Here is a design conundrum: which way to lean the Hebrew Italic design. Logic, and probably common sense, would dictate that it should slant in the reading direction. However, I think we have to consider wider implications on this issue, and I would like to ask for the community’s opinion on this issue. Personally, I would design the Hebrew backward slanting, meaning in the same direction as the Latin.
Some years ago we designed a corporate font for which we faced exactly the same question. After much deliberating and consulting with a number of Hebrew users and typographers it was decided that it should be backwards. The decision was based on the fact that the Hebrew would often be shown in tandem with the Latin and that two have two differing Italic slants would create too much of a textural disturbance in a layout. Furthermore, if a Hebrew text is set, in Italic, and a Latin word needs to be introduced the opposing Italic angles would tend to create an awkward texture. This is particularly true where numbers are used since in modern Hebrew the Latin numeral system is used throughout. Of course a separate set of numerals can be designed and accessed via script specific OpenType feature but its correct use very much depends on the application recognising OT in the first place.
Bruno Maag
The “opposite slanted glyphs” in the second example look strange to me, while the “Latin slanted glyphs” in the first example look natural. In fact the first example is not to far from my Hebrew hand writing. I think that the direction of inclination should have nothing to do with the reading direction, it is a result of the angel of the (right) hand holding a pen. I also see no reason to deviate from what is already a De facto standard. practically all existing Hebrew computer fonts I’ve seen, propriety or open source, are inclined in the same direction as Latin fonts.
Ditto.
Nice! But doesn’t Hebrew also occasionally use Latin letters, e.g. for foreign acronyms? Or is it really just numbers?
Simon, most Israelis can speak English, at least in a basic level. As a result, newspapers can sometime write a word in English. This is common when a new word occurs e.g. a strange name of a new American music star or an obscure technical term. In these cases it is possible that some readers have seen the English word before, but not the (new) Hebrew translation. Having both may help clear things. But I don’t think this issue should effect the design of Italic glyphs.
By the way, the use of Italics in Hebrew is not as common as in European languages. In fact I don’t even know how to say “Italics” in Hebrew…
The latin-slanted glyphs look more natural. Also, most Hebrew fonts contain latin-slanted italic glyphs.
slant it backwards
I think the Hebrew language is written from right to left like the Arabic language so the opposite slanted glyphs make more sense to me.
What Hezy said.
As many wrote above me, the slant should be opposite. it is common in all the hebrew fonts, and has good reasons (as you mentioned in the post).
Hebrew should slant the same way as the Latin alphabet, and it is actually will flow in the correct direction for Hebrew. This is an area I researched for my Master Degree, covering such issues back in 1984, and the full document is available for download from http://www.hebrewtypography.me.uk
From the 1960s through to the 1980s key Hebrew Typographers had aborted attempts at designing a slated Hebrew based on the logic that it is written in the opposite direction to English and so it should similarly slant in the opposite direction. None of these were successful, ranging from Henri Friedlaender’s Hadassa Font which he never published the slated version and similarly some early fonts from Zvi Narkis that were never released due to him not being happy with the result. I was fortunate to discuss the issue with Zvi Narkis in 1984 as some of his fonts were available optically and digitally slanted in the opposite direction to Latin even though he was not happy with them. I explained my own logic to him which is that the Hebrew letter HANGS from a top line, and does not sit on a base line. Even if one believes it now sits on a base line it visually does not – read my thesis. So, simply if you fix the letters to the top line, not the base, and blow them in the direction of the writing, it ends up sloping in the same direction as the Latin alphabet. I expect that also is why Hezy mentions its similar slope to his hand writing. It also fits better against Latin letters as mentioned by contributors.
Incidentally, if one compares the Narkis fonts in old Letraset font catalogs from pre 1984 to those a few years later after my discussion with Narkis, you will note that the slant in subsequent fonts switched to being the Latin direction, even through at the time he would not agree with me.
Finally – in answer to the question of what is Italic in Hebrew, the word Natuy which means slanted is sometimes used to indicate the closest you get to an italic Hebrew as technically unlike italic in Latin which has specific unique character differences, this is not the case in Hebrew and it is merely a slanted version of Hebrew you are creating.
