
The billionaire’s typewriter - Tomte
http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html
======
state
"As a writer, the biggest po­ten­tial waste of your time is not ty­pog­ra­phy
chores, but Medium it­self. Be­cause in re­turn for that snazzy de­sign,
Medium needs you to re­lin­quish con­trol of how your work gets to readers."

Amen. Finally, someone has put this simply. The issue here has nothing to do
with type. The author does a pretty good job of pointing out why Medium's
pandering to design is clearly B.S. — but most importantly it's a complete
ruse. It's a distraction from the fact that they own you.

Edit: If you'd like to downvote my viewpoint, I'd appreciate that you offer
some kind of insight into why.

~~~
onion2k
_It 's a distraction from the fact that they own you._

No they don't.

They don't own the work you choose to publish through their platform in any
way whatsoever. By publishing it there you give them permission to use it[1],
but no ownership of it. They have absolutely no claim on you, your future
work, your past work, or any benefit you might receive from publishing with
them. You can delete a story after you've published it, and you can publish it
unlisted so it won't appear in any listings or publications on their site.

If you believe that's the same as owning you then you have a very strange
definition of "owning you".

[1] [https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e...](https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e0f)

~~~
GrinningFool
I suspect he was thinking of the older version [1] - I know that's the only
one I'd even seen until you posted this link. The wording of the original is
much more draconian, though [to my non-lawyer mind] it appears to say the same
thing now, just much more politely.

[1]
[https://github.com/Medium/Policy/commit/198049bacef485f21cbb...](https://github.com/Medium/Policy/commit/198049bacef485f21cbbc1193bcaebbfb1945f62#diff-c83dc264f3904adf6796203c1c650195L51)

------
jarcane
My favorite writing tool of all time is, without a question in my mind, LyX.

It manages to find the perfect balance of minimal barriers to productivity,
absolute power when I need it, and seriously professional grade results. It's
like writing with iAWriter or similar tools, except I still have some basic
structural options in the interface, and the end result generated is downright
professional grade.

I think the "WYSIWYM" approach that LyX takes on, combined with the power of
LaTeX underneath and the powerful customization possibilities that brings,
kinda makes it a silver bullet for a writer in my book.

~~~
walterbell
Have you written any long documents or a book with LyX? Any recommendations on
resources for learning LyX or LaTeX? There are a lot of Markdown-based
publishing tools being promoted these days.

~~~
jarcane
Honestly, if you can use Word or LibreOffice, you can already use LyX. It's
that easy. I have one short free work published, and a couple of unpublished
works still in production, and I've also used it to generate documentation for
some of my other works (though sadly, HTML output is pretty basic, nothing up
to par with Matthew's Pollen or Racket Scribble). I think the aforementioned
short work is probably a good enough sample of what you can get up to with the
most minimal of effort or know-how in LyX:
[https://github.com/jarcane/bedroom-wall-
press/blob/master/RO...](https://github.com/jarcane/bedroom-wall-
press/blob/master/ROULADEvanilla1.2.pdf)

As for the LaTeX underneath, well, I've seldom needed to muck with it. LyX
abstracts out a lot of the undercarriage and lets me get on with things in a
more GUI-friendly way, though the fallback is always there if I need it
(usually just a few extra tags here and there). If I were doing more custom
template work though, I probably would need to dig more into LaTeX proper.

------
Detrus
The original computing vision, the Mother of All Demos, was philosophically
against designing text in the ways of the obsolete print medium. The focus was
on inventing a new way of writing information altogether. Instead of having
paragraphs go one after another as required by print, have maps
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map)
of the argument, wikis etc. If we focused on this more, we might have reached
a new level of communication efficiency by now.

Here we are arguing if we should let authors stylize text. Does this restyling
of text help communicate more efficiently? Typically no, a long wall of text
just needs to be set in a readable style.

Even this choice of presentation was supposed to be the reader's, not the
author's. I do not care one bit about links appearing in a ♢ weird new way.
Links should appear the same way, everywhere on the web.
[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com) just needed
some padding, nice font rendering, line spacing and you'd get Medium.

