A fact from Roman lettering appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 September 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Roman or Trajan lettering was popular for official use in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century?
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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
... that Roman or Trajan lettering was popular in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century? Source: Nicolete Gray: "In Britain in the twentieth century it was taught in all art schools, promoted in many books, and officially sponsored by the then Ministry of Works...I shall refer to this letter as ‘Trajan’.", John Nash: "The Roman inscriptional capital thrived...in early twentieth century England" (p. 11), "lettering manuals proliferated, each with its V & A photo of the Trajan letters" (p. 19) "a tradition of fine classically-inspired carved lettering which virtually didn’t exist at the beginning of the century [was] firmly established in England by the 1940s" (p. 22). Baines (photo visible here, the last photo) "standard form of official lettering"
ALT1: ... Roman or Trajan lettering was popular for official use in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century?
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith
Interesting:
QPQ: Done.
Overall: Blythwood Very well written article, passes all criteria. The hook is interesting enough, I just wonder if "was popular in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century" could be better worded as something like "became the standard lettering style in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century" because it doesn't seem clear what popularity means. FlairTale (talk) 06:44, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FlairTale, thanks for the kind review! I think the key word is "official" e.g. in Baines' comment: it was certainly a standard for "official" contexts (post office signs, church noticeboards, war memorials) but plenty of other styles were common on business signs. How about "was popular for official use"? I've made that ALT1. Blythwood (talk)