{"id":28945,"date":"2014-11-30T00:02:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T05:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28945"},"modified":"2018-01-15T18:34:10","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T23:34:10","slug":"medium-com-goes-all-rathergate-on-a-1970s-lego-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/30\/medium-com-goes-all-rathergate-on-a-1970s-lego-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Medium.com goes all “Rathergate” on a 1970s LEGO letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I managed to miss the initial controversy about a typographical hoax<\/a> that might not have been so hoax-y:<\/p>\n

According to the website of the Independent<\/em> newspaper<\/a>, LEGO UK has verified the 1970s \u2018letter to parents\u2019 that was widely tweeted last weekend and almost as widely dismissed as fake. Business as usual in the Twittersphere\u200a\u2014\u200abut there are some lessons here about dating type.<\/p>\n

\"Lego<\/p>\n

\u2018The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls.\u2019 It\u2019s a sentiment from the 1970s that\u2019s never been more relevant. Or was it?<\/p>\n

Those of us who produce or handle documents for a living will often glance at an example and have an immediate opinion on whether it\u2019s real or fake. That first instinct is worth holding on to, because it comes from the brain\u2019s evolved ability to reach a quick conclusion from a whole bunch of subtle clues before your conscious awareness catches up. It\u2019s OK to be inside the nearest cave getting your breath back when you start asking yourself what kind<\/em> of snake.<\/p>\n

But sometimes you will flinch at shadows. Why did this document strike us as wrong when it wasn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

First, because the type is badly set in exactly the way early consumer DTP apps, and word processor apps to this day (notably Microsoft Word), set type badly\u200a\u2014\u200aat least without the intervention of skilled users. I started typesetting on an Atari ST, the poor man\u2019s Mac, in 1987. The first desktop publishing program for that platform was newly released, running under Digital Research\u2019s GEM operating system. It came with a version of Times New Roman, and almost nothing else. Me and badly set Times have history.<\/p>\n

In the LEGO document, the kerning of the headline is lumpy and the word spacing excessive. The \u2018T\u2019 seems out of alignment with the left margin, even after allowing for a lack of optical adjustment. The paragraph indent on the body text has been applied from the start, contrary to modern British typesetting practice; the first line should be full-out. The leading (vertical space between lines of text) is not quite enough for comfort, more appropriate to a dense newspaper column than this short blurb.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an error in the copy: \u2018dolls houses\u2019 needs an apostrophe. Either before or after the last letter of \u2018dolls\u2019 would be fine, depending on whether you think you mean a house for a doll or a house for dolls. But it definitely needs to be possessive.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that the type looked careless. It was that it stank of the careless use of tools that shouldn\u2019t have been available to its creators.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I managed to miss the initial controversy about a typographical hoax that might not have been so hoax-y: According to the website of the Independent newspaper, LEGO UK has verified the 1970s \u2018letter to parents\u2019 that was widely tweeted last weekend and almost as widely dismissed as fake. Business as usual in the Twittersphere\u200a\u2014\u200abut there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,62,1118,15],"tags":[263,97,374,1085,92,310],"class_list":["post-28945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-europe","category-germany","category-technology","tag-1970s","tag-advertising","tag-children","tag-fakenews","tag-software","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7wR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28945"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28949,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions\/28949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}