Looks like President Musk is still in charge.

  • @[email protected]
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    66 days ago

    Oooo! Ooooo! Oooooooooo!!! Now’s my time to shine with useless information I learned in a college class that I dropped!

    When using a printing press, there are multiple metal stamps of each letter. WHEN YOU WERE USING THE BIG LETTERS, YOU’D REACH FOR THE ONES ON THE “UPPER CASE”, while the smaller more frequently used letters were kept on the “lower case”.

    And when you needed more s p a c e between letters, you’d use more of the blank metal blocks, which were made from lead, which is why that spacing us called leading.

    Finally, some printing press operators discovered that if you made letters too small, they’d become hard to read, but that you could take advantage of the blank space inside the letter blocks by designing the letters from corner to corner diagonally instead of straight up and down to fit more condensed letters on a single page—this space-saving leaning style was pioneered in Italy. To lean your letters like this was to do like the Italians did, hence your printing style was italicized.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      26 days ago

      Oooh, I didn’t realize italics made it possible to put bigger letters in smaller spaces! Thanks, Professor!

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
        46 days ago

        Yeah! It would buy you an extra couple lines per page, reducing the page count while maintaining readability. When fonts start exploring surface area, you know shit’s about to go off.