A really interesting book on the characteristics of written and printed letterforms is "The stroke" [0].
One really interesting thing is the way that writing and reading have changed more than one might expect. A few anecdotes:
- Until some time in the middle ages, scribes did not consistently use spaces to designate word breaks. This was apparently an innovation of Irish monks. But it had important implications. Sounding out a string of letters is quite difficult. Our modern reading speed depends on the characteristic shapes of words, which only emerged once spaces were used consistently.
- Until relatively late, reading was a laborious process. And because the only things important enough to be written were worth reading slowly, no one much minded. One charge laid against the Jesuits was that they had developed a sinister method of reading silently rather than out loud(!) which allowed them to read much more quickly.
One really interesting thing is the way that writing and reading have changed more than one might expect. A few anecdotes:
- Until some time in the middle ages, scribes did not consistently use spaces to designate word breaks. This was apparently an innovation of Irish monks. But it had important implications. Sounding out a string of letters is quite difficult. Our modern reading speed depends on the characteristic shapes of words, which only emerged once spaces were used consistently.
- Until relatively late, reading was a laborious process. And because the only things important enough to be written were worth reading slowly, no one much minded. One charge laid against the Jesuits was that they had developed a sinister method of reading silently rather than out loud(!) which allowed them to read much more quickly.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Stroke-Writing-Gerrit-Noordzij/dp/...