Not Tropeworthy: Font Anachronism

This might seem trivial but it's not trivia per our definition. It might also seem to be to Too Rare To Trope, but it has 20 examples.

This trope require people knowing font and when they where created to notice it, but for example Artistic License – Military required one knowing military stuff.

Some people notices fonts that's wrong, others notices military patches and military equipment having the wrong letters/numbers on it.

Trivia is for insignificant factoids about a work or its creation that cannot be determined from the work itself.

So yeah, you need to know fonts and that makes this Trivia. There has been discussion on Artistic License stuff in that direction as well.

Well, the fact that I find it uninteresting is irrelevant to the fact that I find it not tropeworthy. It isn't tropeworthy because it just isn't tropeworthy. We already have a trope about anachronisms, and it is Anachronism Stew. This is The Same But More Specific.

The research that went into this trope also is not relevant, as thoroughly researching something that isn't tropeworthy does not make it tropeworthy. And there is no need for anyone to save the page, as no one is suggesting cutting it, but rather putting it someplace it belongs, like Useful Notes or Trivia.

That's fair. Although I feel at least some research is warranted for any trope in YKTTW to make it sound good, read clearly, and have enough examples to sustain it wick-wise.

Question: How do Artistic License pages and Anachronism pages compare, especially as related to this particular case? In my opinion and per my initial intention, this page addresses both anachronistic usage of fonts, and taking artistic licenses with typefaces to better serve a film or similar media.

To be honest, I would have been more happy with naming it Artistic License - Fonts, which is more along the lines of what I was thinking. Not sure why I didn't.

Well, I'm off. The solution is what it is.

It's not really a Useful Notes page. That's for what amounts to Wikipedia pages. This is about examples that happen in fiction.

Trivia it is, then.

x5 these font examples exist in the work itself, they can be determined from the work itself by someone knowing fonts, the same way someone knowing how babies look like can determine Three-Month-Old Newborn, or someone knowing how the sky looks like and that Earth have one moon can determine Alien Sky.

All tropes require some form of knowledge.

edited 8th Jul '14 12:15:43 PM by m8e

Again with not being clear <Sigh> you need to know that the fonts aren't appropriate to the time period shown in the work. The work alone doesn't tell you that. It's a factoid that the time period is not appropriate for the fonts.

I'd say keep it as a trope. This really isn't trivia as it's about how something is used (mis-used rather)in a work which is a trope, aka Artistic License. Renaming it and adding it to the Artistic License index might not be a bad idea though.

And this trope is a pet peeve of mine as I do graphic design... seeing Helvetica, Times New Roman, Blackletter, etc. in all the wrong places/times gets annoying after a while.

This really isn't trivia as it's about how something is used (mis-used rather)in a work which is a trope, aka Artistic License.

The Artistic License items are not restricted to intentional cases. What you are speaking of are the invoked cases, which are tropes, but the examples don't have to be invoked and are Trivia.

A font doesn't tell you that it didn't exist at the time, and a sky with two moons doesn't tell you that Earth only have one.

The facts (the font or two moons) are in the works themself, it just require some knowledge to notice them.

edited 8th Jul '14 12:00:21 PM by m8e

It's not just a matter of external knowledge. A sky with more than one moon is almost always deliberate. A font inappropriate for the time period is usually accidental.

I guess my real concern is that it's going to attract Natter in the form of Thread Mode discussing whether the type style used in <that work> is Times New Roman (which is just barely in the correct period,) or whether it's Plantin, (which is definitely correct for the period), or no, it's Georgia and that's is way way way too late.

And fonts and typefaces don't really apply to signage, which is where most people are going to see this. Sign painters largely went by eye, adjusting the lettering style to how much needed to fit in how much space, and what the customer wanted. They didn't, as a rule, worry about what typeface they were using or whether they were getting it exactly right.

None of that seems to be an issue with the current trope as it stands though, Maddy and it does have a currator to keep it clean.

It's really not too rare to trope at all, given that the page has more than a few examples.