Hebrew should slant the same way as the Latin alphabet, and it actually will also flow in the correct direction for Hebrew. This is an area I researched for my Master Degree, covering such issues back in 1984, and the full document is available for download from http://www.hebrewtypography.me.uk
From the 1960s through to the 1980s key Hebrew Typographers had aborted attempts at designing a slated Hebrew based on the logic that it is written in the opposite direction to English and so it should similarly slant in the opposite direction. None of these were successful, ranging from Henri Friedlaender’s Hadassa Font which he never published the slated version and similarly some early fonts from Zvi Narkis that were never released due to him not being happy with the result. I was fortunate to discuss the issue with Zvi Narkis in 1984 as some of his fonts were available optically and digitally slanted in the opposite direction to Latin even though he was not happy with them. I explained my own logic to him which is that the Hebrew letter HANGS from a top line, and does not sit on a base line. Even if one believes it now sits on a base line it visually does not – read my thesis. So, simply if you fix the letters to the top line, not the base, and blow them in the direction of the writing, it ends up sloping in the same direction as the Latin alphabet. I expect that also is why Hezy mentions its similar slope to his hand writing. It also fits better against Latin letters as mentioned by contributors.
Incidentally, if one compares the Narkis fonts in old Letraset font catalogs from pre 1984 to those a few years later after my discussion with Narkis, you will note that the slant in subsequent fonts switched to being the Latin direction, even through at the time he would not agree with me.
Finally – in answer to the question of what is Italic in Hebrew, the word Natuy which means slanted is sometimes used to indicate the closest you get to an italic Hebrew as technically unlike italic in Latin which has specific unique character differences, this is not the case in Hebrew and it is merely a slanted version of Hebrew you are creating.
Simon, you make an interesting point. Latin-slanted Hebrew would look less weird if the letters still looked like they were hanging off of some line. Unfortunately, in the the above image, the line from which the Hebrew characters hang does not correspond to any line detectable in the design of the Latin characters. Ideally, the Latin and Hebrew characters would have the same x-height, so that the Hebrew characters would hang from the mean line of the Latin characters. The problem with that is that the Hebrew characters would have to be smaller than they appear in the image, and would be harder to read. A good design might take care of that. No matter what, it’s a tricky issue. Personally, I find it æsthetically displeasing when mixed Latin and Hebrew text does not have a consistent x-height.
Bruno, any thoughts on the x-height issue?
I’m not expert in the Hebrew language, though I did study Hebrew for two years in college. Despite reading right-to-left, the Latin-slanted font seems much more natural. I can’t say why; the other is just distracting and doesn’t seem nearly as natural.
Thanks for your comments everyone, and thanks for confirming my own opinion on this issue. I slightly disagree with the notion that Hebrew is primarily slanted, since you can observe some glyphs possibly changing appearance when designed as a proper Italic, or Cursive. However, it depends on the design of the font in general what the exact treatment is.
X-height: again, this is something that has to be designed with the other scripts in mind. Clearly, putting the Hebrew at x-height will make it too small, and setting it to full cap-height will make it look huge. The optimal is somewhere in-between, like figure height which often tends to be a few percent smaller than caps. We’ll do testing on this.
Quote:
“which is that the Hebrew letter HANGS from a top line, and does not sit on a base line. Even if one believes it now sits on a base line it visually does not – read my thesis. So, simply if you fix the letters to the top line, not the base, and blow them in the direction of the writing, it ends up sloping in the same direction as the Latin alphabet.”(Simon Prais)
Got to about the same conclusion, though HANGS from a top line doesn’t seem like a good explanation to me.
It’s because Hebrew is written from top to button, the start point is “pinned in place” and the rest of the letter is slanted in the writing direction.
That’s the way it would be if you tried to write slanted Hebrew by hand, and that’s probably why it looks more natural that way (top to the right, bottom to the left).
Unfortunately I don’t speak Hebrew, but this analysis is very interesting. :)
I think that the question is not what is “right” but what is common-
The Ubuntu Font is designed to be the main font of the system and as such it will and should interact with other fonts in the most common way.
So, for the question about the direction of the italic font – Just do as everybody else, slope to the right.
And for your question about the relative font size -
Again, since this font is intended for a system wide use, you don’t need to test yourself against the Latin letters, but against all other common Hebrew screen fonts on all 3 operating systems (Arial, David, Raanana, Miriam, Tahoma, etc.) and find the right balance comparing to them.
Look here – http://tombigel.com/fonts.html it’s a test page I made when I started developing websites on a Mac and had a huge problem with Hebrew fonts. This page looks totally different on Windows, Mac and Linux and on different browsers on the same system, but you can see from it what are the major font families and the Hebrew/Latin size relations.
I btw a big fan of the Arial (and Narkis Tam) approach of setting the size of the Hebrew letters to the size of the uppercase letters in the corresponding English font. You can always create a variant with larger Hebrew (And get ready, you will have the same problem with Arabic) Letters.
In the last paragraph i meant “lowercase”…
hiya everyone, I was just checkin? out this site and I really like the basis of the article, and have nothing to do, so if anyone wants to have an compelling convo about it, please contact me on facebook, my name is sammy robechaud