News flash. In the Stanford Report (faculty and staff news, serving also as p.r. for the university) today (8/20), this headline:
Oh, the font! The trickster font!
I expected a subhead along the lines of:
Distinguished Professor of Education Albert Tinkery establishes international databank on educational practices
But no. The curse of sans serif fonts has struck. It’s artificial intelligence expanding beyond Stanford.
August 20, 2026 at 7:52 am |
I wondered whether you would choose Albert, Alfred, or Allan!
August 20, 2026 at 8:13 am |
I chose Albert because it’s the name of my best buddy from childhood, Albert Fritz; Al / Fritzie remained my good friend throughout his long and remarkable life, until he died not very long ago. I picked the name to honor him.
August 20, 2026 at 10:12 am |
Amen to that. There ought to be a law: even sans-serif fonts should have crossbars at the top and bottom of capital Ii, a rightward serif at the bottom of lower-case Ll, and an upstroke at the top left of the numeral 1.
While we’re at it, let’s prohibit f+i, f+l, and f+f ligatures; they fail to respond when we’re searching for words like fish, flue, and staff (not to mention raffish and effluent). We can keep the æ ligature but there should be a regulation that it shouldn’t look like the œ ligature, even in italics.
August 20, 2026 at 10:17 am |
Yes, yes, yes, all of the above. We should take to the streets.
August 20, 2026 at 11:07 am |
I was more concerned with “Tinkery”. Is that a neologism for “putzing around with,” or is it a brand of AI (eye not ell), à la Claude or Gemini?
August 20, 2026 at 12:24 pm |
The former — ‘tinkering around with’.