Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Italic type" in English language version.
If Aldus hoped, as it is commonly said that he did, but he never said, that cursive letterforms would save space, he must have been disappointed by the result: a Roman type on the same body gets in just as much. It is a beautiful and legible typeface.
Manutius dated his edition...as 15 September 1500, but included in the volume is a letter...with date of September 19.
One of the distinctive things about French calligraphy of [the 1680s] is that the lead-in stroke of letters like i, m, n and so on have flat, rather 'roman', serifs, making them look a bit like a 'sloped roman'…Fournier used it fifty years later in his 'new style' italics, and later so did Firmin Didot. And that French flat serif also turns up in…the italic to Times New Roman.
One of the distinctive things about French calligraphy of [the 1680s] is that the lead-in stroke of letters like i, m, n and so on have flat, rather 'roman', serifs, making them look a bit like a 'sloped roman'…Fournier used it fifty years later in his 'new style' italics, and later so did Firmin Didot. And that French flat serif also turns up in…the italic to Times New Roman.
A type cut by an unknown punchcutter whose matrix is numbered MA174 in an inventory of Plantin Moretus Museum…is not completely italic but has traces of blackletter, which must be rare in the history of type although there are many roman types like that.
