GLYPH, Garamond. Internecine fighting in this war-torn region abated yesterday as Sans-Serif fighters from the province of Calibri took control of the capital of Garamond, previously held by Serif loyalists.
“Gimme a V!”
“We have been welcomed as liberators,” said Gill Sans, leader of the rebel forces. “The people threw off their serifs and danced in the streets.”
Claude Garamond, “The Father of His Typeface”
Serif forces downplayed the importance of the loss of the city, saying they would regroup and return to fight another day. “This is typical of provincial Sans-Serif thinking,” said Caslon Frutiger. “We have 26 capitals, the loss of one here or there is like change behind the sofa cushions.”
Sans-Serifs are so named because they do not wear “serifs,” a fine cross stroke at the top or bottom of a letter’s make-up. They model themselves after “sans-culottes,” French revolutionaries who refused to wear culottes to pep rallies and sock hops during the 1960s. The Garamond region, like Alsace-Lorraine, has been the scene of fierce territorial battles since the invention of moveable type in 1436 by Johannes Gutenberg, with Serifs holding the upper hand until the twentieth century when Sans-Serif fonts flooded into the region to handle jobs Serifs refused, such as desktop publishing.
“We are the whipping boys of typography,” said Arial Helvetica, a young woman who says she has faced persecution for using a Comic Sans font to make signs for her tent in the refugee camp at Andale Mono. “They say you can get diseases from walking around without serifs, but I like a more casual look.”