Essays, 2010          1466 words

In the Name Of the Father (or the troubles with L-caron)

by Peter Biľak

A real-life situation that forced a type designer to evaluate his profession. One small typographic detail (an incorrect version of the diacritic over the letter L) caused troubles with the authorities. With a happy end.

ʻIs it all worth it in the end?!ʼ might be the type designerʼs lament in a moment of weakness. As a typeface designer I spend countless hours designing first the basic Latin alphabet, then the extended Latin alphabet (to support languages ranging from Icelandic to Maltese), then mathematical symbols, currency symbols, diacritics, punctuation, Cyrillic characters, Greek characters… The tiniest details of design and spacing have to be checked. With more than 2000 characters per font, it can be a tedious task to make sure that all possible letter combinations look as they should. I could easily spend a week adjusting the spacing of the characters needed to write polytonic Greek. But only a handful of people use polytonic Greek, the basically obsolete system replaced by modern Greek. What else could be accomplished in the time that I spend adjusting characters that someone, somewhere might use sometime? How many lives could be saved? How many trees planted? How many houses rebuilt? What am I doing here? Does it make any sense?

    Although I usually manage to convince myself that what I do is tremendously important (ʻvisualizing the languageʼ, as I grandiosely call it), there are those weak moments when I am not sure. (After all, how many more fonts does the world really need?) Especially now: our daughter Elisa was born less than a week ago, scrambling all our routines, shuffling all our priorities. How can I compare spending an hour adjusting the spacing of a font to spending an hour soothing my baby daughter?

    I havenʼt touched a bezier curve for a week now, being a good father. And one of my fatherly duties is to stop by the city hall to request the birth certificate. Armed with all the necessary paperwork, I enter the monumental building of The Hague municipal office. After a brief wait, I get to explain to a charming, efficient lady that I have come to register our newborn.

    ʻLovely. Congratulations,ʼ she says.

    I present my ID, my wifeʼs ID and the papers from the hospital. Everything is fine, everything is in order, everyone is smiling, until suddenly she says, ʻAnd what is your name?ʼ The methodical Dutch civil servant canʼt find my name in the system.

    ʻHow do you spell that again?ʼ

    As a descendant of the Slavic settlers of the Danube river basin, I have a surname with an accent: Biľak. The name has given me some trouble because of the accent over the L. When I first arrived in the Netherlands, another efficient public servant in his best effort to record my name wrote: Bilʼ ak. ʻPretty close,ʼ I thought at the time. Charming even, how hard they try. Except that when I receive official mail, their software, programmed to capitalize all proper nouns, addresses it to P. Bilʼ Ak, which probably makes my neighbors wonder what African tribe I come from.

    After ten minutes of fruitless searching in the database for all possible variations of my last name, there are now four determined bureaucrats coming up with ideas. ʻTry searching by first name.ʼ There are over 4000 Peters living in The Hague. ʻTry his birth date.ʼ 253 people born on the same day.

    After what seems like an eternity of searching, they finally find my records. But instead of relief, I feel concern: will Elisa have to go through this every time? I try to take action.

    ʻLook, my name is not right in the database. It is not Bilʼ ak, it is Biľak.ʼ The gathering of Dutch civil servants gives me a collective perplexed look.

    ʻBut thatʼs just what we have, donʼt you see.ʼ I try to remain calm and polite.

    ʻWell, no it isnʼt.ʼ I even have a convincing argument. ʻMove the cursor one letter at a time. It should be 5 characters: B-i-ľ-a-k, see, not B-i-l-apostrophe-space-a-k, as it is now.ʼ

    ʻThe trouble is,ʼ I say in the voice I use in my typography lectures, ʻthat instead of the small letter L with a caron, you used L and an apostrophe. L-caron is a character used only in the Slovak language, so perhaps your computer doesnʼt have access to it.ʼ

    ʻNo, thatʼs impossible, we recognize all accents– look.ʼ The assembly of clerks shows off, scrolling through a collection of accented characters. I scan through them, dismissing Latvian L with a cedilla, Polish L with a stroke, Catalan L with a mid dot, another few Lʼs whose uses I donʼt know.

