Why We Need More Than A Spell Checker

Carl Shank • March 25, 2023

Why we need more than a spellchecker. Spell checkers are great. They help us in busy offices doing busy tasks everyday. EXCEPT they cannot correct errors of statement or errors of typography. Grant Weisbrot of New York City has noted that "it is impossible to efficiently proofread without a knowledge of typesetting and printing procedures." ("The Typographic Eye: Proofreading," Electronic Publishing, May 13, 1994) He gives some examples of errors of statements — spelling when letters are missing, like "he" for "the;" spelling in a piece published in Britain, like "color" for "colour;" using a correctly spelled word in a wrong way, like 20 carat gold (carat is a diamond weight, karat is an alloy of gold, caret is an insertion mark, and carrot is a vegetable); awkward sentence structure, incorrect or inconsistent capitalization; and errors of fact, like the kangaroos of Tibet.


Then there are errors of typography, like primes (' ") for apostrophes or quotes (See Below), or quotes used for inch marks, double-hyphens (--) for an em-dash (—), fractional mistakes (See my Blog on Fractions), kerning that is on or off, word spacing that is inconsistent, unbalanced centered copy, allowing widows, orphans, ladders or rivers (See Below), wrong sized bullets, subscript or superscript failures (NIKE (TM) instead of NIKE™), two spaces after a sentence ending instead of just one space (a common typist mistake), asterisks to represent bullets, using the letter "l" for the number 1, capital O for the digit 0, and misnumbered pages.


Interestingly, the ancient Koreans were known for the quality of their proofreading work. If a novice made one typo, they lost a finger. The second typo caused the loss of a hand! In 1539, France required printers to hire proofreaders or to be fined and held liable for damages due to typographical errors. Today, we just add a "not responsible for typographical errors" to ordinary newspapers and mailers. We have grown sloppy, uncaring, and typographically ignorant—sad to say. Frank Romano in a March 1993 Electronic Publishing article, "The History of the Typo," says that "today artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic are being used to electronically generate typographical errors without human involvement."


Weisbrot notes that "a proofreader must correct the proof and enhance the typography without ever making changes in the text or specifications; editors usually frown on a proofreader's pretensions to improve the language, but it is rare for a designer to complain if the layout is typographically improved." I have included a Sample below of a typical proofreader's remarks on a submission.


In saying all of this, I read a letter submitted to the Typographical Journal of 1894 of the desperate conditions of a friend of a newspaper comp. She notes — "I do believe that the morning newspaper, set by weary, sweating, half-blinded, nerve exhausted humans, who are driven to the saloon to recuperate by temporary exhilaration, and to early graves by soul and body enervating toil in unwholesome, ill-ventilated, stinking, over-heated composing rooms, a greater curse to humanity than the much dreaded machine [the coming Linotype machine] can ever be. May the morning newspaper set by human hands soon die, I say." (Alexander Lawson, Thoughts on the Typo Workplace, Electronic Publishing, January 7, 1994) We have come a long way from those days, but I wonder what we have given up for speed and so-called efficiency.

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German Typography History

By Carl Shank • August 31, 2026
German Typography History German typography has a particularly distinctive history because Germany was central to the invention of European movable-type printing, the development of Gothic/Blackletter typography, the rise of Fraktur, and later the modernist rejection of traditional German type. The story therefore moves dramatically from manuscript Gothic forms to highly ornate Fraktur, then to Bauhaus modernism and finally to contemporary digital typography. The history can be understood as a series of major transformations, as noted in ChatGPT, Gothic manuscript → Gutenberg → Schwabacher → Fraktur → Roman/Gothic duality → nineteenth-century industrial typography → Bauhaus modernism → New Typography → postwar modernism → digital pluralism. What makes German typography particularly fascinating is that the political and cultural meaning of type was unusually strong. Fraktur was not simply a letterform; over time it became associated with German language and identity, while the twentieth-century modernists deliberately sought to replace that historical visual language with an international, functional one. If you're studying European typography comparatively, German typography makes an especially useful contrast with Italian, French, Dutch, and English typography, because Germany's long attachment to Gothic type produced a very different trajectory from the Roman-type tradition that developed in Italy and subsequently dominated much of Western Europe. A number of Blogs I have written gives one an insight as to German historical typography and its central typographic characters, including typefaces and notes about Johannes Gutenberg, Marin Luther in Gothic type, Fraktur type and its extensive use in Germany, Rudolph Koch, the Bauhaus period with Herbert Bayer and Paul Renner, Futura, Jan Tschichold and Die Neue Typographie, and the influence of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font and its relationship to Helvetica, Univers, Neue Haas Grotesk, and Arial. Blogs that inform — Advance in Typography: Twentieth Century (Part 1) Type After Gutenberg: A Historical Sketch Theology of Type (2): Gutenberg to Early 1900s Early German Typography (Part 1) Early German Typography (Part 2 ) Blackletter Type & Universities About Sans-Serif Fonts Typography: A History of Machines Contemporary German Typography. Contemporary Germany has become one of Europe's major centers of type design. Important contemporary designers and foundries include Erik Spiekermann. Erik Spiekermann (born1947)( is a German art historian, typographer, designer, information architect and writer. He divides his time between Berlin, London and San Francisco. He runs Hacking Gutenberg, an experimental letterpress printing workshop in Berlin. He wrote Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works , a book on typography first published in 1993, revised 4th edition 2023. Spiekermann has designed numerous typefaces, both for sale and as part of corporate design programs. His typefaces include Berliner Grotesk (original is from 1913, digitization is from c. 1978), Fira Sans (designed in collaboration with Ralph du Carrois) for Firefox OS, released in 2013 under the SIL Open Font License), ITC Officina Sans and Serif fonts (1990), and FF Meta. FF Meta is especially interesting, as one of the fonts illustrated by axis-praxis for variable font use. It has 28 Instances offered through Adobe, from Condensed through Black, and a Variable font from Monotype. Spiekermann’s work emphasizes information clarity, signage, corporate identity, wayfinding, and digital typography. In German typography, wayfinding refers to the use of typography, symbols, color, spatial organization, and signs to help people navigate a physical environment. It is closely associated with Germany’s strong tradition of functionalist and systematic graphic design. Modern German typography is characterized by pluralism rather than a single national style. Contemporary designers freely use sans serifs, serif typefaces, variable fonts, neo-grotesques, geometric sans serifs, humanist sans serifs, contemporary revivals of Fraktur, experimental lettering, and digital display fonts. Fraktur remains visible in specialized contexts such as traditional breweries, historic businesses, newspapers and publications with historical associations, certificates, Blackletter music and cultural graphics, and Gothic/medieval-themed design, However, it is no longer the default German text type.

Italian Typography History (2)

By Carl Shank • August 29, 2026
Italian Typography and Futurism. One of Italy's most important contributions to twentieth-century graphic design came from Futurism. Beginning around 1909, Italian Futurists challenged conventional typography. The most important figure was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His Zang Tumb Tumb and related works used typography dynamically rather than simply as a vehicle for continuous reading. Zang Tumb Tumb is a sound and concrete poem appearing in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist’s book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople. The poem uses Parole in libertà (words in freedom; creative typography) and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant-garde print. (Wikipedia)
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