Size matters
Luckily, I’ll be long gone when it happens.
Whilst I can’t really remember doing it the first time, I’m not sure that I’d want to have to learn to read again.
Whilst I’m interested in languages in general, I tend to enjoy the physical structure and appearance of it far more than to learn the meaning of the words. I think it’s having spent some time as a typesetter.
Take Japanese Kanji, hiragana and katakana, though especially the kanji, they lie somewhere between a letter and a picture… The Egyptian hieroglyphics are another example – not only a way of recording information and communicating, but a standardised art form. The written language always lies between the functional and the aesthetic.
Diacritics too, those exotic dots and lines the mutate characters I already know well.
And as for function, there are the different directions you can read in, downwards, right to left…
As I have mentioned before I’m partial to a bit of concrete poetry, but there’s no need for a distinction, in my mind, between that and the ordinary written, or typed, word. The strange marks we leave.
Unless it involves comic sans… I’m not so keen on that.
Philip J Schadenfreude on 
Some people see the snowflake, others snow.
Don’t ask me what that means. I like fonts. I
downloaded a bunch from the Comic Sans link.
Is that like not seeing the wood for the trees?
Oops, just did.
Some fonts are brilliant, others not so much… but a lot of that depends upon how you use them I suppose.
Comic Sans is sans comic.
My brain hurts, I can read that easily, but I think you broked something.
Thanks.
If you like the look of words, you would love some of the callighraphy I have hanging on my walls, just the alphabet, done for practice.
The practice of writing really interests me, not in a technical way, more of a philosophical way, the way we speak, the way we write, methods of writing, all have meaning over the words.
A note on the fridge saying only “hi” can carry volumes of meaning, dot the “i” with a love heart, circle with stars, or scrawl in blood on human skin, all very different meanings.
I completely agree! I love language. I’ve always had a thing for calligraphy, but I’m quite terrible at it. Maybe I should try again. =)
I also love the philosophical/psychological aspects of nature, how you can say basically the same thing, but with slight variations, and have it come across quite differently. Metaphors and symbolism are rather intriguing, as well: how you can talk about something without actually TALKING about it, and then have the meaning clearer and more precise than if you had actually just gone out and said whatever it was that you had wanted to say.
they remind me of tags off the web 2.0
I just got this comment… sorry must have been *very* slow.
That’s sort of where I got the idea… that people can scan text for importance by size rather than innate order.
Well spotted.
Just remembered, some Terry Pratchett (best author ever) books have odd ways of having the words arranged.
Tho the pages that look weird are still very easy to read for some reason.