Question about italic "W" character about et-book HOT 3 CLOSED

Are you asking about the (over-)slant of the italic uppercase “W”? That would be a design choice.

For example, Equity (designed by Matthew Butterick), which is based on Ehrhardt, also features what you’d call “overly slanted uppercase A, V, and W” in its italic:

But these slants in ET Book and Equity are nothing compared to Rosart’s more aggressive tilt:

Bethany Heck wrote a piece about Rosart in her Font Review Journal, where she mentioned this “aggressive forward tilt and ‘wind sheared’ aesthetic”.

from et-book.

Side note. Admittedly, these heavily slanted forms can look odd to our 21st-century eyes, but I think this is only because many digital fonts we see today don’t feature these forms (so we are simply not used to how they look). However, if you look at the printed materials prior to the desktop-publishing era, then you can find many examples of such slanted forms.

For example, here is the caption to the illustration Disappearing Bicyclist (1906; source: https://www.geogebra.org/m/hypuahfc):

Then there’s Writing & illuminating, & lettering (Johnston, 1906, p. 269; source: https://archive.org/details/writingillumina00john):

from et-book.

Very fascinating insight. Thank you for taking the time to explain. Would you have any recommendations for books/journals on typography?

from et-book.