To the reader, Medium promises consistency of presentation that the rest of
the web does not. That problem should really have been solved on the browser's
end, by a style that applied to all articles, chosen by the user from existing
templates.

The style should serve a functional purpose to the reader, be slower or faster
to read, reduce eyestrain, etc.

The web was supposed to be more extreme than frozen pizza, more like
astronaut's food paste. Skeuomorphic pizza in any form distracts users from
the real purpose.

As far as Medium controlling your content, if the web was smarter you could
put it somewhere else and the links would magically work. Centralization is a
technically simple way to exploit a dumb network and the network should be
fixed.

~~~
jordanlev
Surely this is a matter of personal taste / opinion -- I actually prefer when
different sites have different designs. For example, I don't like RSS readers
that put all content into the same format, and prefer ones that just link to
the articles so I can read things in the context of the site's design (as the
author wants it, not me).

And I think the diamonds next to the hyperlinks on this article is a neat
design flourish (because it is still intuitive and usable... although
admittedly most other designs that do away with the standard underlined text
are a usability loss).

~~~
Detrus
It's a matter of philosophical taste. I like to look at fancy typography
myself. But there is a time and place for that, which is a separate time from
reading something for content.

Unique designs serve a functional purpose, helping you remember where you read
something, who authored it. That purpose can be served a different way.

And philosophically, I'm not sure I should care about who wrote it. One author
having a prettier template than another adds bias. A set of various authors
using the same template can make the mediocre ones appear more trustworthy
than mediocre authors using an ugly template.

If I chose the template for everyone, I'd judge them by content faster, since
I'd be used to the look and new pretty typography wouldn't distract me.

------
w1ntermute
What is the point of inserting a "◊" before each link? It looks ridiculous and
distracts from reading the article.

~~~
jccooper
Because it's a web-based book? I've browsed about and haven't seen a clear
explanation. (It took a while to figure out what the hell is going on at that
site.)

Apparently he considers underlining a sin against typography
[[http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html](http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html)]
as one of the "bad typewriter habits"
[[http://practicaltypography.com/typewriter-
habits.html](http://practicaltypography.com/typewriter-habits.html)]. That
might be why.

Which is funny, because one of his other rules is against abusing ALL CAPS
[[http://practicaltypography.com/all-
caps.html]--which](http://practicaltypography.com/all-caps.html\]--which) he
does for internal links.

The site is also full of other absurd usability choices, like using the blank
edges of the page for navigation [[http://practicaltypography.com/how-to-
use.html](http://practicaltypography.com/how-to-use.html)].

The author might know good typography for books, but has gone way overboard
applying it to his website.

~~~
illicium
Not to mention the 24px body type that fits less than two paragraphs per page

~~~
dublinben
It was the aggressive hyphenation of words that really did it for me.

------
austenallred
Medium's typography is simple and readable. I like reading things on Medium
more than reading things on most blogs because nobody can mess it up. The
focus is on the content. That's exactly what I want; I want to read and not be
distracted.

The way this article is displayed, however, is not only distracting, but a
perfect example of how dogma-like design choices can take away from the
functionality and usability. I understand why the author doesn't believe
underlines should be used to represent links, but the diamonds are the most
distracting and confusing design I've seen online in a long time.

~~~
logn
Medium could offer simple and readable blogs via an open source app and
concurrently offer freemium hosting (e.g., the ghost.io and WordPress model).

I agree with the author's fundamental concerns about freedom.

I imagine some years in the future the same people heralding Medium will
become its harshest critics. How many times does it take for people to be
burned by proprietary apps/services before they stop using them? In the case
of Medium, there are ample alternatives.The author is right that marketing
Medium really is what Medium does best.

------
arh68
_What is_ writing? Is it getting all the words down before you forget your
point? Or is it polishing and formatting your content to appeal to the
readers? It's easy to throw the term around, brand your _software for writers_
, the _best writing tool_ , etc.

