Volume 16–1.pdf

ave you ever noticed that the
Tuesday morning meeting which is
supposed to answer everybody's
questions rarely does? This is not a
new phenomenon; it has long been
prevalent in business. Now, unfortu-
nately, it is beginning to creep into
other aspects of our lives. There are
less and less simple answers to ques-
tions like: "Why doesn't my car
startr "Why isn't my report worth
an 'A'r or "What do you mean, you
can't balance the checkbook?"
So it is with the origins of
our alphabet. The seemingly simple
question is,"What's the origin of the
letter 'E'?" Sorry, no simple answer.
Several experts believe that
our "E',' or at least some of the sounds
it represents, was once indicated by
the Egyptian hieroglyph for a house.
Others contend that it grew out of
the sign represented as a window
And others still, attribute the "E's"
ancestry to the Egyptian symbol of
a courtyard. To further complicate
matters, our "E',' one of the most
commonly used vowels, actually
started life as a consonant.
The Phoenician writing sys-
tem is generally credited as the first
step toward the creation of our cur-
rent "phonetic" alphabet. Phoeni-
1:16
cian writers were among the first to
use symbols to represent sounds,
rather than employing different sym-
bols or pictures to signify a particular
word. The Phoenician language
was based on 22 consonant sounds
(vowels were relatively unimportant),
each with a name—and a symbol to
represent that sound in writing.
One of these 22 sound-sym-
bols was the precursor to our "E'.' The
Phoenician which they called
he, and roughly represented the
sound of our "h," was probably the
great-great grandparent of the fifth
letter in our alphabet.
When the Greeks adopted
the Phoenician writing system, they
had difficulty pronouncing about
half of the Phoenician letter names;
and so they modified the trouble-
some characters to bring them into
sync with the Greek language. Some
were altered only slightly, others
drastically, and still others were
dropped altogether.
The Phoenician )■\ was
one of the problem characters. The
Greeks could not pronounce the
first sound of the letter name. Being
pragmatic people, and living in less
complicated times, their answer to
the problem was just to drop the
part of the name that was causing
the difficulty. As a result the Phoeni-
cian "he" became simply "e" —and
thus our most useful vowel was born.
Overtime, the Greeks gradu-
ally simplified the design of the
Phoenician character, and flopped it
so that its arms were pointed to the
right. The end result looked remark-
ably like the E found in typefaces
like Helvetica - or ITC Avant Garde
Gothic!' The final version was given
the name epsilon and represented a
short e sound.
The "E" is normally
drawn as a somewhat narrow
letter. Its width, without serifs, is
approximately one-half of its
height.
The middle horizontal
stroke (or arm) is almost always
drawn above the true center of
the character. This gives the letter
both balance and proportion. In
some mannered designs, espe-
cially those with art nouveau
overtones, the middle stroke is
placed quite high.
FA ITC Fen ice® Regular
The middle stroke is also
normally the shortest of the three
horizontals. The differences
should be subtle (in many cases
not even optically apparent), but
the center stroke should be
slightly shorter than the top, and
the top not as long as the baseline
stroke. Although not as obvious,
these differences are also found
in sans serif designs.
While simple answers
may be becoming a rare occur-
rence, the simple beauty of our
alphabet endures.
ITC Benguiat® Book
E ITC Avant Garde Gothic® Book
— Allan Haley
HEADLINE ITC GALLIARD BOLD ITALIC WITH ROMAN
TEXT ITC STONE SANS MEDIUM. ITC STONE SERIF BOLD ITALIC
BYLINE: ITC STONE SERIF BOLD CAPTIONS: ITC FRANKLIN GOTHIC BOOK