This summary, while not presuming to define the Virtues, or achieve Beauty by a formula, does indicate some guiding principles for the letter-maker, and does suggest a definite meaning which may be given to the terms “Right Form,” “Right Arrangement,” and “Right Expression” in a particular craft.
It is true that “Readableness” and “Character” are comprised in Beauty, in the widest sense; but it is useful here to distinguish them: Readableness as the only sound basis for a practical theory of lettering, and Character as the product of a particular hand & tool at work in a particular craft.
The above table, therefore, may be used as a test of the qualities of any piece of lettering—whether Manuscript, Printing, or Engraving—provided that the significations of those qualities on which “Character” depends be modified and adapted to each particular instance. It is however a test for general qualities only—such as may help us in choosing a model: for as to its particular virtue each work stands alone—judged by its merits—in spite of all rules.
SIMPLICITY
(As having no unnecessary parts)
Essential Forms and their Characterisation.—The “Essential Forms” may be defined briefly as the necessary parts (see p. [275]). They constitute the skeleton or structural plan of an alphabet; and One of the finest things the letter-craftsman can do, is to make the Essential Forms of letters beautiful in themselves, giving them the character and finish which come naturally from a rightly handled tool. [p241]
If we take the “Roman” types—the letters with which we are most familiar—and draw them in single pencil strokes (as a child does when it “learns its letters”), we get a rough representation of their Essential Forms (see diagram, fig. [142]).
Such letters might be scratched with a point in wax or clay, and if so used in practice would give rise to fresh and characteristic developments,[53] but if we take a “square cut” pen which will give a thin horizontal stroke and a thick vertical stroke (figs. [10] and [40]), it will give us the “straight-pen,” or simple written, essential forms of these letters (fig. [143]).
These essential forms of straight-pen letters when compared with the plain line forms show a remarkable degree of interest, brought about by the introduction of the thin and thick strokes and gradated curves, characteristic of pen work.
Certain letters (A, K, M, N, V, W, X, Y, and k, v, w, x, y) in fig. [143] being composed chiefly of oblique strokes, appear rather heavy. They are lightened by using a naturally “slanted” pen which produces thin as well as thick oblique strokes. And the verticals in M and N are made thin by further slanting the pen (fig. [144]).