Ironic Sans: Idea: A new typography term

Bwa!

Posted by: Katie | February 19, 2008 3:06 PM

Now, why didn’t I think of that? You’re always a step ahead of the pack, David.

Posted by: Jesse | February 19, 2008 3:38 PM

Brllllant! Now we need a word for when lowercase letter i’s look like l’s.

Posted by: Mr. Wisdumb | February 19, 2008 5:02 PM

I support full adoption of this term.

Posted by: Alex E. | February 19, 2008 5:18 PM

lol

Posted by: Brad | February 19, 2008 6:16 PM

Amazing, genius.

Posted by: Nico | February 19, 2008 10:23 PM

This is absolutely perfect!

Posted by: Tim Chambers | February 20, 2008 1:40 AM

Well played! I salute you.

Posted by: ryn | February 20, 2008 4:14 AM

Awesome - this definitely needs to be taken up!

Posted by: sylvia | February 20, 2008 6:55 AM

Supporting t-shirt?

Spum bad keming.

Posted by: Jaime Morrison | February 20, 2008 10:59 AM

This one time, I nearly bought an indium ingot on eBay thinking it was iridium, (much more precious).

Posted by: Anonymous | February 20, 2008 11:46 AM

Beautiful.

Posted by: Rachelskirts | February 20, 2008 11:46 AM

I hate myself for finding this really really funny.

Posted by: Alex Cabrera | February 20, 2008 1:53 PM

Brilliant!

Posted by: Brandy | February 20, 2008 2:02 PM

Brilliant!

PS: I have to confess that I LOL’ED in real life.

Posted by: Chris Papadopoulos | February 20, 2008 2:06 PM

But what’s keming?

Posted by: Bob Loblaw | February 20, 2008 2:47 PM

Well Done.

Posted by: Craig | February 20, 2008 3:00 PM

Too funny!

Posted by: Dick Margulis | February 20, 2008 3:07 PM

You could sell the shirts through a web site at www.keming.corn

Posted by: Duncan D'Nuts | February 20, 2008 3:09 PM

As a card carrying member of the typographic industry for over 45 years I think it’s time we went back to Linotype machines. You couldn’t kern anything! But keming is perfect.

Posted by: Ron | February 20, 2008 3:16 PM

I love it!

My husband who knows very little about typography, once noticed some poor keming and said, “Honey, look at that. Even I know there are way too many kernels between those letters.”

Now I have two made-up words to describe things related to kerning…

Posted by: wpratt | February 20, 2008 3:33 PM

>Brllllant! Now we need a word for when lowercase letter i’s look like l’s.

Smallls

Posted by: Scott Falkner | February 20, 2008 4:33 PM

You FLICKER.

;)

Posted by: Brian Tiemann | February 20, 2008 4:41 PM

I feel very dense but can you give an example of usage?

Posted by: Samuel Mikel Bowles | February 20, 2008 5:08 PM

This is the basis for a puzzler: What part of a ship turns into its opposite when the “rn” is turned into an “m”?

I happen to be intimately familiar with this problem because my surname is a homonym for that part.

Posted by: Ted | February 20, 2008 5:19 PM

@ Samuel Mikel Bowles - you don’t get it, do you?

Posted by: Bon | February 20, 2008 5:20 PM

Ted: ‘stem’ y ‘stern’.

Interesting.

Posted by: Duncan D'nuts | February 20, 2008 5:24 PM

Brilliant!

Posted by: Dave Simon | February 20, 2008 5:24 PM

“PS: I have to confess that I LOL’ED in real life.”

That’s one of the most cringe-worthy sentences I’ve ever read. That’s saying a lot, given how widely I’ve read the interwebs.

Posted by: Harvard Irving | February 20, 2008 5:31 PM

So when my former employer had me kern 5 pt © lines, he was encouraging me to kem?

Posted by: Jeff Wilson | February 20, 2008 5:32 PM

improper kerning of the word FLICK can get you in a lot of trouble.

Posted by: Greenmeat | February 20, 2008 5:32 PM

Please who kem FLICK can just f*** off.

Posted by: dave | February 20, 2008 5:39 PM

Simply brilliant!

Who’s up for writing a Wikipedia entry?

Posted by: Már | February 20, 2008 5:48 PM

When I saw this linked on DF, I thought I was seeing an instance of keming.

Posted by: VMR | February 20, 2008 6:00 PM

Should a kerning joke be described as kemical?

Posted by: Wuuam (aka Bill) | February 20, 2008 6:07 PM

Excellent - leaming typography one misstep at a time!

Posted by: Stephen Smith | February 20, 2008 6:48 PM

People called CLINT also need to watch it ;-)

Posted by: Graham | February 20, 2008 6:49 PM

Do automatically-generated Google Book Search results count as prior art? :)

Link

(Note search term.)

