Text for Proofing Fonts: A Farewell to the Quick Brown Fox
Very interesting article, but set up against a strange straw man.<p>First, the usefulness of a full <i>page</i> of text for critically analyzing a font is obviously extremely useful <i>for type designers</i> looking for flaws to fix, or perhaps a national newspaper or magazine selecting a new body type that must be absolutely flawless. This is indeed a great text for proofing fonts.<p>But "quick brown fox" was never intended for proofing fonts. When the author says pangrams are "singularly useless" for that, he's right, but they're very good for something <i>else</i>.<p>Mainly, browsing fonts in a catalog to get the full personality at a single glance, on a single line. Above all what kind of "a", "e", "f", "g", "j", "l", "t", and "w" it has, since these (in non-italic) generally have the most variation. To check if there are any letters the font does something "weird" with. And just get an overall basic sense of look and spacing.<p>So setting the paragraphs he comes up with, as a <i>replacement</i> for pangrams, just feels like the entirely wrong way to frame it.<p>(All that said, I have <i>insane</i> respect for the man -- his designs set <i>the</i> absolute top bar.)