12 November 2019 · Originally published in Revista .925

The Curious Case of the Inverted M’s

By Eduardo A. Álvarez del Castillo

From remote times, sign painters have fashioned institutional or commercial lettering rooted in local visual culture.

— José María Cerezo

Certainly the shaping of letters is a manifestation of an immense historical tradition; their appearance comes largely from the definition that Semitic peoples gave those small marks nearly 3,000 years ago. Thus the morphology of letters as we know it today has been established essentially since antiquity; yet one must note that this does not exclude the possibility of modifications and/or adaptations according to whatever technical and stylistic needs may arise.

The appearance of letters

When the nomadic societies of the Middle East became sedentary peoples, they perfected agriculture, animal husbandry, and the production of goods through artisanal processes that, in turn, established social relations such as trade.

The first, simple representations of letters became symbols laden with meanings and grew distant from the beings and objects that had given rise to them. They now contained not only what they had first represented, but were assigned possession of further meanings—things that could no longer be touched or observed at a glance: that is, actions and even ideas.

Paradoxically, these new functions, which might seem more complicated, had the capacity to make the structuring and diffusion of ideas easier—that is, to make messages more direct. Primitive signs evolved gradually toward a system that was seemingly more laborious and meticulous, yet more flexible.

Thus they evolved into new forms that possessed specific sounds and that could be interwoven with one another as free components, capable of building different words—forms of greater specificity—and that facilitated the making of a broader and more particularized vocabulary. These graphic marks meant a systematized way of conventionalizing written communication, accessible to the various civilizations that shared the Mediterranean space.[1]

Semitic writing has been identified as an essential landmark in history. Its origin is unknown; it is not known precisely whether it is an invention or an adaptation. This writing has two branches: northern and southern. Of these, the northern is the more important and subdivides into variants among which Aramaic and Phoenician stand out.

The Phoenicians[2] were the people able to develop a revolutionary system (circa 1800 B.C.) that linked spoken sounds with writing: they identified in their language 22 key sounds—all consonants—and for each they drew a corresponding symbol. It is of significant importance to note that some of those signs have survived a winding historical process of successive mutations, preserving their identity for centuries.

Later the Athenians took those 22 Phoenician letters, turned two of them into vowels, and added four other vocalic signs, thus reaching 24.[3] The Phoenician names of the letters were preserved, but their spelling was corrected to reflect their own pronunciation. Thus Phoenician aleph became Greek alpha, beth became beta, gimel gamma, delt delta, and so on.

The times of the Roman Empire

When Rome dominated the Mediterranean region, around the second century B.C., the custom was coined of immortalizing imperial deeds in public spaces, on triumphal arches, monuments, and other buildings. The form of the letters took on the characteristics and proportions of the aesthetics and tools of the age: these were the first manifestations of the classical Roman letter style known as Capitalis Monumentalis.[4]

In parallel there existed the variant called Capitalis Rustica, a domestic version used to meet the needs of popular communication. It was a rapid means of writing and spreading news, informing about political matters, and even some forms of advertising.[5] It was drawn with a brush or pen, and its strokes were more condensed, with some more rounded and fluid forms, which gave it lightness and spontaneity.[6]

What are letters?

A letter is each graphic sign in a writing system: in a pure phonetic alphabet, a simple phoneme (sound) is denoted by a simple letter, but both in history and in practice letters generally denote more than one phoneme. Letters, as elements of alphabets, keep a pre-established order called “alphabetical order.” Letters also have specific names associated with them; those names differ with language and geography.

Letters are the physical notation of language, achieved through manual means: scribes, copyists, amanuenses, and illuminators. The invention of printing represented the mechanization of writing and of the alphabetic system; for that it was fundamental to define the 26 letters that make up the Latin alphabet used in most European languages.

One must therefore affirm that the form of letters has been influenced by two powerful forces: (a) the sculptural predominance of the incised letter and (b) the calligraphic predominance of the written letter.

The Roman sculptural influence is quite clear and directly appreciable in capital letters; by contrast, the Latin influence is not so forceful in lowercase letters, for they have been affected by a calligraphic current close to italic cursives.

