I was first getting into typefaces and calligraphy. The second's another early one; I used to write in blackletter like that all the time. Everybody complimented me on my handwriting, because who else writes like that? Third line's an art deco medley, my current favourite script, although I'm sure I'll move on to something else in a couple of months. Next line's my cursive handwriting, followed by my usual handwriting. Note the long s and r rotunda; I'm pretty sure I'm the only person using a long s these days,***** and I'm quite definite on the fact that nobody else uses r or rum rotunda.****** * "Cool calligraphy thing" is, in point of fact, a technical term used by modern calligraphers the world over,** and is not something I came up with just now because "calligraphy project" sounds too big for a (slightly larger than) notecard-sized work like this. ** You can trust me on this, because I'm honest to a fault.*** *** Usually someone else's. **** There once was an internet explorer, Who whilst on safari met a calligrapher, They saw the inscription And read the description Even the footnotes from nowhere. ***** I find most attempts by modern writers to emulate long s appalling, because A) it's not every s, you know - there's rules about when to apply it; and B) it's not an f - take a good, close look at that crossbar. I recently read Good Omens, and had a few (probably unintentional, though you never can tell with Gaiman and Pratchett) laughs when they attempted it during the sections about Agnes Nutter and her book - it was just so haphazardly applied, it's like they just chose s's at random. ****** Why's the rum gone?
