purchased a font that had no lowercase “l”
I recently purchased a font of lowercase ATF 96pt Franklin Goth Extra Condensed.
Pretty heavy stuff.
However, the font shipped without the lowercase “l” (elle). I suspect the elles were mixed in with the uppercase “Is” (eye), which were sold with the uppercase font (which I did not buy).
What should I do? Is it possible to have some elles (l’s) made by Owosso with a copper die and a wood base — and have those set properly in a line of type?
Or am I now stuck with an incomplete font?
Thanks for your advice
i’m not sure but you might get away with cutting some 12 or 18 point rule, i think the franklin is just a straight line, not sure.
That’s a great idea. The digital version of franklin is straight and it appears that the stems in the metal are straight too — so I’ll just have to find the correct thickness of rule.
to tmac, dickg and others
Aficionados [spelling?] of good typography should not read the following:
re substituting for lower case l (elle):
When (morning newspaper) we got a Nebitype, some of the comps found that substituting (in some founts) meant not having to take a walk back to the journalists when a heading was a trifle “tight”. Usually this could be done only in sans-serif typefaces, but most headings were. A lower-case l (elle) could be substituted for a cap I (eye) in most founts, and a cap I (eye) for a figure 1 (one) in some founts (and a few other substitutions). Kerning (such as TA or LY), using the compositors’ power saw, was also a blessing, but watch the fingers. So far as I know, condensed founts were never substituted for some of the characters in normal-width founts. I also saw a 10-point Mergenthaler Metrolite character 1/8 (one-eighth) cut with a sharp knife to make a 1/3 (one-third) which was not in the fount.
On one occasion, a character was missing from a word in a story about an Apollo spacecraft; a normal correction meant that the paragraph made an extra line, just a few characters on that last line.
The lino operator decided to avoid taking the story to the journos for a “cut” to shorten it, and the morning paper did not have the squeeze machine used by another (afternoon) paper. The line ahead of the word Apollo had been wide-spaced, so the lino operator transferred the letters Ap followed by a hyphen to make Ap- in one line, and typeset pollo into the next line, making room to move some letters up and avoiding making an extra line. In the rush to get the last page of the day’s edition away, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary, and no comment was ever made.
Alan.
Thanks Alan.
“and no comment was ever made” — until now!
On the plus side, the ebay seller has offered a reasonable discount, or the opportunity to return in full.