A particular case for analysis: the letter M

The purpose of this essay is to review the morphology of the letter “M”: it is said with a little humor and another measure of truth that the “M” came out of the water, for it had undulating forms that evoked the fluid movements of currents. The letter “M” comes from a Phoenician letter that meant water. The Egyptian hieroglyph pronounced “M” also had the form of a broken or wavy line and was the symbol of “water.” From this symbol the Phoenician alphabet took its letter mem, but transformed the strokes so that the aquatic evocations disappeared. The Greeks copied it for their letter “m,” and later appears the majestic Latin “M” with the straight, angular forms of the Capitalis Monumentalis noted above. The “M”—as we know it—comes from the letter mo in Coptic, maiin in Hebrew and Aramaic, mu in Assyrian, ma’un in Arabic, mem in Phoenician, mi in Greek, and eme in Latin.

The conventional structure of the letter “M” comes from the forms defined in ancient Rome, both in Capitalis Monumentalis and in Capitalis Rustica. In them we can identify determining qualities: as already noted, the sharp feet or serifs[7] are the characteristic trait for categorizing a certain letter manifestation as “Roman,” and the second relevant aspect is the contrast between strokes: thin and thick (alternating).

Given the angle of attack of the instrument used for calligraphic writing, one obtains alternation among the strokes; in that sense we can infer the position of the broad-edged instrument employed (brush, flat brush, or reed) to achieve that variation. This means that the strokes of a capital “M” will be thin and thick by turns. In typographic terms: the first and third stems are called thin stems, and the second and fourth are called ascending or thick stems.

That balance is visible in Roman typefaces classified as old-style according to Vox-ATypI,[8] to cite only a few, in:

• Bembo, the revival Monotype produced in 1929 of the type Francesco Griffo[9] cut and Aldus Manutius[10] used for Cardinal Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna in 1495.
• Caslon, the exquisite work of the English engraver William Caslon[11] dating from 1725, put back into circulation in the twentieth century through numerous foundries.
• Garamond, Stempel’s revival of the type Claude Garamond[12] cut in 1530, inspired precisely by the work of Griffo and Manutius.
• In the contemporary Goudy, created by Frederic Goudy[13] for American Typefounders (ATF) in 1915, inspired by the letters of the Italian Renaissance.
• Or more recently, in Trajan, designed by Carol Twombly[14] in 1989 with direct references to the inscriptions on Trajan’s Column.[15]

For the reasons set out above, it is exceptional to find manifestations that do not respect the classical norms defined for the correct structuring of this letter. Set out below are various commercial signs, mostly handmade, found on some streets in the historic center of Taxco de Alarcón, Guerrero. In them one sees the inverted placement of the capital “M,” in specular reflection (rotated 180° on the vertical axis). It is striking that this is the only letter that appears that way, since in all the others the conventional morphology of an old-style Roman type set has been respected. From the appearance of the signs found, one may infer that they date from no more than ten or twelve years and correctly follow the norms dictated by Law Number 685 on the Conservation and Oversight of the City of Taxco de Alarcón, Gro., Title Four, Chapter II, Articles 58 to 64,[16] regarding the structuring of signs and commercial notices on public thoroughfares: use black lettering, and blue or red for emphasis, on a white background.

Photographs from the original essay in Revista .925 (Eduardo A. Álvarez del Castillo, 2019).

This is the moment to speculate what reason provoked this expression of the letter “M”: can it be considered a sign painter’s error? Might it be ignorance of the expressed norms? Simply the free interpretation of the author of those works? If so, are they all the work of the same hand? Otherwise that mistake or distraction would seem to be laying down new norms for drawing the letter, which various sign painters take up and fix in new commissions carried out in the aforementioned city in the northern zone of the State of Guerrero.

This expression of the letter could pass unnoticed before the passerby’s eyes; strictly speaking one must say that communication is achieved, since the letter is legible: its morphology is recognized, and the sound that must accompany it is expressed strictly—of that there is no doubt. Yet it appears as a full visual phenomenon that, amid the regularity of the typographic landscape of a city that seeks to preserve rigorously its urban aspect as part of its regional identity—see the Magical Towns categorization granted by the Ministry of Tourism[17]—in which there are no signs in vibrant colors, nor visual eccentricities or billboard advertisements, an extraordinary manifestation appears that neglects—or challenges—the typographic orthodoxy the canons prescribe.[18]

What might happen? Simply that these singular cases of the inverted “M” disappear in due time: renewing the worn sign or, perhaps, after a change of commercial use in the premises we see today, no one remembers them—or else… might we be witnessing the gradual appearance of a phenomenon renewing conventional typographic criteria? I suggest we give the phenomenon time and watch its development with attention. ¶

(Published 12 November 2019)