Welcome back to our quest for answers about how our quirky English alphabet came to be. If you’re just joining us, I recommend reading part one of this story first. A quick recap of English so far:

欢迎回到我们寻求有关古怪英语字母的答案的过程。 如果您只是加入我们，建议您先阅读本故事的第一部分。 到目前为止的英语快速回顾：

• The Latin alphabet was born in Rome and spread across Europe with the expansion of the Roman Empire
  拉丁字母出生于罗马，随着罗马帝国的扩张而遍及欧洲
• As Latin became associated with Christianity, it spread around the remainder of Europe
  随着拉丁语与基督教联系起来，它在欧洲其他地区传播
• The Anglo-Saxon peoples of England combined Latin letters with their Old English language and developed it into Middle English by the 15th century
  英格兰的盎格鲁撒克逊人将拉丁字母与他们的旧英语结合在一起，并在15世纪发展为中古英语

启动压力机！ (Start the Presses!)

Everything leading up to the 15th century has been pretty chaotic, with occasional additions, removals, and modifications of letters, not to mention the continually evolving style of writing, and the lack of standard spelling for words. Things are about to get much more standardized though, and it’s about time we meet Mr. Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany. The year is 1440, and former goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg had just modified a winepress to push ink onto paper, instead of squishing juice out of grapes. Up until this point, scribes could only copy a handful of pages per day writing by hand. The printing press jumped that up to 3600 pages per day, more than a 100x efficiency gain. No wonder this is one of the most important moments of human history.

直到15世纪，一切都非常混乱，偶尔会增加，删除和修改字母，更不用说不断发展的写作风格和缺乏标准的单词拼写了。 事情将变得更加标准化，现在该是我们在德国美因茨与古腾堡先生会面的时候了。 那是1440年，前金匠约翰尼斯·古腾堡(Johannes Gutenberg)刚刚修改了酒压机，将墨水推到纸上，而不是从葡萄中榨汁。 到目前为止，抄写员每天只能手工抄写几页纸。 印刷机每天最多可跳至3600页，效率提高了100倍以上。 难怪这是人类历史上最重要的时刻之一。

Sure, it’s an important invention, but when Gutenberg first started printing, what typeface did he use? Times new roman? Comic Sans? Helvetica? None of these would be invented for several hundred years, so Gutenberg printed with Blackletter, sometimes called “Gothic” letters. It imitated the blocky angular letters that German scribes had developed by that point, and Blackletter continued to be used in printing up until the 17th century. You can see Blackletter shown in the image below, in the “Fraktur” style. If you think these letters look distinctly “German”, you’re not wrong. Blackletter was used in Germany much longer than anywhere else, right up until the 1940s. That ended when Nazis declared it “too Jewish”, and changed the national typeface to Antiqua, the European standard (that’s not a joke, they called it “Judenlettern”).

当然，这是一项重要的发明，但是当古腾堡(Gutenberg)首次开始印刷时，他使用了哪种字体？ 英语字体格式一种？ 漫画Sans？ Helvetica？ 这些都没有被发明数百年，因此古腾堡印有布莱克莱特(Blackletter)，有时也被称为“哥特式”字母。 它模仿了当时德国抄写员开发的块状棱角字母，Blackletter一直用于印刷，直到17世纪。 您可以在下图中以“ Fraktur”样式看到Blackletter。 如果您认为这些字母看上去明显是“德语”，那您就没错。 直到1940年代，Blackletter在德国的使用时间都比其他任何地方都长。 纳粹宣布它为“太犹太”，然后将国家字样更改为欧洲标准Antiqua( 这不是个玩笑，他们称之为“ Judenlettern” )， 到此结束 。

With the spread of the printing press across Europe by 1470, newspapers quickly followed. In fact, they were so tightly associated with the printing industry that 500 years later, we still call newspapers “the press.” In printing shops, the letters were organized into capital letters and small letters. Since the capital letters were needed less frequently, they were kept above the workbench in the upper case. The small letters, needed more often, were kept in the lower case.

随着印刷机在1470年在欧洲的传播，报纸Swift跟进。 实际上，它们与印刷业息息相关，以至于500年后，我们仍然称报纸为“新闻界”。 在印刷店中，字母被组织为大写字母和小写字母。 由于不需要大写字母，因此将大写字母保留在工作台上方。 需要更频繁使用的小写字母保留在小写字母中。

Blackletter was a good starting point, but it was difficult for ordinary people to read. The letters were chunky and tightly clustered together, you needed to be taught how to read this style. Back in Italy, Venetian printers were developing new typefaces such as Antiqua that more closely resembled handwriting, smoothly connecting the letters. Some typefaces were slanted, as if written in cursive. As these sloped typefaces spread beyond Italy, they were termed “Italic.” As the classical Italian revival was heating up, printers were looking back at the elegant simplicity of the Roman capitals for inspiration, heavily influencing the design of “Roman” typefaces such as Antiqua.

