Category Archives: Readability

Dutch Old Style: Janson

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By the 1600s, French oppression had caused the center of typography to shift to Antwerp primarily through Plantin who was based there. This style commercialized the French designs that were so heavily promoted by Plantin. The Dutch influence made the French work more printable, taking out some of the subtleties of Garamond and Granjon. Their main influence was in England where there was no real typefounding industry until Caslon in the 1700s. These styles were a abandonment … Continue reading →

Your book better not look like a poorly designed Website!

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I had a little go’round with a coding geek on the #eprdctn Twitter feed about the use of fonts in ebooks. He was muttering about those #$*&^!%^#$ designers, and I ended up biting off the tips of my fingers to avoid cutting him a new one to drain all his pent up hostility. It was hardly a fruitful conversation. But it got me thinking. The real problem with the new publishing is the layout quality The quality … Continue reading →

Formatting basics: making a beautiful book which is comfortable to read

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Before I get started with the basics of formatting I need remind you about the goal: a beautiful book which is comfortable to read. You need a customized set of styles to enable you to keep your book consistent and give you global control over the entire book as you format. This is only possible if you first understand how to design paragraphs. I will help you through the basic set up of styles (to implement your … Continue reading →

Drop caps

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Drop caps One of the typographic devices used to indicate the beginning of a story or chapter is the drop cap. In this use, the first letter or letters of the first paragraph is (are) made large enough to be three, four, or five lines of type tall and inset into the paragraph. The first-lines of that paragraph are tabbed around the letter or letters. First of all, this is very easy with page layout software. InDesign’s implementation … Continue reading →

First-line indents and a second interior alignment

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First-line indents I have briefly touched on first-line indents for body copy paragraphs in talks about styles. This is the preferred method of telling the reader that a new topic sentence is being developed—a new thought expressed. I also mentioned my practice of adding a point or two after paragraphs to help the reader see that first-line indent on a busy page. I realize that this is anathema to many, but they should get a life. If … Continue reading →

The use of small caps is required

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Use small caps. Small caps are a specialized letterform. They are a smaller set of capital letters (often a bit larger than the x-height), used in place of the lowercase letters, which are designed so they have the same color as the rest of the font. Many of the OpenType Pro font families have real small caps. Faux small caps One of the typesetting options in most professional software (and many word processors) has been the use … Continue reading →

Bulleted lists are highly attractive to readers

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Use bulleted lists The typographic use of bullets and dingbats is conceptually unknown to typists. Lists are at the core of non-fiction and blog typography. Bulleted lists are an extremely effective means of attracting the reader’s attention—as are numbered lists. In fact, there has been a lot of study to find out what readers see and respond to. There are specific paragraph types you can use effectively to attract the reader’s eye or to re-attract it if it is … Continue reading →

Careful of hyphens and eliminate widows and orphans

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Be careful with hyphens. Because typeset line endings are automatic, so is the hyphenation. You can turn it on or off. Hyphenation is done by dictionary. You can set up the hyphens when you add new words to the user dictionary (see InDesign’s help). Another problem is that automatic hyphenation can create hyphens for many consecutive lines. Here there is sharp debate. Most of us agree that two hyphens in a row should be the maximum (a … Continue reading →

How your readers see your letters: legibility

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8. No ALL CAPS As mentioned in the underline section, setting letters in all caps is the other way to emphasize words on a typewriter. Typesetting has many more options like italic, bold, bold italic, small caps. Plus we can use a larger size, a different font, a different color, and more. In fact, we must be careful we do not get carried away in our enthusiasm for all the options at our disposal. ALL CAPS IS … Continue reading →

Space, space and a half, double-space Horrors!

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Space, space and a half, or double space? None of the above! This is why we use leading instead of spacing. Spacing is old typewriter terminology. The three options listed above were the only ones available for typewriters. In almost every case (unless you are trying to mimic a typewriter) a single space is too close, a space and a half is too far, and a double space is ridiculous. Again, the focus has to be on … Continue reading →