1977: The British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.
Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

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I remember this one very well, because I worked at a printing firm. To me, it was sooooooo obviously a clever hoax, but if you didn't know anything about printing (or geography I suppose), it was a normal piece of reporting. Thought at the tome it was very clever, as in those days, the print trade was a closed shop.
Posted by Richard Baxter  in  Margate, England  on  Sun Mar 28, 2004  at  12:17 PM

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You know... I truly believe that if you ran that same story today... you would still mistify the better part of our population.

At least back then, the world had true typographers... Now we have wanna be "graphic designers" who still wouldn't recognize a serif from a sans serif!


Posted by Patricia O.  on  Thu Apr 01, 2004  at  07:38 AM

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One of the most wonderful spinoffs from the Guardian story in 1977 was the book - one of the most precious in my island library of over 3,000 title - The Private Presses of San Serriffe. If anyone is interested I can send full details and an extract or two. I can also send my contribution to todays tomfoolery. My quote for today (above my signature) "Only fools dig for the treasure that was never buried" (Chinese Proverb).
Posted by Iain Orr  in  UK  on  Thu Apr 01, 2004  at  11:27 AM

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One of the things you have to understand about this particular hoax was that the Guardian printed special supplements on real countries on a regular basis and this looked exactly like one of these. It included history, geography, cultural and vacation information (thomas Cooke, one of Britain's leading tourist agencies were apparently innundated by people wanting to take a vacation there). Another notable point was thatthese idyllic islands actually moved. For six months of the year fierce currents washed against one side of the islands and then for the other six months gentle currents deposited what had been washed away at the other end.

All in all a wonderful place to visit as it was always changing.
Posted by Richard Boyle  in  Vancouver Island Canada  on  Mon May 10, 2004  at  09:59 AM

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Responding to Ian Orr -- yes, please, details on the book (here, if possible; or email: hank at spamcop dot net).

The 'more' link for this item tries to open http://../af_1977.html --> "404 not found" -- more info welcome.

I make a living as a proofreader/editor, and was just musing on the difference between 'proof' and 'reproof' -- some of the the writers where I work equate the two (grin).
Posted by Hank Roberts  in  People's Republic of Berkeley  on  Tue May 11, 2004  at  11:19 AM

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Hank, Thanks for letting me know about the broken link. It's now fixed. And if you go to abebooks.com and do a search for Private Presses of San Serriffe, you should be able to find quite a few used copies of it available.
Posted by Alex  in  San Diego  on  Tue May 11, 2004  at  11:40 AM

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Excuse me, but I'm a graphic designer, and in my multimedia class we did learn the difference between serif from sans serif. Please don't judge unless you know what you're talking about, Patricia.
Posted by Anon  on  Sun Jun 06, 2004  at  08:23 AM

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Oh, those wacky Brits...hahahaha.
Posted by sparrow  in  Michigan  on  Fri Jul 30, 2004  at  05:30 PM

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Everything I know about typesetting I've got from computers, so I wouldn't be at all surprised in almost nobody had heard of serifs in 1977. in fact, I still don't know what relevance "Pica" or "Bodoni" have... are they font names or something?
Posted by Yariv  in  UK  on  Tue Nov 09, 2004  at  06:42 AM

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Pica is a unit of measurement, you might also see these on old dot matrix printers, where it means use a pica sized font. I think Bodoni is a font.
Posted by Ian  in  UK  on  Sun Nov 28, 2004  at  07:32 PM

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actually Bodoni is a very common font
*Graphic Designer knowledge*
finally pays off....
Posted by Liski  on  Sun Apr 03, 2005  at  10:25 AM

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Thank you for great web site, i have discovered it recently, lots of good read
Posted by abba  on  Sun Apr 03, 2005  at  08:22 PM

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What was never admitted was that there was a significant crisis a couple of days before the San Serriffe supplement was published. In those days a supplement of that size had to be set well before publication day (not least because of the shenanigans of the print unions in that hot metal era). Originally San Serriffe was placed in the Indian Ocean and one of the stories speculated about the way the islands were drifting slowly towards the coast of India. At the end of March there was a coup in the Seychelles and somebody realised that a supplement poking fun at a place called San Serriffe while there was mayhem going on in another bunch of islands with a similar name in the same ocean was not a good idea. So San Serriffe was rapidly moved to a spot off Namibia. Except that no-one changed the story about bumping into India, which would have involved drifting a couple of thousand miles. (As Night News Editor on the paper at that time I was peripherally involved, but I think that mistake persisted through all editions that night.
Oh and the artwork of the map which appeared in the supplement is in the British Musum cartographic hoaxes room, but no-one at the paper ever discovered how it got there...
Posted by exed  on  Thu Sep 29, 2005  at  10:51 AM

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I googled San Serif today 2nd Nov 2005 because I was reminded of it by a wonderful spoof in today's Guardian. They introduced a new "hand crafted" Japanese puzzle in response to the current craze for sudoku etc. called Maru-batsu.
Theres an article about its creator and a full page of example games played out move by move on Japanese type grids. Its tic-tac-toe. Brilliantly done. nearly 40 years on and still as daft!
Posted by steve mcaulay  in  Yorkshire England  on  Wed Nov 02, 2005  at  07:28 AM

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It's typesetting terminology not print terminology.
Posted by T.Setter  in  England  on  Fri Mar 17, 2006  at  11:37 AM

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The joke lives on in the private press world. The Bird & Bull Press has published a number of additional things at least two books on "San Serrife" and have even printed money and had coins made. One book is available at their web site and for money and coinage try http://www.oakknoll/com and search on "San Serriffe" this is an antiquarian book dealer I used to work for.
Posted by J. Laird  in  Maryland  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  08:02 PM

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This year David McKie (of the Guardian) shared some of the internal happenings when the San Serriffe supplement was being produced:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1744581,00.html
including the air crash on Tenerife just before publication, which caused the islands to be moved from that area.
Posted by anon  on  Sun Apr 02, 2006  at  10:06 AM

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Yep, I remember when this came out.I knew nothing of typesetting terminology, but was mystified by the 37 year old leader with his Minister sons.
Posted by eekamouse  on  Sun Apr 02, 2006  at  03:08 PM

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I was initially hoaxed by this as a colleague presented it to me as being a place he had visited while on his national service.

It took me about 2 pages before the penny dropped, not because of the printing terminology, but because of some of the other proclaimed 'facts'
Posted by Ian Moseley  in  London  on  Mon Apr 03, 2006  at  08:00 AM

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David Mckie is (as usual) right and I confused two separate stories. The Tenerife air crash was the event that led to the change, and the Seychelles coup was a few months later. I think I confused the two events because oif the similarity some of us on the paper noted to the gimcrack events in the Syechelles and the description of San Seriffe a short time before.
Posted by exed  in  uk  on  Mon Apr 03, 2006  at  10:43 AM

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