Posted by: Ian Mackay | February 20, 2008 6:58 PM

I d o n ’ t t h i n k t h e r e i s s u c h a t h i n g

Posted by: Kevin | February 20, 2008 7:02 PM

This is the gayest thing I have ever seen. Go find a friend

Posted by: j | February 20, 2008 9:32 PM

> Brllllant! Now we need a word for when lowercase letter i’s look like l’s.

anti-allasing

Posted by: Hao | February 20, 2008 10:21 PM

great post. i liked it… Like the Paranaque Scandal…

Posted by: Paranaque Scandal | February 20, 2008 11:28 PM

I remember going to an Adobe workshop years ago, and they were telling a story about a “power user” who wanted to know more about “leading” (said user pronounced leeeeeding).

Adobe guys smiled, and told him power users need not worry about this.

I think the context was around a paper they had put out called “Get the lead” (rhymes with head).

Posted by: Hamish | February 21, 2008 2:04 AM

There is a Bums Farm near us. It should be Burns but on the signpost there is distinct keming between the r and the n.

Posted by: Ali Turnbull | February 21, 2008 4:42 AM

Ha ha - ‘Kernin g’ speed setting without concern for letterspacing

Posted by: Ricky | February 21, 2008 5:47 AM

> Brllllant! Now we need a word for when lowercase letter i’s look like l’s.

Turkish

Mik

Posted by: mik | February 21, 2008 7:37 AM

Turkısh

Mık

Posted by: Mik | February 21, 2008 7:48 AM

reminds my of the arial = anal joke. in a good way, mind.

Posted by: Jay | February 21, 2008 8:53 AM

I tried to write a Wikipedia entry, and someone flagged it :’(

“This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is a very short article lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. (CSD A1).”

So quick, add to it!

Posted by: Brendan West | February 21, 2008 9:31 AM

@David: Brllllant.

@Jaime: Made my laugh my “burn” off. Now must go crawl around floor searching for it. (Hmmm, smaller than I thought!)

Posted by: Jen | February 21, 2008 10:17 AM

I love it!

Posted by: Lori Lee | February 21, 2008 12:22 PM

Awesome!! God we’re nerds….

Posted by: Michael | February 21, 2008 3:26 PM

Hahaha, should be no problem to make this a proper word in the dictionary, seeing what they are adopting nowadays :-) Great idea!

Posted by: Matthias Schreck | February 21, 2008 4:45 PM

I always giggle when I see “click here” in lowercase sans serifs kerned too closely, it looks like “dick here”

Posted by: Pope | February 21, 2008 6:23 PM

Oh, I LOVE this. Great entry.

@ guy who said: “You could sell the shirts through a web site at www.keming.corn”

ROFL; You made my clay.

Also, isn’t it usually upper case I’s that end up looking like (lower case) l’s? Also also, some number 1’s look like lower case l’s.

Posted by: Catherine | February 21, 2008 10:30 PM

Yeah, you have to be careful. If not, you’ll end up calling a designer a “ddt” instead of a dolt.

Or you might say a PFAD creator “drods” instead of drools.

Of course, most designers will be OK, as they rely on giant numerals, rather than words.

Posted by: Wenalway | February 22, 2008 12:10 AM

Very cool.

In terms of the 1’s and lowercase l’s, typewriters traditionally don’t have a 1 key, and instead have you use the l key for two purposes. Strange how they worked it out that way, no?

Posted by: Ted2 | February 22, 2008 5:45 AM

Love that! Posting on my blog. You rock.

Posted by: Jen Montgomery | February 22, 2008 11:17 AM

A++ would LOL again! XD

Posted by: Tasha | February 22, 2008 12:40 PM

Outstanding. Still laughing

Posted by: darren | February 22, 2008 12:59 PM

Shouldn’t that be a prime mark (′), not a neutral apostrophe (‘)?

Posted by: Anonymous | February 22, 2008 4:46 PM

Would bad kerning jokes be a kemical bomb?

Referencing this on my blog!

Posted by: Lin D | February 22, 2008 7:32 PM

Not only will I adopt the term ‘keming’ from this day forward, but I will also pay its college expenses!

I was an apprentice compositor decades ago; ohh, the ugly type I’ve seen …

Posted by: Tom | February 23, 2008 2:30 AM

Bad keming is rampant in all those twisty groovy captcha phrases. It always takes me two tries to get it right.

Posted by: yellojkt | February 23, 2008 12:07 PM

Wow… this one definitely made me laugh too much. I got some strange looks from my roommate. This really reminds me of a sniglet.

Posted by: Rockwell | February 24, 2008 7:37 PM

Very pleased to see someone at least snug keming into the sniglet article, since it didn’t stand up on its own.