Finally I see it. ʻL-caron, there it is!ʼ I exclaim.

    ʻThatʼs not it, that looks completely different.ʼ

    Indeed, the L-caron that I am pointing to has a different form of caron, something like an inverted circumflex, a little upside-down roof. ʻIt looks different because of the font you use, but it is the right character,ʼ I insist.

    ʻNo, no, thatʼs a different letter. This is the right one,ʼ says one of the clerks, pointing at L-acute, another letter used in Slovak.

    I begin to realise that this is going to be difficult. Iʼve lectured on typography to students, to professors, to designers, but never to sceptical city hall employees. The only point of reference they have is my original birth certificate, and I have to agree that the L-acute looks closest to it.

    I start to explain that L-caron is a palatalized consonant unique to the Slovak language, that it is almost always followed by a vowel, that Jan Hus the Czech religious reformer is credited with the reforms of Czech orthography and first introduced diacritical marks sometime in the 14th century. That Anton Bernolák codified the Slovak language standards in his 1787 Dissertatio philologico-critica de litteris Slavorum and introduced the L-caron.

    The clerks are not impressed.

    ʻThis is a different letter, not your L-caron.ʼ

    I start to lose patience.

    ʻItʼs your font which is wrong. What is it? Oh, I see, itʼs Arial. Well, Arial Unicode is simply wrong. The problem is in the font.ʼ I start to sketch the differences between the correct and incorrect version on the back of an official document. ʻTwo different representations, but the same phonetic value. Both versions are acceptable, but THIS ONE,ʼ I say with dramatic emphasis, ʻis the general standard in Slovak orthography.ʼ

    The clerks are dismissive, unwilling to negotiate the value of their system font. I am fighting an uphill battle. In the depths of my soul I begin to wonder: how many fonts have I designed? Many. Too many. But Iʼd be willing to change them all to include the incorrect version of the L-caron to save Elisa future troubles.

    ʻWe can call the Slovak embassy, and they will prove that this is the correct character.ʼ I suggest.

    ʻNo, that is not legally acceptable.ʼ

    ʻSo what would you need in order to accept the correct spelling of the name?ʼ

    ʻWe would need your birth certificate with this version of L,ʼ the clerk says, pointing to the incorrect L-caron.

    I was running out of options. Getting a new birth certificate with the wrong L-caron would be as difficult as changing the font in The Hagueʼs municipal computers. Suddenly I had an idea. On the table was a sample template of the birth certificate, and when I looked closely, I saw that it used Times New Roman.

    ʻCan we try something? Just a test, nothing binding,ʼ I say.

    I receive a hesitant approval.

    ʻTry using this incorrect L-caron and print the birth certificate. I think it will look fine when you print it.ʼ

    ʻNo it wonʼt,ʼ the clerks say, ʻit will be just the same.ʼ

    ʻPlease, just try it.ʼ

    I am taking a risk, counting on the fact that if the print is really made in Times New Roman, it is highly unlikely that the L-caron is incorrect in that font as well. The clerks enter the name. The ancient printer whines and clacks, then stops. Dramatic silence. I feel like I am performing the ultimate magic trick. The printer ejects the paper and five clerks huddle around it, scrutinizing it carefully. I can hardly breathe. The clerks shake their heads.

    ʻThis is really strange. It looks different.ʼ

    The printed version has the correct L-caron. The municipal computers display in Arial Unicode, but they print in Times New Roman, and the birth certificate looks just fine. I feel the thrill of victory and the clerks start to realize that the problem is indeed in the font. Ten minutes later I am holding the correctly spelled certificate in my hands, holding it as tightly as I hold Elisa when she cries.

    Tiny details in typography seem to make sense again.

Commissioned and first published in the book KAPITAL K by Onomatopee