In two recent posts, Daughter Number Three looks at laughably bad hyphens (or hyp- hens) and unhelpful postal abbreviations.
Reading the first post reminds me of manual-typewriter days, when one had to decide whether or how to hyphenate at the end of a line. Secretaries and typists often used a little dictionary for that purpose: no definitions, just spelling and syllabification. Reading the second post makes me think that the old postal abbreviations (Calif., Mass., N. Y.) weren’t bad at all.
As I just discovered, USPS has a handy PDF with the history of postal abbreviations. It surprises me to see that the two-letter versions have been around since 1963.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Bad hyphens, unhelpful abbreviations
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I've also seen Illinois as "Ills.", which I've always liked.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand the traditional (and AP) abbreviation of Illinois, Ill. Especially in a sans serif typeface. I break the rules and spell that one out in text all the time.
ReplyDeleteI thought right away of what Erik Spiekermann says about Helvetica. Yes, Ill. is ugly. In my head though I see it as handwritten, with the capital I sporting serifs or in cursive.
ReplyDeleteIllinois in sans serif is a proofreading nightmare. I know I'm going to miss an extra "l" someday on proofs. Which means I'll miss something else.
ReplyDeleteI used to have one of those hyphenation books. I probably still do . . .
Diane, that reminds me of my wish that Google’s URL shortener would stay away from the numeral 1, the capital i, and the lowercase L.
ReplyDelete