¶ A typically moral and conscientious Englishman finds it exceedingly difficult to keep morals out of art talk; he finds himself inclined to think, e.g. that R ought to have a bow more or less semi-circular and of a diameter about half the height of the stem, & a strongly outstanding tail; that an R with a very large bow and hardly any tail at all is wrong. But such moral notions as the word ‘ought’ implies, & such words as ‘right’ & ‘wrong’ — taken as having a moral connotation — are obviously absurd in such a discussion, and we should be ready to admit that any old shape will do to make a letter with. Nevertheless, special circumstances demand special treatment, and as a ‘confirmed drunkard’ may be well advised to ‘take the pledge’ and deck himself out with blue ribands, so, seeing the whirl of eccentricity into which modern advertising is driving us, it seems good and reasonable to return to some idea of normality, without denying ourselves the pleasure and amusement of designing all sorts of fancy letters whenever the occasion for such arises. Moreover, it seems clear that as a firm and hearty belief in Christian marriage enables one not only to make the best jokes about it but even to break the rules with greater assurance (just as a man who knows his road can occasionally jump off it, whereas a man who does not know his road can only be on it by accident), so a good clear training in the making of normal letters will enable a man to indulge more efficiently in fancy and impudence. . . . ¶ The kind of figure 2 shown in fig. 19, or the r’s in fig. 20, with violently contrasted thick & thin forms & enormous blobs might be amusing to meet if they were the unaided efforts of some sportive letter designer. But having become common forms they are about as dull as ‘Robots’ would be if they all had red noses.

— Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography, 1936