Archive for August, 2011
Sometimes a Mac (or a PC) is a typewriter
Way back in 1989, a Macintosh enthusiast and self-taught typographer named Robin Williams wrote a slim book called The Mac is Not a Typewriter. A few years later she wrote a similar book, The PC Is Not a Typewriter. The message of both books was almost religious in its fervor: we could no longer regard outselves as mere writers; we now had to be desktop publishers and typographers. Anyone who did not understand this was making a sad mistake. To quote from my own 1992 copy of The PC Is Not a Typewriter:
The purpose of this book is to let you in on some of the secrets that have been used for centuries to make type pleasing, beautiful, readable, legible, and artistic . . . If we are taking type out of the hands of the professionals, then we must upgrade our awareness of what makes their work look professional. I strongly feel it is our obligation—every one of us who uses the computer to create text on a page—to uphold the highest possible level of typographic quality in this changing world.
I enjoyed reading this and other books by Williams; she had a playful, pleasing style and made typography seem interesting. And yet 20 years later, we can say that her books failed. They did not convert the masses to her way of thinking. The first lesson in The PC Is Not a Typewriter is to insert only one space after a period, not two—a lesson that is still routinely violated today. Another lesson had to do with properly setting tabs for indented first lines and paragraphs—and this too remains a trouble spot for many writers.
