Close-up of a black typewriter-style quote tattooed along the side of the ribs, reading you are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love.

Typed quote tattoo along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black text tattoo runs across two lines on the side of a torso, set in a typewriter-style serif font. The letters are crisp and evenly weighted, with the top line angled slightly upward across the ribs. The photograph is taken in soft indoor light against plain skin, with a blurred background of a floor and a blue mat at the edge of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Quote Word Typewriter font Text

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Imperial came in on a Tuesday, wrapped in a bath towel and smelling of somebody's airing cupboard. The owner, a Mrs Pell from Hebden Bridge, had written on the job card that the e-key only struck high and that she needed it back by Friday, because she had a sentence to finish. I asked what sort of sentence. She said I would know it when I saw it.

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I stripped the carriage on the bench under the lamp. The e-arm had been knocked sideways, most likely from a fall, and the ribbon was dry as a biscuit. I bent the arm back, brushed the type clean, and typed a row of e's across a card to check. Nothing odd about the work. The odd thing was the sheet already in the platen, which she had left there on purpose. Two lines, the second shorter, the carriage having hesitated at the end.

I did not read it, which is my rule. The lamp was on it, though, and the capitals were large. you are terrifying and strange and beautiful, it said, and under that, something not everyone knows how to love. I thought of my wife's handwriting, which had been loopy and forgiving and nothing like type, and I put the sheet face down beside the ribbon tin and got on with the sprockets.

On Friday she came in with her coat buttoned to the neck and paid in coins. I set the machine on the counter and she rolled in a fresh card without looking at me. Then she typed the two lines again, slowly, every e falling square where it belonged. At the full stop she sat back and said that was the last one, she had been practising for a long time. The e came out clean all the way across the card, and she folded it into her pocket as if it were a receipt.