I can't say I agree 100% with either author. On the one hand, Wichary shows
some 'gorgeous' LaserDisc snippet and lauds it as some return to the good old
pre-typewriter days. I don't think that automatic drop caps, mandatory line
widths, 'smart' quoting, etc help any authors express anything at all. Sure,
the typewriter example is bad, but was the fake image grain necessary? Did it
show how striking the keys harder slightly bolds the text? The LaserDisc
example is not at all like writing with an italic pen, where you can express
stylistic _choice_. Cramming everyone's text into some
StandardPrettyPrintNFormatter [1] so your website looks pleasing to readers is
pretty much the complete opposite of fostering creativity. It's a website for
_readers_ , not _writers_. Can I upload a scan of calligraphy? Maybe draw a
title in bubbly block letters? Use a red pen? Of course not. Everything looks
the same, and Butterick points out why

    
    
        The goal is to cre­ate the il­lu­sion that every­thing on Medium be­longs
        to one ed­i­to­r­ial ecosys­tem, as if it’s the New York Times.
    

On the other hand, I don't really know what it is Butterick aspires to. Good
tools? Empowerment? He makes great fonts but the ◊ link markers need to go.
Does some rule say that's a good idea? It interrupts the flow.

[1] Much like gofmt. That kind of conformity is great for coding style (can't
read your crazy indentation), but it's just like how the constraints of the
typewriter lead to a style of writing that eliminates stylistic differences
(can't read your handwriting) so you can focus on content. Medium just adds
another layer of conformity.

~~~
Terr_
It's amusing that--speaking of typography on the web--disabling the download
of fonts fails so gracelessly that I'm seeing this in your post:

    
    
        The goal is to cre the il that every on Medium be-long 
        to one ed ecosys, as if it's the New York Times.
    

Apprently I need some "DejaVu Sans Mono".

~~~
Tomte
Do you happen to use Chrome?

I saw something like that (dropped characters) on another site, as well.

Only with Chrome, neither with IE nor Firefox.

------
shawnhermans
In most cases, I disagree with the point the author is trying to make. The
author is arguing against the heavy restrictions Medium places on typesetting
and layout. As a reader and author, I don't want the author to worry about
these types of details. I want them to worry about ideas and storytelling.

The only exception I can think of to this rule is for highly visual medium
like graphic novels. In this case, typesetting and layout are inseparable from
the medium. That being said, I don't think Medium is designed for that type of
use case

There may be other cases where creative choices in typesetting and layout may
enhance the writing, but this usually isn't the case. Normally, when an author
tries to "spice up" their writing this way it ends up looking like a crappy
MySpace or GeoCities page.

As an aside, George RR Martin apparently uses WordStar 4.0 to write his books.
I don't know if this proves or disproves the argument. Maybe if he had more
control over the typesetting and layout, he would be done with Winds of Winter
by now.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
As an author who cares about typography, I don't think these things are
mutually exclusive. Butterick's point here is that Medium takes away your
choice _on the web,_ where there's very frequently no separation between
author and publisher. That separation doesn't exist if you host your own
WordPress or Ghost installation, or on Tumblr or WordPress.com -- but it
doesn't really exist if you publish on Medium or Svbtle or the like, either.
The difference is that with Medium and similar services, you are acting as
your own publisher but letting them act as graphic designer.

I understand that a lot of authors don't have the background for this sort of
thing, and that LaTeX's basic philosophy here is a good one (i.e., don't screw
with the defaults and your paper will look good, and even if you _do_ screw
with them you have to put a bit of effort in to start making things look
crappy). And Medium will look better than slapping up unstyled HTML.*

But that means neither that you necessarily want everything to look like
Medium's default -- which, unlike LaTeX, cannot be changed even a whit by
authors -- nor that that your choices are only "write with Medium" and "learn
professional typography." It's not difficult to slap up a WordPress or Ghost
installation and choose from hundreds of themes, many of which have at least
_reasonable,_ if not amazing, typesetting standards.

