This piece of work was an assignment for my typography class in my second year of university. We were given a letter to study and explore before presenting our findings on a zine and a poster.
P was the letter that I was given and I decided to focus on the pronunciation of the letter. The letter P is a voiceless bilabial sound due to not needing your vocal cords and having both of your lips closed at the beginning of the pronunciation the letter.
The poster that I created was also poking fun at the fact that in certain words, the letter P is not pronounced. In words such as tempt and prompt, the letter P is only created by the transition between m and t. The title of the zine ‘The silent 16th’ sums this up. Does P even need to be in the word or is it just to reassure people that they are pronouncing the word correctly? If someone was not able to see the word and had heard it for the first time, would they think that a P was necessary to put into the word? Creating the letter P in braille asks this question for people who really cannot see. The silent 16th.