The Letter

ITC Avant Garde
Gothic Book

Charlemagne

Poetica Chancery II
Supplement

The ancestor of our L was in¬
strumental in unlocking the
secrets of ancient Egyptian cul¬
ture. The I sound was one of
those represented in the names
of Ptolemy and Cleopatra on
the Rosetta Stone.

When the stone was discov¬
ered in 1799, it sparked consid¬
erable interest among scholars
as well as the general public.
Because it apparently bore the
same message carved in Egypt¬
ian hieroglyphics, Egyptian
demotic script, and Greek, it
was believed that the four-foot
slab of black basalt could help
reveal the mysteries of Egypt¬
ian hieroglyphics. Scholars cor¬
rectly deduced that each car¬
touche, which is an inscription
enclosed in an oval (a symbol
of royalty), represented the
name of a ruler. The scholars
presumed, also correctly, that
the ruler whose name appeared
most frequently was Ptolemy,
and that the name that occurred
next most often was Cleopatra’s.
The symbols shared by both
names—those denoting the
sound values of p, t, o, I, and e
—were instrumental in deci¬
phering the hieroglyphics. The
Egyptian glyph representing
the I sound was first depicted
by the image of a lion. Over

centuries this evolved into a
much simpler hieratic charac¬
ter, which served as the basis of
the letter we know today.

¿L

When the Phoenicians de¬
veloped their alphabet around
1000 b.c., the I sound was signi¬
fied by a number of simpler
versions of the hieratic charac¬
ter, some rounded and some
more angular. From this point
on, the simple and straightfor¬
ward L became a rather compli¬
cated character, taking on a
variety of forms (sometimes
simultaneously) in just about
every alphabet in which the I
sound was represented.

u

The Phoenicians called their
version of the letter lamedh,
which meant “goad” or “lash.”
Through a stretch of the mod¬
ern imagination, a whip or lash
can be seen in the basic shape
of the lamedh, which is made

Cochin Bold

38

up of two strokes, one of which
probably represented the han¬
dle of the whip, while the other
represented the thong.

Not to be outdone by any of
their literate neighbors, the
Greeks had four versions of the
L. As they had done with so
many other letters, they had
borrowed the basic shape of
the Phoenician character, mak¬
ing some slight modifications
to its design and name. They
established the angular quality
of the letter, and changed its
name to lambda.

L/V1

The Greek rendition of the
L that the Romans initially
adopted looked more like an
arrow pointing southwest than
the right-angled character we
currently use. Over time, the
letter evolved into the precisely
rendered horizontal- and verti¬
cal-stroked character that
appears on Trajan’s column—
and the one we use today.

-

The L is a narrow letter,
essentially an E with the top and
center arms removed. The hori¬
zontal stroke is approximately
half the cap height, but in some
designs it is smaller. In most
roman designs the end of the
horizontal stroke terminates in
a serif, generally reflecting a
consistent treatment of similar
strokes throughout the charac¬
ter set. In some serif typefaces,

LITC Tiffany ЛГ

J Goudy Old Style

however, like Goudy Old Style
and Poliphilus, the horizontal
ends in what looks like a
tapered brush stroke. In con¬
trast to constructed typeface
designs, the handlettered L’s
horizontal stroke can be either
lengthened or shortened, de¬
pending on the letter that fol¬
lows it. A few typefaces provide
an alternate L with a horizontal
stroke that swashes under adja¬
cent characters.

Letraset

Bauer Bodon

Letraset Citation

Albertus

Light

ITC Fenice

Nuptial Script

Bank Gothic Light

Letraset

Heliotype

Futura Light

Serifa Black

Adobe Caslon
Swash Bold Italic