Lastly, Butterick's point about Medium's business model is certainly worth
paying attention to.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While it's gauche to reply to yourself, I just realized I left that asterisk
unconnected. Oops.

*Whenever I talk about how typography matters, I usually get comments (not necessarily on HN) about "content is king" and HTML 2.0 was good enough and how can typesetting possibly matter? Well, sure, content is the most important, but think about an audiobook. It could be read by a professional voice actor, it could be read by the author, and it could be read by your computer's text-to-speech software. Same content each time, barring mispronunciations, but the chances are you'd rather hear the one read by Stephen Fry than the one read by Siri. Typography and graphic design is the visual equivalent. In theory, every print novel could have been reproduced by printing in 12-point Courier and slapping them in three-ring binders, but isn't it nicer that they weren't?

------
drapper
I remember that some time ago many people were wondering what's the point of
Medium, how they're gonna monetize on it, etc. and I think the answer is
perfectly clear nowadays - they want to be a youtube of written content.

Just as many people treat youtube as a get-go place for their video/music
content needs (many people start to treat it as their TV, especially kids),
Medium hopes people will, in time, treat Medium as the only
magazine/newspaper/blog-place they need - and that should also push
traditional media to utilize it (same as happens for TV channels and youtube).
This is a long-term plan, but given how Internet tends to favour natural
monopolies (see Google, Facebook, YouTube) it might actually work. Even if
they will fail at this someone else will probably succeed.

------
gkop
Assume for a moment that the value proposition of Medium to the writers boils
down to convenient and beautiful design, and Medium writers simply make the
choice that this value is worth their giving their content away for free.

What about the risk of association between their writing and the Medium brand
detracting from the writers' impact?

Even if it's just a small percentage of potential visitors for whom Medium is
an anti-signal, why risk it?

I guess the Medium network may bring in more readers than the Medium brand
bounces. Does anyone have information about what quantity and quality of
readership the Medium network offers to an individual article or author?

------
Jack000
during my time as a freelance designer/dev I had a particularly demanding
client. I came up with several layouts and iterated for weeks on a single page
with little progress. One day in frustration I filled the entire page with a
tinyMCE textbox and said, "here, now you can make it exactly how you like it"
\- and he did, and it was terrible, but he was happy.

The large majority of people have terrible taste in design. I think design
constraints on platforms like medium just serve to prevent people from
actively ruining their content with bad design.

------
jdnier
"If they some­times act as if they dis­cov­ered ty­pog­ra­phy like it was the
Higgs bo­son, we can for­give their ex­cess of en­thu­si­asm."

~~~
Luc
You left out the diamond - it made reading this article very strange, since I
haven't trained myself not to vocalize it.

"If they ♢ some­times act as if they dis­cov­ered ty­pog­ra­phy like it was
the Higgs bo­son, we can for­give their ex­cess of en­thu­si­asm."

~~~
cphuntington97
I just figured my browser wasn't configured properly...weird.

~~~
Tortoise
The diamond indicates a link. It's a great convention once you understand it,
but it's not at all obvious.

~~~
mryingster
How is it a great convention? I'm not trying to be contentious, however I am
not sure how that is superior to underlining a link, which is a fairly
ubiquitous convention. It seems overly cumbersome. It made me think though
that perhaps a superscript would serve the same purpose and be less intrusive.

~~~
rev_bird
I liked it, if only because it made the text look much more uniform. I imagine
it was done out of objection to the "make the link bold and blue and
underlined and _very different_ " ethos that even Google was into until
recently. With this, I can just read, and if I see a diamond, I know a
mouseover will reveal the anchor text and point me toward whether I want to
click on the thing or not.

