Colophon
This site is set in my personal style, relying on a handful of conventions adapted from their print usage — wide-margins for uncrowded text, a unified palette grounded in an off-black body ink, a small set of distinctive but readable typefaces, and measured use of ornamentation and floral motifs.
Type
All English text is set in one of three type families.
- Borges by Alejandro Lo Celso (PampaType)
- Heliotrope by Matthew Butterick
- Triplicate by Matthew Butterick
Page titles are set in Borges Open Regular and navigation items in Borges Medium small capitals. Section headings and subheadings are set in small capitals in Borges Regular and Borges Light respectively. Site name, page subtitles, and emphasis are set in Borges Poema. The body text is Heliotrope 3 Regular. Triplicate Poly A is used for lists, links, and page footers.
Greek text and German text, should there ever be any, are set in Otta PE by Francisco Gálvez Pizarro (PampaType) and Gorgias Regular by Manuel López Rocha (PampaType) respectively.
All faces are licensed for web use.
Palette
- Parchment
#fbf9f1 / #1b1c1e- Ink
#272029 / #e8e0e8- Mauve
#915f6d / #e49cb3- Wine
#722f37 / #f2b0b8- Quartz
#51414f / #c2b9c2- Purple
#301934 / #edcdf1
Ornamentation
Decoration is meant to be noticeable but not distracting. Light rose and vine motifs are used throughout. The header seal is a facsimile of a ligature in Spencerian hand, the form of cursive in which I write and which was standard in the United States from 1850 to roughly 1925. The site icon and end-of-page ornament use imagery drawn from Pyrrhonian skepticism.
Design
The design of this site is borrowed from my house style, pinned to a custom LaTex style package and adapted to a range of mediums. Print documents are compiled from modified Markdown exported to LuaLaTex. Examples visible at Writing.
Name
The name is loosely inspired by Pyrrhonian skepticism as a watchword to keep inquiring. The word skeptic comes from ‘σκεπτικός’ (skeptikos), meaning ‘an investigator’ and was used to refer to the followers of Pyrrho. ‘Σκεπτικός‘ is itself derived from the verb σκέπτομαι (skeptomai) — meaning ‘to look at, examine, or consider’. ‘Σκέπτου’ (skeptou) is the second-person singular present middle imperative of σκέπτομαι. The present imperative form presents a directive to an ongoing or repeated activity, as in Ancient Greek the present tense carries imperfective aspect, though it does not imply the Pyrrhonian expectation that the activity may never conclude.
Despite the origins of the name, Sextus Empiricus’s preferred word for describing the activity of the skeptic is the verb ‘ζητέω’ (zēteō), and he additionally uses the related adjective ‘ζητητική‘ (zētētikē). Linking all three, he says:
Ἡ σκεπτικὴ τοίνυν ἀγωγὴ καλεῖται μὲν καὶ ζητητικὴ ἀπὸ ἐνεργείας τῆς κατὰ τὸ ζητεῖν καὶ σκέπτεσθαι… (PH 1.7)
That is, ‘the path of skepticism, then, is also called investigative from the activity consisting in investigating and examining…’
Although he does use other forms of ‘σκέπτομαι’, as best I can tell, Sextus never uses ‘σκέπτου’. That makes it fitting for a revisionary modern interpretation.
Construction
Site pages are plain HTML and CSS with content for the most part generated from modified Markdown. Nothing is loaded from other sites.