onsdag 20 april 2011

Aldus Manutius inventor of fonts like Garamond



Another interesting detail about the book printer Aldus Manutius, is that he also developed a host of fonts that is today widely used. The font family is called Medievelatikva or Garald. The Font family includes Garamond and Palatino as you probably recognize.

Useless knowledge perhaps, but I think it's classy that the fonts were created 500 years ago and I wonder if they knew which impact their work would have on the future.

tisdag 19 april 2011

Aldus Manutius invented the semicolon

Some inventions have transformed the history of the world and have become widely publicized. Some inventions have also had great influence, but the inventor has remained relatively unknown.
 

One of these inventors is Aldus Manutius, who lived between 1450 and 1515. Only 44 years old he invented the semicolon character (;). One can imagine how the mood was in his Venetian printing works when they realized that they had created something new, something big, something historic (I am ironic).


What they did not count on was the fact that not one single, normally gifted person, would use the sign during its first 510 years, but the suddenly used thousands of times an hour around the globe;-)
 


Semicolon was originally meant to be used when you think that a point is a too strong separation sign and a comma causes two sentences in a row. It is used between sentences - typically main clauses - which are closely related to each other. A semicolon is usually followed by small letters and can also be used for enumerations in order to separate groups from each other