~~~
spydum
except that mouse over isn't really a thing in all browsers since the advent
of mobile browsing.. so it seems his own style choices constrain users
freedoms (ironic, isn't that more or less the underlying theme of the rant?
enforcing a style choices reduces freedom without providing value? oops)

------
john_other_john
Isn't a few now of the major websites, just formatting our random output into
templates? I'm convinced we're as a race still just as sold on having nice
templates in our wordprocessors, only just now for the web, and here's the
funny thing, how meanwhile everyone and his dog seems to want to write a new
basic, oh so very basic, word processor, for each new website they drum up,
the irony of it all is that to me it harkens so much more evocatively of the
days of VBA ruling the small biz game, and VBA developer magazines selling
code and tool bundles, and boy there was indeed a lot to be made, in that sort
of thing... just nowadays we're suppose to all follow this or that ethos or
ethic or way of fiddling our formats and pay someone else to curated our
invaluable output online, preferably for a fee that does not exclude the
possibility to better advertise to us...

------
tempodox
Great article. To me, it explains why Medium is such a perfect fit for a
certain kind of marketing material, and not much else beyond that.

After initial novelty wore off, I now decidedly tend to _not_ read articles on
Medium. It has become one of the countless sites I wouldn't miss at all.

------
WalterBright
There are some things I miss about a typewriter, like the visceral
satisfaction of pounding on the keys and watching the text emerge.

I also miss typewriter fonts. Yes, I know I can get typewriter fonts,
including the typewriter font that HD uses for its text entry boxes. I mean
the unevenness of it due to mechanical variations, variations in the ribbon,
etc., leading to every impression being slightly different.

Computer fonts are too perfect.

~~~
dredmorbius
While they're typically considered gauche, there _are_ typefaces which emulate
a broken typewriter. I somewhat like those as well.

~~~
WalterBright
Even printed books are uneven. That gives printed books a bit of charm that is
lacking in the endlessly perfect digital books. It's like a drum synthesizer,
too perfect.

If I was designing ebook software, I'd support a rendering that would ever-so-
slightly mis-position each letter, and in fact have a dozen incarnations of
each letter, all slightly different, and pick one at random each time.

I'd also make the background not quite perfect white. It'd be tan with a bit
of variation in it, and maybe adding tiny specs of dirt.

So it looks like a real book!

It wouldn't be hard, either.

~~~
dredmorbius
Printed books can be _uneven_ but they're also fairly limited in what they can
present.

Your basic concept is a page full of type. I actually care a lot about
footnotes or endnotes (I read a lot of nonfiction), indices, and
bibliographies. Books lacking in any or all of these get strong demerits.

It's virtually impossible (and very expensive) for books to present
distractions. Static black-and-white or color images are about the limit, pop-
ups or fold-outs are possible, and as a novelty, perhaps an electronic gizmo
pasted to a page or cover, though I cannot think of a single published book
I've got which has such. Some technical books that came with CDROMs, but
that's almost a completely passed phase now.

There are aspects which speak to age and printing technology -- the slightly
blurred type of most pre-1950s 20th century books, and increasing sharpness of
type and copy since (starting up-market). Typeface, though modern and sans-
serif faces pretty much always annoy me. Large-print books for seniors.
Different styles -- picture, comic, and children's books with lots of
illustrations. College and high-school textbooks, increasingly almost useless
with their call-outs, images, and other visual gimicks. Flashy, yes, but not
all that informative.

Or look at Harry Potter and the animated magic newspapers. If I were to run
into that I'd scream -- looks fun for a second on a movie screen. Rage-
inducing in real life.

Your eBook suggestion is possible. It's _really_ easy to overdo, and a little
bit goes a long way. You're also limited by technology, and would likely find
that you're getting noise at two levels -- the pseudo-analog noise (see
LaTeX's coffee stain macro: [http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349](http://hanno-
rein.de/archives/349) [http://texblog.org/tag/coffee-
stain/](http://texblog.org/tag/coffee-stain/)), plus accumulated _digital_
noise -- bad pixels or damaged e-ink.

Websites which use background images under text virtually _always_ get it
removed by me locally using a personal stylesheet manager.