Posted by: Matt | February 25, 2008 12:02 AM

keming e.g.:
“The trade of sugar resulted in the cornmodification of human life.”
p17

Posted by: nnyhav | February 25, 2008 10:08 AM

It should definitely be a prime mark, not an apostrophe. This is disgraceful.

Posted by: Anonymous | February 25, 2008 4:47 PM

That is awesome, sending this link around my circles here…You gotta get this in a text book, heck..why isin’t it on typophile.com yet? Do it.

Posted by: Tanya Sprowl | February 25, 2008 5:01 PM

Very clever, I support the term. Make some badges for those who want to support you on their sites, something simple like “I don’t Kem”

Posted by: iLoveColors | February 25, 2008 10:26 PM

Please explain why keming is a natural progression and what the relationship is between kem and kern. Thank you.

Posted by: yearning | February 26, 2008 12:43 PM

Hysterical! I’ll take a badge too!

Posted by: Cheryl | February 26, 2008 2:39 PM

After taking the time to reset a badly kerned paragraph on a client’s card, the old bugger wanted it reset in the original BAD format. Go figure!

I’m ordering a shirt!!

Posted by: Peg | February 27, 2008 8:33 AM

Very nice. I found a great keming example from back in 2002 (originally on typographi.ca, but the blog post appears to have been taken down). Of course there were more problems than kerning with this particular Christmas tree ornament, but there you go.

Posted by: Tim Jarrett | February 27, 2008 10:37 AM

I’ll support this idea - its brillant!

Posted by: Joewe | February 27, 2008 1:46 PM

l’s that look like i’s = lies?

:)

Posted by: Sarah J | February 27, 2008 3:25 PM

I once ordered a name tag for my dog, Puck. The ‘P’ and the ‘U’ overlapped. I made them send me a new one.

Posted by: treedweller | February 27, 2008 4:46 PM

=) Brilliant

Posted by: George K | February 27, 2008 5:48 PM

It gets truly confusing if you set the term in small caps: KEMING

Posted by: Michael | February 28, 2008 5:45 PM

One of the bst examples of keming I have seen is at:

http://www.butlerwebs.com/jokes/images/megaflicks.jpg

Posted by: Jiwan | March 4, 2008 1:58 PM

tehe, yay for typographical jokes!

Posted by: Joe | March 4, 2008 6:52 PM

wow how lame.

Posted by: john | March 5, 2008 9:01 PM

Oh, my. I didn’t know that a term existed for this problem. I encounter it at work, on our main database software program, all the time.

Said software also uses Arial font, which is (so I hear) all well and good for readability, but when you have someone whose last name is, say, ILLIG, it makes it impossible to check for spelling errors.

Posted by: CarrieP | March 5, 2008 9:47 PM

fLIcking brIllIant

Posted by: arlb | March 9, 2008 10:50 AM

bl - how fumy

Posted by: Aesop | March 10, 2008 4:42 AM

We also need the verb “to kem”, which, of course, means to kern improperly.

Posted by: Pete Yandell | March 11, 2008 7:58 PM

> Should a kerning joke be described as kemical?

We also need the verb “to kem”, which, of course, means to kern improperly.

Definitely! Those should be added to the Wikipedia page too. :) Brlllant!

Posted by: Tiemen | March 13, 2008 8:29 AM

We could keep the neutral apostrophe, and adopt IPA for the pronunciation key. That’d be Perfect. IPA and correct punctuation, what more can we ask for? =)

If we keep the Webster pronunciation key, then it indeed should be a prime mark, to indicate that the stress is on the syllable to the left.

Posted by: Ambrose | March 14, 2008 12:55 AM

HA HA HA!
Like dozens of people that have said this. Brilliant. It really is Brilliant. ^^

Posted by: Maggie | March 14, 2008 1:22 AM

The Otago Star had to apologise to an art group for saying it had a ‘lousy’ year when it should have read ‘busy’.

http://www.regrettheerror.com/newspapers/busy-not-lousy#comment-5768

I think that counts as a keming episode, don’t you?

Posted by: Ali Turnbull | March 15, 2008 3:21 PM

You know, I took a typography class in college and actually get this! What I love is that it is so obscure that it is condescending to everybody else who doesn’t get it. How do I get a Tee?

Posted by: Steven Douglas | March 20, 2008 11:35 AM

Great idea!

Re: “Now we need a word for when lowercase letter i’s look like l’s.”

And don’t forget the seemingly indiscriminate mixing of uppercase and lowercase letters: YARD SAlE

Posted by: Greg Williams | March 20, 2008 4:57 PM

David…please make the following curse into a t-shirt:

Kern in Helvetica!

