Tag Archives: Leading

Leading-Trim destroying traditional typography

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Leading-Trim destroying traditional typography seems a strange way to start an article on typography. But for the sake of Web developers, who are commonly typographic illiterates, they are toying with changing the historic basis of paragraph spacing, and all line spacing. What set me off is an article I read this morning in Medium, a magazine with which I was unfamiliar. The head and subhead are: Leading-Trim: The Future of Digital Typesetting How an emerging CSS standard … Continue reading →

Control your spacing & alignments with tabs & fixed spaces

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Tabs and fixed spaces Spaces cause many other problems for people trained in typewriting. On a typewriter, the spacebar is a known quantity. This is because every character in monospaced type is the same width—even the space. This is definitely not true for type. In fact, in type, the space band is often a different size than it was the last time you hit the key. This is caused by several factors. First, the word space character … Continue reading →

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

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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 →

No, No! to double-space and double-returns

Skilled Workman Posted on by

What follows is an excerpt from my new release, Writing In InDesign Second Edition. ******************************** Typography determines reader reactions It goes far beyond your font choices—important as they are. This is the first and most important thing you must understand. You are not only trying to control or at least predict the reaction of your typical reader to your content. You are also working you make your book a comfortable, friendly, and familiar part of the life … Continue reading →

Sizing your type

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The major point to remember is that all letters of a given typeface and a given size fit into rectangles that are the same height. We’re spending a lot of time on this because it is an important concept to understand. Often paragraphs or lines of type look very different in size, but in fact they are the same point size. This is primarily due to variations in x-height and built-in leading in the specific font chosen. … Continue reading →

Basic formatting tips

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is the rough draft of a third portion of “The New Publisher” which will be a guide to ministers, ministries, and non-profits who need to get their vision out to their people. This new paradigm of the 21st century radically changes things. It gives us an opportunity we should not pass up. Formatting basics Designing your paragraphs We need to talk a bit about setting up your paragraphs. Again most of this knowledge is assumed by … Continue reading →