Scunthorpe Sans: The font with a built-in digital soap dispenser
Imagine typing a sentence, and suddenly all offensive words magically turn into sleek black bars – without lifting a finger. Welcome to the world of Scunthorpe Sans, likely the first typeface with built-in detergent for dirty language!
This typographic innovation blends humor with technical finesse by automatically censoring profanities like f***, s***, or p*** – with one charming exception: the English town Scunthorpe remains untouched, because, as the creators put it, “this town has suffered enough.” The typeface’s name is a nod to the infamous Scunthorpe Problem, where filter algorithms block innocent words due to accidental letter combinations. While many systems fail here, Scunthorpe Sans demonstrates how censorship can be approached with typographic elegance and a touch of self-irony.
OpenType: The Swiss Army Knife of Digital Typography
OpenType, co-developed by Microsoft and Adobe, has revolutionized digital typography since its 1996 debut. Unlike older formats, OpenType offers cross-platform compatibility and supports up to 65,000 glyphs in a single file. This not only enables complex writing systems but also advanced typographic functions – from ligatures and small caps to context-sensitive character substitutions.
For deeper insights into OpenType, check out typografie.info, Typography Nerd, or the Typetype blog. Adobe also offers practical examples in their feature documentation.
The Magic of Discretionary Ligatures (dlig)
At the heart of Scunthorpe Sans lies its unconventional use of the dlig feature (Discretionary Ligatures), typically used for decorative combinations like ct or st. In this case, however, it replaces hundreds of swear words with black rectangles.
The technical foundation comes from Microsoft’s OpenType feature spec, which explains how chained context lookups can recognize and dynamically replace specific character sequences based on context.
More illustrative ligature examples can be found on TypeNetwork and in this CreativePro article.
One particularly clever exception is defined for the word Scunthorpe: although it contains the substring “cunt”, it is not censored. This is made possible by a context-sensitive rule – a method also discussed in the glyph engine HarfBuzz.
From Joke to Technical Masterpiece
What starts as a joke becomes a brilliant showcase of what modern typography can achieve. The font’s humorous origin demonstrates how creative solutions and technical depth can come together – a theme also explored on ilovetypography.com.