Notes on the type

Back in 1997 the New Yorker published a piece lampooning the proliferation of ‘Notes on the Type’ — those oleaginous mini-essays informing us that ‘this book was set in Backslap Grotesque Italic Semi-Detached, a variant of Bangalore Torpedo Moribund adapted in 1867 from a matrice by the Danish chiseller Espy Sans, a character if ever there was one’.

In the years since, the situation has gone from worrying to insufferable. Many non-fiction books now suffer from a severe case of distended colophon — sentence after rococo sentence, in the best M&S chocolate-box language, on the lineage of the type and typographer, on the amusing top notes of blueberry and persimmon that can be detected in the prose. I recently read one that explained not just who invented the font, but who was long thought to have invented it, before concluding: ‘The type is an excellent example of the influential and sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England up to the time William Caslon developed his own incomparable designs from them.’