~~~
WalterBright
I read both ebooks and scanned pdf files on my Kindle. Interestingly, I've
grown to prefer the scanned pdf files, because of the imperfections, not in
spite of them.

Note that most people scan at 300 dpi, that doesn't look good, and is
uncomfortable to read. 400dpi is much better.

------
ghshephard
Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site
painful to read?

Compare: [https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-
merit...](https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-meritocracy-
in-tech-4500a2b302b1)

To:

[http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-
typewriter.html](http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html)

[Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]

~~~
mapleoin
Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the
practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole
article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in
comparison.

~~~
ghshephard
That answers my question then - on the 1440x900 13" MBAir, the black lettering
from Practical Typography is jarring, and unpleasant to read for long periods
of time for me, but Medium flows very well - and I read tons of material on
their site.

PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the
place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct
font installed), and the assault on my eyes. Perhaps on a higher-resolution
retina display it works out better (and perhaps Medium suffers somewhat in
comparison)

~~~
mintplant
I'm on a few-years-old Lenovo laptop with an ordinary 1366x768 display, and it
looks fine to me. What browser are you using? Can you take a screenshot?

~~~
raihansaputra
I'm on MacBook Air too and it does look weird. I'm browsing on Google Chrome.
Here's the screenshot: [http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9](http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9)

------
jccalhoun
What I don't understand about all this talk of layout and typography is why it
is suddenly a good idea to have a website that consists of nearly 2/3 empty
white space with a narrow band of text. Sorry but it isn't good typography if
I have to zoom in to read your site.

~~~
ReidZB
It sounds like the site is not rendering correctly for you. The font size
itself is (supposed to be) very large, so if you are zooming in, then it
sounds like something's wrong. (Mobile device, maybe?) If anything, some folks
might prefer to zoom _out_ , not _in_.

As for the 2/3 empty white space, that is an attempt to have a measure (line
length) [1] that is readable. A general rule of thumb is somewhere around 70
characters per line is comfortable to read for single-column text. Now, I tend
to think that 70 characters per line feels pretty short on the web... in my
personal experience, around 100 characters feels a lot better.

Anyway, if you're interested in typography, take a look at Bringhurst's _The
Elements of Typographic Style_.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28typography%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28typography%29)

------
ForFreedom
I had written an article almost on the same note, "Medium never as a blog" on
Jan 5, 2014 - [https://medium.com/@fnkey/medium-com-never-as-a-
blog-f1126d7...](https://medium.com/@fnkey/medium-com-never-as-a-
blog-f1126d74cd1e)

------
mangeletti
Ha. I had a debate a couple years back with 3 of my coworkers about the value
of constraints in our new hire developer test. The argument was akin to, "We
want to see how creative the developers can be.". My rebuttal was, "If you
want to see how creative somebody is, give them only one tool and see what
they can accomplish.".

Alas, constraint wins -
[https://siteanalytics.compete.com/medium.com/](https://siteanalytics.compete.com/medium.com/)

------
droob
This post kinda collapses if you take out the assumption of Ev's moustache-
twirling malice at its center.

------
jacalata
This is disingenuous as shit. How does anyone who has a passing familiarity
with minimalism have the nerve to write 'how is it pos­si­ble to be “the best”
while of­fer­ing less?' Especially with the admission later in the article
that yes, he designs tools with deliberate constraints.

I could certainly get behind an article arguing that Medium is bad for writers
because of the centralization, loss of control of audience, etc. But this one
isn't it, because it doesn't appear to acknowledge that some writers don't
want to automate their own Wordpress themes (except with the dismissive 'if
you really believe that' aside which I'm not counting).

~~~
hbosch
> How does anyone who has a passing familiarity with minimalism have the nerve
> to write 'how is it pos­si­ble to be “the best” while of­fer­ing less?'

Minimalism is not about offering less. Minimalism is about offering more, and
presenting less — "more" here meaning depth of experience, in the broad sense.
I think that is what he is suggesting, especially easy to discern in the
context of his main thesis (that Medium isn't minimalist, it is homogeneity).

