APPLIED RESEARCH SUMMARY  Provides strong empirical support for the notion that readers ascribe personality attributes both to typefaces and to text passages  Establishes a foundation for investigation of the interactions between typeface and text personas The Rhetoric of Typography: The Persona of Typeface and Text EVA R. BRUMBERGER INTRODUCTION T he rapid technological growth of the past few decades has introduced what is essentially a rev- olution in publishing, with rapid and dramatic changes in publishing technology, accompanied by increased access to that technology. Publishing has moved in great part from the print shop to the desktop, from massive and unwieldy mechanical machines to com- pact (though still sometimes unwieldy) personal comput- ers. Word processing and desktop publishing software of- fer countless ways to modify the format of documents, including relatively easy manipulation of an extensive set of standard typefaces. As Lanham (1993) says of desktop publishing, “I can reformat a text to make it easier to read, or, using a dozen transformations, make it hard, or just different, to read. I can literally color my colors of rhetoric” (p. 5). Software packages also offer ready-made design tem- plates, which often appear to have been created without any understanding of the principles of document design, but which, nonetheless, are widely used. Additionally, thousands of typefaces are available as free downloads from the Internet, more can be purchased for relatively small fees, and still more can be created with font design software. Reshaping technical communication These technological developments have reshaped the field of technical communication: communication tasks and me- dia have expanded, and the roles of technical writers are more broadly defined. The converging role of writers and designers is particularly significant. In the past, as Sullivan (1991) suggests, “. . . writers have not needed to think carefully about how the look of the page will affect the meaning of the text. For them, the meaning of the text has resided solely in the content of the words” (p. 43). However, technology increasingly places responsibil- ity for multiple design decisions in the technical writer’s domain (Benson 1985; Sullivan 1987). As the roles of de- signer, writer, and producer converge, visual communica- tion has become a central task for many technical writers (Rainey 1997). Visual rhetoric and typography As visual communication becomes more central to our work, it also must become more central to our research. While our field has studied document design and currently is directing more of its attention toward visual rhetoric, little research has been conducted on the role of typography as part of that rhetoric. In scholarly discussions of visual communication, typography has been largely ignored. As Colin Wheildon (1996), magazine editor and typog- rapher, argues: “the rules of typography [are] largely an- cient maxims, with very little, if any, empiricism to support them” (p. 184). They are a form of “craftlore,” practitioners’ lore, supported by intuition but lacking a theoretical and empirical foundation. The existing research on typography has focused pri- marily on readability and legibility issues; only a handful of studies have attempted to investigate the personas of type- faces perhaps because typography has generally been con- sidered transparent. In 1959, typography researcher Cyril Burt concluded that there had been virtually no objective research on the psychological aspects of typeface design and usage. Burt’s observation remains true today. Manuscript received 23 May 2002; revised 22 November 2002; accepted 1 December 2002. 206 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION • Volume 50, Number 2, May 2003