During an online messenger conversation, my friend Will switched his typeface on me. I told him to “Go to Helvetica!”. He snapped back with a quick and clever “Kern in Helvetica!” and I’ve been laughing about it ever since. I’m even writing a song about it. So, an accompanying t-shirt would be nice.

-incognita

Posted by: incognita | March 22, 2008 9:34 PM

how is it even possible to kern “busy” into “lousy” i can understand the other way around but simply cannot grasp how someone could see the word busy and say, “hey some jerk put that “l” and that “o” too close, I know what to do”, that man should be shot.
And isn’t it a problem with uppercase I’s and lower case l’s

Posted by: mike jones | March 25, 2008 5:08 PM

Very very clever! I will adopt this term! :)

Posted by: Hello Kitty Junkie | April 1, 2008 12:30 AM

Perfect timing to commemorate the second anniversary of your web log.

(Or should that read “web bg”?)

Posted by: Chris Onymous | April 2, 2008 2:10 PM

This is absolutely THE best way to explain this phenomenon. I just adopted this word.

Posted by: The Watcher | April 2, 2008 5:31 PM

In the hopes that this becomes a widely recognized new word, I sent a link to all my graphic designer friends. They found it brilliant.

Posted by: Cat | April 3, 2008 3:01 PM

Great stuff :-)

For those commenting on the lowercase L phenomenon, you’ll be wanting to look at lowercaseL.blogspot.com

Posted by: Paul Annett | June 26, 2008 6:10 PM

BTW, “spum” (Jaime, 10:59) would be a great word for p*rn spam.

Posted by: amba | September 30, 2008 5:30 PM

Here’s another excellent, naughty keming example:
http://peterjsullivan.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/final-registration/

Posted by: Jen | December 5, 2008 12:47 PM

Genious. Adopted!

Posted by: Johannes Gorset | January 31, 2009 3:23 PM

Ha!

Posted by: Lauren | February 13, 2009 1:11 PM

one of the genious ideas of the century..
brilliant:)

Posted by: hullabaloon | February 25, 2009 9:42 PM

@ “J” (nice name, by the way. exotic.) who said: “This is the gayest thing I have ever seen. Go find a friend”

I think it’s safe to say that David has friends all over the place because of this post. Am I right?

And J, you’re obviously lonely enough to coment on how “gay” this is, so why don’t you take your own advice?

Posted by: Sarah | May 1, 2009 11:06 PM

Hilarious. Comic Genius.

Posted by: DGentry | August 2, 2009 8:26 AM

Thought I’d pop in to share the related idea I had: “cornpensation”, defined here as “the act of making mental adjustment for keming that doesn’t actually exist”.

Because I’ve done it several times myself, and needed a word to describe it.

Posted by: Eric Meyer | October 8, 2009 12:35 PM

I think the whole idea is a red heming…but it just may fly.

Posted by: Scott | October 19, 2009 10:30 PM

Just spotted this in an OCR version of Fahrenheit 451:

“I’m a fireman. I can bum you!”

Posted by: Sherri | February 18, 2010 4:29 PM

I think this works best when set in Goudy Modem.

Posted by: scruss | July 11, 2010 8:20 AM

The p e n i s mightier than the sword.

Posted by: Erik Nelson | October 31, 2010 4:36 PM

I got in a lot of trouble one time as a kid. I saw the name Theodore J. Flicker in the credits for Barney Miller, and I burst out, “Oh, my God, Ma, that guy’s name is….”

Posted by: Peter | January 7, 2011 1:36 PM

I got in a lot of trouble one time when I was young. When I say the poorly kerned name THEODORE J. FLICKER scroll by int eh credits for Barney Miller, I said, “Oh, my God, Ma, that guy’s name is….”

Posted by: Peter | January 7, 2011 1:40 PM

I got in a lot of trouble one time when I was young. When I saw the poorly kerned name THEODORE J. FLICKER scroll by in the credits for Barney Miller, I said, “Oh, my God, Ma, that guy’s name is….”

Posted by: Peter | January 7, 2011 1:41 PM

anyone know who came up with this?

I would like to use it on a business card possibly because my last name is KERN and I am pursuing graphic design.

Posted by: rachel kern | February 1, 2011 5:45 PM

Great example of Keming:
http://www.brotipshq.com/post/4148051454/120

Really kills what is already a lame joke. Awful.

Posted by: William Newton | March 31, 2011 1:44 PM

Keming garners “gamers” when kerning “garners.”

Posted by: Katie | June 14, 2011 4:30 AM

I made a website celebrating the horrible keming you can find on the web: fuckyeahkeming.com, check it out and let me know if you have additions :)

Posted by: Kilian | July 11, 2011 6:00 PM

I have to say, this is brilliant!