On Sat, 2 May 2009, Richard J. wrote:

wrote on 02 May 2009 13:27:51 ...

I always thought that the serif on the "1" in New Johnston was an
aberration on what is meant to be a sans serif font, and am delighted
to see the return of the old elegant "1", and the more logical and
attractive "4" as well.

As I said in my original post, I don't regard it as merely a serif. It nearly
always slopes down to the left, reflecting the way in which the figure 1 is
written by millions of people.

I'm with Richard on this one: i don't consider that little downtick a
serif any more than the crossbar on the t is. Furthermore, i like the tick
- i think the tickless 1 lacks clarity and gravitas.

I thought i'd have a look to see if there was an official term for the
tick on the 1, but couldn't find anything in my one book on typography and
a bit of googling.

But i did find this fascinating post about typesetting a huge prime
number:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=183

And this article about, well, it's in the title:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_tele...misconceptions

tom

--
If you're going to print crazy, ridiculous things, you might as well
make them extra crazy. -- Mark Rein