Thursday, February 07, 2008

Overcome By Font

(Picture courtesy of ivritype.com)

How often have you been discouraged and ceased learning a particular sefer because of the size and type of the font?

posted by A Simple Jew @ 4:43 AM   5 comments

5 Comments:

At February 7, 2008 at 9:30:00 PM EST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Often. I happen to very picky on that. So I can't stand poorly designed sforim. (This shouldn't be mistaken for copies of old sforim which are hard to read because of copy quality while it is hard, it doesn't bother me so much as bad design). So I try to find those editions which are made nicely.

 
At February 7, 2008 at 9:35:00 PM EST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I personally don't releate at all to the trend to publish sforim with huge letter and nekudoys (many Breslovers today publish this way, and I don't like it). Such sforim take huge space on the shelf, and use a lot of paper, while they could be many times thinner and lighter. While it might be useful for some vision impaired people, but it seems some modern publishers think it should be the standard "for all". Fortunately not everyone is running after such trends.

 
At February 8, 2008 at 12:10:00 AM EST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

B"H
While I usually try to focus on the content of the seforim, I must admit that the size, style, and quality of the print does influence me. It's a lot easier for me to focus when a sefer is beautiful. It enhances the beauty of the text to me.

 
At February 8, 2008 at 10:05:00 AM EST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I totally agree. I try and steer clear of the seforim with bad typesetting and fonts.
Just recently I ordered some seforim over the phone. While most of them were fine, there were a couple that weren't. Makes me wish I would have specifically requested the editions with the better quality. But oh well...

 
At February 10, 2008 at 8:23:00 AM EST, Blogger yitz said...

the main difference for me is that a lack of nikkudot makes the going slower. I usually learn as fast as I possibly can, and the presence of nikkudot usually helps that a lot (though I recently obtained a copy of Likkutei Halachoth w/ nikkudot and for some reason I still feel more at home in my copy that has no nikkudot)

i definitely have issues with certain fonts, but i find once you get into it, you cease to notice what font it is... just like watching a black and white movie, twenty minutes in, you aren't aware of anything unusual about the picture.

That said, the fonts i find most uncomfortable are the artscroll & chabad fonts. When I was in grade school and started davening out of sefaradi siddurim as per my minhag the first thing that made me feel at home was the nicer fonts.

(i also like pocket-size versions of sefarim simply because they can travel anywhere)

 

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