It’s supposed to be ‘coffin’ medicine, but FFI in lowercase causes some issues due to the way some fonts utilise a specific **ffi** character for clarity. When switched to another typeface, this will be omitted entirely if that typeface doesn’t do that, and so we end up with **Co**~~ffi~~**n medicine**.
>*Typographic ligatures are the drawn combination of multiple letters to form a better fit and avoid awkward intersections. The ff, fi, ffi, and ffl combinations are most common, as the kern, or overhang, of the f bumps horribly in both Roman/upright and italic/oblique faces. (That kern used to literally overhang metal type, making ligatures necessary to avoid breaking type.) You probably have also seen the æ and œ ligatures, which come from Latin and are still sometimes used in lieu of ae and oe in UK English spellings of certain words, as in manœuvre or encyclopædia.*
>*A drawn version of those letter combinations that joins the letters together (in serif faces) or redraws and spaces them correctly (in some sans serif and decorative faces) solves the problem.*
> *As the [No Such Thing As A] Fish people tell it, the answer to the cracker joke was supposed to be “coffin” medicine. But in the original typing of it, “coffin” has the ffi replaced with the ligature ffi (as it is in this line now twice; try to select it). That would be fine…except in the text-encoding conversion from source to joke-printing machine, the ligature doesn’t exist in the printed typeface. Often, that results in a piece of tofu, as it’s sometimes known: the rectangular upright box that substitutes for missing characters. In the joke-printing machine, it just omits a character altogether, and must not have been seen or noticed in its final form.*
I had: How do sheep greet each other at Christmas?
Merry Christmas to ewe.
Fuck right off, Morrisons.
Mine was
What is Santa’s favourite sport?
The north pole vault
Con as in con carne means meat 🥩?
😁 didnt getit, but was fun
‘Made in China’ is the punchline.
Dracula was famously an advocate of homeopathy.
Bloody Mary
It’s the opposite of coff medicine
I will not be taking further questions thank you
Dracula is immortal. He doesn’t need medicine, but maybe he wants you to think he does, so you don’t know he’s actually Dracula. So his medicine is a con. It’s probably just blood. Sneaky.
16 comments
*coffin
**It’s the result of typographical issues.**
It’s supposed to be ‘coffin’ medicine, but FFI in lowercase causes some issues due to the way some fonts utilise a specific **ffi** character for clarity. When switched to another typeface, this will be omitted entirely if that typeface doesn’t do that, and so we end up with **Co**~~ffi~~**n medicine**.
>*Typographic ligatures are the drawn combination of multiple letters to form a better fit and avoid awkward intersections. The ff, fi, ffi, and ffl combinations are most common, as the kern, or overhang, of the f bumps horribly in both Roman/upright and italic/oblique faces. (That kern used to literally overhang metal type, making ligatures necessary to avoid breaking type.) You probably have also seen the æ and œ ligatures, which come from Latin and are still sometimes used in lieu of ae and oe in UK English spellings of certain words, as in manœuvre or encyclopædia.*
>*A drawn version of those letter combinations that joins the letters together (in serif faces) or redraws and spaces them correctly (in some sans serif and decorative faces) solves the problem.*
> *As the [No Such Thing As A] Fish people tell it, the answer to the cracker joke was supposed to be “coffin” medicine. But in the original typing of it, “coffin” has the ffi replaced with the ligature ffi (as it is in this line now twice; try to select it). That would be fine…except in the text-encoding conversion from source to joke-printing machine, the ligature doesn’t exist in the printed typeface. Often, that results in a piece of tofu, as it’s sometimes known: the rectangular upright box that substitutes for missing characters. In the joke-printing machine, it just omits a character altogether, and must not have been seen or noticed in its final form.*
* [**Source**](https://glennf.medium.com/dont-coffin-me-it-s-crackers-8dd43faa42d1)
It means that the crackers are cheap ones
I had: How do sheep greet each other at Christmas?
Merry Christmas to ewe.
Fuck right off, Morrisons.
Mine was
What is Santa’s favourite sport?
The north pole vault
Con as in con carne means meat 🥩?
😁 didnt getit, but was fun
‘Made in China’ is the punchline.
Dracula was famously an advocate of homeopathy.
Bloody Mary
It’s the opposite of coff medicine
I will not be taking further questions thank you
Dracula is immortal. He doesn’t need medicine, but maybe he wants you to think he does, so you don’t know he’s actually Dracula. So his medicine is a con. It’s probably just blood. Sneaky.
Hah! I got this [5 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/s/EqsftvJLbX), good to see it’s not been corrected!
Well, vampirism is basically a pyramid scheme
I had that exact one a couple of years ago. Good to see it’s still doing the rounds.
Had this same one years ago- should be coffin medicine