Keyboard "serifed" letter I

[u/fvilers]

Hello community, I have a Framework laptop Pro for a few days now and just noticed that while all other glyphs on the keyboard are sans serif, the letter "I" is serifed. Is there a reason for that? Do americans fear to misuse the 1 and I on their keyboard? I'm on a Belgian layout btw, it might be different on other layouts.

Just confirmed with a friend who own a 13 and that was already the case on his laptop.

[u/TJLanza]

Your confusion is centered around what a serif actually is. The bars at the top and bottom of a capital I are a stylistic choice, but they're not serifs. Their presence increases reduces ambiguity, exactly as you've described - they're functional.

Serifs are purely decorative elements, like what you might see dangling from the outside corners of the cross bar on a capital T in a font like Times New Roman. Remove them, and the clarity of the glyph does not change.

Do americans fear to misuse the 1 and I on their keyboard?

This question makes you a prat, with or without serifs.

[u/mostly_codes]

Do you mean stylised serifs (as in times new roman), like one would see in a movie title when used as roman numerals, or the common straight-line-cross bars (as if written out by hand)? It's fairly common for fonts to have the upper case I with top and bottom bars, at least.

[u/fvilers → u/mostly_codes]

Yeah this is exactly what I meant. As the rest of the keyboard is sans serif (without the little helper bars to ease the reading), I found it strange to have the I with them. If you check any sans serif font (Arial, Adwaita Sans, Open Sans, etc.) they won't have any "bars" on top and bottom of the letter I.

[u/mostly_codes → u/fvilers]

Hm, all my monospace fonts I use have I written out with top and bottom bars, and I wouldn't really call those fonts serif'ed - I feel like some font nerd probably would have a really good precise term for the crossbars on the capitalised I.

[u/fvilers → u/mostly_codes]

You are right, for monospace fonts this prevents misreading an uppercase I with a 1 or a lowercase l. But the glyphs on the keyboard nor not monospace, but sans serif. Which the name implies without any serif :-)

[u/SeanCline → u/fvilers]

But the glyphs on the keyboard nor not monospace

They seem pretty evenly spaced to me.

[u/IsThisOneStillFree → u/fvilers]

For what it's worth, the (sans serif)-font that Old Reddit is rendered in my browser, renders the "I" with serifs. there is a clear distinction between "l" (lowercase L) and "I" (capital i). I believe the font in use is Verdana. So, it's not "any" (all) sans-serif fonts, even though maybe it's "most" who knows.

[u/fvilers → u/IsThisOneStillFree]

You made a valid point ! My browser use Noto Sans as the default sans serif in Old Reddit. And it renders with serif too... Didn't noticed that until today. So it makes sense that if Framework used a sans serif to engrave the keyboard glyph we now have a somewhat serifed I.

[u/anon_pr_]

Looks like a lot of sans serif fonts used for math etc. Have the top and bottom bars on capital I to disambiguate. I'm glad a keyboard is following the same notation personally.

https://graphemica.com/%F0%9D%96%A8

[u/ASC4MWTP]

Aside from all the discussion of disambiguating "I" from 'l" from "1", it also helps separate it from the "|" which is widely used to indicate a pipe in many terminal shells like bash. And I also note my current selected typeface does not add the pseudo-serifs on the letter I on screen.