Fonts with threatening auras

@edentfont usability · 10 comments · 150 words · Viewed ~451 times.

I was browsing the web recently when I can across this utter horror show of a font.

Warning, not for the faint of heart.

Screenshot of text where all the characters lean to the left.

The thing is, I can't adequately describe why I - and many others - find it so disturbing.

In all my years of reading English, I've never found a font which slants backwards. I'm used to italics so there's no reason it should seem weird. And yet... it's like the uncanny valley of fonts. Something in my brain just screams "WRONG".

I examined the page to see if it was some kind of fancy CSS transformation. But, no. It appears to belong to a font family called "recline".

Thanks. I hate it.

What's the most unsettling font you've seen in the wild?

10 thoughts on “Fonts with threatening auras”

2023-05-18 12:02

Matt Mascarenhas said on mas.to:

@Edent Mmm… I reckon it looks like it's rendered with a lag:• Imagining a draw cursor trundling along from the top-left corner pixel to the bottom-right, rows first (as we read)• It draws a row, moves onto the next one, but isn't quick enough to start drawing it at the right placeSo we're left with a feeling of wanting it to "get a move on!"Wonder if this font is as disturbing to readers of right-to-left scripts…
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2023-05-18 13:18

Denny says:

I take it you're not left-handed, nor had reason to observe the writing of anyone who is? I think it's relatively common in that grouping, presumably as it lets them see the pen nib better or something.
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2023-05-18 12:36

David Corney said on sigmoid.social:

@Edent Ooh, nasty! Sort of reminds me of the Leaning Tower illusion - maybe part of my brain sees the sloping letters as getting further away? (Though that wouldn't explain why italics look fine.)http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Leaning_tower_illusion
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2023-05-18 13:42

AP says:

Your final question could be amended with "(except Comic Sans MS, too easy)". 😉
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2023-05-18 14:43

Liam 🏳️‍🌈 said on mastodon.gruezi.net:

@Edent I've heard stories about some folks at my job installing Arial Sarcastic a number of years back- similar concept, but if installed incorrectly, could overwrite the normal font 😬Original page is gone now, but luckily got archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20150926032416/http://www.glennmcanally.com/sarcastic/index.htm Sarcastic Font
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2023-05-18 22:33

Rich Lucking said on tech.lgbt:

@Edent reminds me of a dot matrix printer with the pins reassembled wrongly... I seem to remember doing something like that when I cleaned a star lc10....
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2023-05-24 23:26

Younes Ben Amara says:

I came from ‏‪Eric Bailey newsletter or as he described it "linkdump". nice notice. for me I recently developed a moderate hate for the Arial font. don't know why. ‬‏
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2023-05-27 15:59

Slow Learner says:

Nice attitude towards left-handed handwriting, that's right charming that is.
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2024-07-09 13:20

David Jones says:

It's Dark Academia https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/188432/dark-academia
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