The Weird Words and Phrases Designers Use to Test Their Fonts

“If you kern a font in Polish—which has interesting combinations of diagonal letter shapes and special accents—it will work perfectly in almost every other language.” [Zwykły means “ordinary.”]

“This magic word has glyphs with straight and rounded sides that are common to much of the rest of the font—except for those pesky letters with diagonals like k, x, w, and y.”

“This is the day Sweden switched which side of the road it drives on. The dieresis and fi ligature help test the color of the dots. And there’s a double g.”

“This has all the shapes needed to test a design. It’s also a little in-joke, because in my native German, a glove is a Handschuh (“hand shoe”), so handglove is an Anglo-German tautology.”

“This phrase helps look at the widths and spacing of A, W, V, and Y.”

“This has an interesting d-apostrophe-Y combination, as well as a rare Y-q. Most importantly, it’s a succulent wine!”

“For looking at the swashes in an English Modern face.”

"Great for testing ligatures."

“Since every new typeface begins with H and O, and the E and R are both revealing and fun to draw, it’s a short leap from here to rendering my own last name. I can never resist.”