The Letter

M

Historians tell us that our cur¬
rent M began as the Egyptian
hieroglyph that depicted an
owl. From this simple line
drawing it was further distilled
over thousands of years into
the hieratic character repre¬
senting the m sound. By that
time the great-grandparent of
our M looked a little like a
handwritten m balanced on the
tip of one stroke.

CD

Omnia

Lisa Solid

m

nj /vu WJ (v| |V|

The Phoenicians called their
m-letter mem. It’s easy to see
that this character is based on
the Egyptian hieratic symbol,
and that it is clearly the fore¬
runner of the thirteenth letter
of our alphabet. The Phoeni¬
cian letter looked almost like
our three-humped lowercase m
with a tail added at the end.

The Greek mu evolved from
the Phoenician mem. During
the adoption process, the
Greeks typically converted the
mem’s soft round shapes into
angular ones. The Greek mu
was acquired first by the Etr¬
uscans, and then the Romans,

neither of whom changed its
shape or proportions. The
Romans also pressed the M and
six other letters—I, V, X, L, C,
and D—into double duty as
their numerals, granting the M
the honor of representing the
highest value, 1,000.

Gill Sans

415

ЯЁЁШ

The M is one of the widest
letters, its width being almost
equal to its height. Although
the W is almost always wider,
the M traditionally determines
the width, or “set,” of a type¬
face in metal type. It was gener¬
ally assumed that the M
required a perfectly square
platform (the flat surface below
the raised letter on a piece of
metal type).

The M can also be thought
of as a V with supporting legs.
The angle of the V can vary,
and the supporting limbs can
either be vertical or splayed a
few degrees, as can be seen in
Plantin and Trump Mediaeval.

Because of its many strokes,
the M is one of the most diffi¬
cult characters to design. Con¬
densing an M is an especially
difficult task, especially in serif
designs. The second and third
strokes meet somewhere in the
space between the first and last
strokes. Most of the time the
point where they join, which is
called the vertex, occurs at the
actual center of the space, but a
type designer may make subtle
adjustments so that the vertex
occurs instead at the optical
center. The M’s vertex rarely
descends below the baseline, as
it does in the N, the V, and the

M

Plantin ITC Weidemann Book

41

Senator Thin

Bovine Poster

Diotima Italic

Adobe Garamond
Alternate Italic

W. Many times, in fact, the M’s
vertex sits some distance above

Barmeno Medium

the baseline.

M M

Ivi ГГС CleaHàce I' 1

A key to designing the M is
to make the upright strokes
appear to firmly support the
others. In the Ms of serif
designs, the top serifs usually
point outward.

ITC Beesknees