Blackletter是一个很好的起点，但是普通人很难阅读。 这些字母显得矮胖并且紧密地聚集在一起，需要教您如何阅读这种风格。 回到意大利，威尼斯人的印刷商正在开发新字体，例如Antiqua，它们与笔迹更加相似，可以平滑地连接字母。 有些字体是倾斜的，好像是草书写的。 这些倾斜的字体在意大利以外的地区流行，因此被称为“斜体”。 随着意大利古典复兴的兴起，印刷商开始回望罗马首都的典雅朴素以寻求灵感，这极大地影响了Antiqua等“罗马”字体的设计。

足够的字母摇动矛 (Enough letters to shake a spear at)

Getting back to our English alphabet, the invention and spread of the printing press and the standardization of London-style English (called the “Chancery Standard”) made quite a change. Around the 15th century, the alphabet may have looked something like this, with 24 letters:

回到我们的英文字母，印刷机的发明和普及，以及伦敦式英语的标准化(称为“ Chancery Standard”)，都发生了很大的变化。 在15世纪前后，字母可能看起来像这样，有24个字母：

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W X Y Z

ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVW XYZ

We’re getting close; our two missing letters are U and J. Up until the 16th century, V and U were considered to be the same letter, with the shape (pointed or round) depending on where the letter falls inside a word. To decrease the complexity of using U/V, they were split into a separate vowel and consonant- U and V respectively. When imitating the Roman style, designers may choose to only use V, as the Romans did. For example, take a look at the inscription on the Automotive Building in Toronto’s exhibition place, built in 1929.

我们越来越近了； 我们缺少的两个字母是U和J。直到16世纪，V和U一直被认为是同一字母，其形状(尖头或圆形)取决于该字母在单词中的位置。 为了降低使用U / V的复杂性，将它们分为单独的元音和辅音U和V。 模仿罗马风格时，设计师可以选择仅使用V，就像罗马人那样。 例如，您可以看一下建于1929年的多伦多展览馆汽车大楼上的铭文。

J has a similar story, thanks to 16th-century Italian Grammarian Gian Giorgio Trissino, who decided that J needed to be a separate letter in order to properly pronounce “Jesus” in Italian. His ideas spread into other European languages, and the English J was born. He was also involved in splitting up U and V, and he suggested a few new letters for the alphabet: Ɛ, Ⲱ, and Ӡ. What is with these Italians trying to add more letters?

感谢16世纪的意大利语法学家吉安·吉奥吉奥·特里西诺(Jian Giorgio Trissino)，J也有类似的故事，他决定J需要单独写一个字母，以便用意大利语正确发音“耶稣”。 他的想法传播到其他欧洲语言，英语J诞生了。 他还参与了U和V的拆分，并为字母表建议了几个新字母：Ɛ，Ⲱ和Ӡ。 这些意欲添加更多字母的意大利人怎么办？

工业革命与平面设计 (Industrial Revolution and Graphic Design)

Printing technology, which had been improving by small iterations up until this point, was completely changed by the industrial revolution. The establishment of major type foundries such as Linotype and Monotype created an explosion of new typefaces and options, including multiple weights for typefaces (light, regular, bold). Up until this point, the only way to highlight something in the text was by using an italic font. Now there’s the option of bolding text, a much more effective way of drawing attention to certain words. While italic can show a contextual difference (see what I did there?) bold stands out in the text much better, and the reader can see it without reading the whole page.

到现在为止，通过小迭代不断改进的打印技术已被工业革命彻底改变了。 诸如Linotype和Monotype之类的主要字体代工厂的建立激起了新字体和选项的爆炸式增长，其中包括多种字体权重(浅色，常规，粗体)。 到目前为止，突出显示文本内容的唯一方法是使用斜体字体。 现在，可以使用加粗文本选项，这是一种更有效的方式来吸引某些单词的注意力。 尽管斜体可以显示上下文差异(请参阅我在那做的事情？)，但粗体在文本中会更好地突出显示 ，读者无需阅读整页就可以看到它。

As graphic design boomed in the 20th century, the need for more stylized and specific typefaces brought about new fonts that reflected the style of the times. Helvetica, one of the most famous typefaces in history, was created in 1957 and represented the cleanness, readability, and objectivity of the Swiss Style, which was popular at the time. Typography is a conservative craft though, and only the best typefaces become timeless. Many, many typefaces have been left in the era they represented, and along with outdated colour palettes and patterns, serve to remind us of the aesthetic of those times and places.