Way I see it, it's a matter of There Is No Such Thing As Notability when it comes to tropes... it's a boring, mundane, insignificant trend... but it's still a thing that happens.

Writers don't look into this and thus it happens. Thus it fits our Artistic License definition. Just because, well, it's not interesting or sexy doesn't mean it's not out there.

edited 8th Jul '14 7:00:09 PM by Larkmarn

The fundamental reason I opened this was that even in the examples, I couldn't see how this fit the definition of a Trope, which, and I quote the front page of the site:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. "

Note the word *reasonably* there. Tropes are about conveying some sort of information relevant to the story/setting/character. EVERYTHING else is trivia. That doesn't make other stuff uninteresting, it just makes it irrelevant to the work, if you can't use it to tell your audience something. Remember, Tropes Are Tools.

Keeping this as Trivia seems by far the best solution, because it IS interesting to some people, even if that portion of people is a minority (I found it a nice little tidbit of knowledge, for example).

But it's not a trope.

There's a lot of stuff under Artistic Licence and Anachronism Stew that really is trivia, and not an example of a trope, too, but two wrongs don't make a right. E.g. take a look at the Anachronism Stew entry for Black Hawk Down - that's ALL trivia, and the film shouldn't have an Anachronism Stew entry at all.

edited 8th Jul '14 8:03:14 PM by trims

"Words are in a font I can recognize and associate with a particular thing" is a convention that Creators can reasonably expect the audience to have.

1) It requires knowledge not intrinsic to the work—and c'mon, knowing that babies are little and knowing that Earth has only one moon is not a very good parallel to knowing when Helvetica was invented or whatever. 2) It is not a story telling device. Tropes are defined as tools used to tell stories, yes? This does not tell a story in any way. 3) It is a The Same But More Specific version of Anachronism Stew.

This shouldn't have ever made it past YKTTW as a trope, and it shouldn't be left there now.

Slightly off-topic, but you're misusing Anachronism Stew. It's not just "an anachronism"; there's a whole thread now dedicated to cleaning that sort of thing up.

It's not so much knowing the exact name of a font, as it is knowing the shape of the font that creators rely on. And generally speaking, the way fonts look is pretty common knowledge.

Examples:

Using "western" style fonts in western movies, even if those fonts weren't invented yet. Audiences know what those fonts look like; the fonts help sell that the movie takes place in the old west.

Using "old English" style calligraphy in anything dated older (and occasionally younger) then the Renascence. Audiences associate that letterform with anything old looking. Never mind that actually Renascence letterforms looked a lot more like modern letterforms do today then calligraphy. And the calligraphy they did do in the Renascence looks like today's italic, not manuscript writing...

Using "tech-like" letters in futuristic/sci-fi works. For some reason, the digital LCD letter style looks more "high-tech" even if people are using touch screens...

The point being that people know what those letterforms look like and using those fonts helps sell the setting a work is taking place in. Does it matter if those fonts are historically accurate? Nope! Just that the audience thinks they are.

Font Anachronism is listed as the third item in a list of "more particular variations" under Anachronism Stew, so I don't believe that I am misusing it.

I just don't see how this meets the threshold of a trope in any way at all. Someone should hook a crowner.

edited 9th Jul '14 12:06:52 AM by mongol

It's also instructive to look at the list of examples that are actually listed on that page. There is not one example of "Font X is used to evoke Year X when it wasn't invented until Year X+Y", except for a vague allusion about The Artist. IOW there are zero examples of this trope being used to reinforce a particular sense of time and place. Every example is "this font was shown in this movie set in this time period, but that font didn't exist then."

Not tropeworthy.

@43: "Words are in a font I can recognize and associate with a particular thing" is a trope as the writer is exploiting that for storytelling purposes, but Meaningful Font is not exactly what this page is.

As for Anachronism Stew, its practical usage is "anachronisms" - there are concerns that that is too broad and not a trope, which is why it has a cleanup topic itself.

I think this page really is trivia, and that's cool. We have lots of trivia pages about media. Maybe someone will learn something. If someone wants to take the idea of fonts emphasizing a time period, they should go for it.