随着20世纪图形设计的蓬勃发展，对更多风格化和特定字体的需求带来了反映时代风格的新字体。 Helvetica是历史上最著名的字体之一，创建于1957年，代表了当时流行的Swiss Style的简洁，可读性和客观性。 排版是一种保守的手艺，只有最好的字体才会成为永恒。 在它们所代表的时代中，已经留下了许多很多字体，以及过时的调色板和图案，使我们想起了那个时代和地方的美学。

The terms “font” and “typeface” are used interchangeably, so what’s the difference? A font is a typeface with a specific size and weight. For example, “Times New Roman” is a typeface, but “Times New Roman Bold 30pt” is a font. This division has become mostly unnecessary, as these technical terms aren’t needed for computer-based fonts. So don’t worry about which one you use.

术语“字体”和“字体”可互换使用，所以有什么区别？ 字体是具有特定大小和粗细的字体。 例如，“ Times New Roman”是字体，而“ Times New Roman Bold 30pt”是字体。 这种划分几乎变得没有必要，因为基于计算机的字体不需要这些技术术语。 因此，不必担心您使用哪一个。

今天的版式 (Typography Today)

After more than 2000 years of change to the alphabet, we’re undergoing more experimentation than ever. Not with the letters anymore- since international standardization of the Latin alphabet, those aren’t likely to deviate any more, especially considering how deeply those 26 letters have embedded themselves in our lives. Modern experimentation happens with typography, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in overt ways. A great example is Sans Forgetica, a typeface that recently made headlines over its alleged ability to assist in memory.

在对字母进行2000多年的更改之后，我们正在经历比以往更多的实验。 自从拉丁字母的国际标准化以来，这些字母就不再存在了。它们不再可能发生偏离，尤其是考虑到这26个字母在我们生活中的嵌入深度。 现代实验是用字体进行的，有时以微妙的方式，有时以明显的方式。 一个很好的例子是Sans Forgetica，这是一种字体，最近因其所谓的辅助记忆功能而成为头条新闻 。

Unfortunately, that benefit isn’t quite what it seems- it appears that things written in Sans Forgetica stick in your memory because the letters are harder to read and take more effort to process³. Once your brain gets used to them, it becomes no more useful than any other typeface. But this shows off the lengths we can go to in using science and technology to continually improve the design of our letters. And at this point, we’ve been experimenting for more than 3000 years. Why stop now?

不幸的是，这种好处并没有看起来那么明显-用Sans Forgetica编写的东西似乎一直留在您的记忆中，因为字母更难读并且需要更多的努力来处理³。 一旦您的大脑适应了它们，它就不会比其他任何字体都有用。 但这显示了我们在运用科学技术不断改进信件设计方面可以做的工作。 至此，我们已经进行了3000多年的实验。 为什么现在停下来？

脚注 (Footnotes)

1. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The image has been modified from its original format by the author.

1.根据知识共享署名-相同方式共享3.0未移植许可证获得许可。 该图像已被作者修改为原始格式。

2. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

2.根据知识共享署名-相同方式共享3.0未移植许可证获得许可。

3. Jason Geller, Sara D. Davis & Daniel J. Peterson (2020) Sans Forgetica is not desirable for learning, Memory, DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2020.1797096

3. Jason Geller，Sara D. Davis和Daniel J. Peterson(2020)Sans Forgetica不适合学习，记忆，DOI：10.1080 / 09658211.2020.1797096

Disclaimer: This general interest article covers a significant portion of recorded history, and as such, important details that didn’t directly serve the narrative of this article have been omitted. Some omissions are minor and others are major, so I encourage you to explore any of the topics above if they sparked your interest. If you believe I omitted a critical detail, please let me know! Comments from history nerds, fact-checkers, and historical skeptics are welcomed. Thanks for reading!

免责声明： 这篇引起广泛关注的文章涵盖了记录的历史的很大一部分，因此，省略了不能直接用于本文叙述的重要细节。 有些遗漏是次要的，而另一些则是主要的，因此，如果它们激发了您的兴趣，我鼓励您探索以上任何主题。 如果您认为我省略了关键细节，请告诉我！ 欢迎历史书呆子，事实检查员和历史怀疑论者发表评论。 谢谢阅读！