Typography Basics

Some basics of Typography Introduction Reading the stories posted on Chakatheaven and Furaffinity, I’ve repeatedly come across well- written ones where the presentation is a bit of a deterrence. Those gems include writing the body of the text in 16pt, a long text completely italicized and centring with tabs. Headings also are a bit of a sore spot. In the case of plain text there is not a lot of formatting options but with more advanced formats, those options exist. As a consequence I’ve decided to write this mini-manual in order to improve the general readability of texts, followed by an overview on the software available to produce readable texts. I claim neither perfection nor completeness for this overview, but am reasonably certain to get at least the basics right. Of course with a good reason, deviation from those guidelines is entirely acceptable. Formatting Text Alignment Fundamentally, there are four different alignments: Justified (most of this document), flush left, centred and flush right. For longer texts in languages written from left to right, flush left or justified are the only really worthwhile options. The difference between justified and flush left is the treatment of the text on the right side: Flush left keeps distances within the text (space widths, distance between letters) constant and produces a ragged right edge while justification varies those (and, if activated, hy- phenates words) to keep both sides aligned. Font/Typeface Traditionally, a typeface is what’s today usually also referred to as a font: A family of different but related fonts, usually bundled together. For example, Times New Roman Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic are different fonts belonging to the same typeface, as is strictly speaking each individual font size and -weight. Better typefaces have individual font definitions for the main varieties, while weights in addition to Regular and Bold is a feature rather found in truly professional typefaces. Generally, there are three really relevant families of typefaces to distinguish: Serif typefaces, which have small lines at the end of each letter’s strokes, guiding the reader along the line while reading. They are often used in books and newspapers, where the reader faces a lot of text. Their problem is that they often don’t reproduce too well when a small font size meets a low resolution. This combination can result in the optical disappearance of delicate parts of the letters like thin lines (or the serifs themselves) when the font is too light for its size. Sans serif typefaces usually do not suffer from this problem – they have no serifs and usually a relatively homogenous line width. This makes them more legible but especially longer texts somewhat less readable. They are rather used for signs, headings and electronic texts (especially online), where a low-resolution output medium is the norm rather than the annoying exception. Monospaced fonts are a bit the odd one out. They are not defined by serifs or their lack but rather by the uniform width of each character (glyph). The other families – blackletter, symbol, effect etc. – are suitable for special effects but usually a bad choice for longer texts. In order to set the entire document, different typefaces can be used, either a single one for every- thing or a mixture as done here, sans-serif for headings and a serif font for the text. The main text should be set in a readable but not too big font size. The usual range is between 9 and 14 pt, this text is set in 12 pt. Important side note: Typefaces set in the same nominal size can look quite different. For comparison (all in 12 pt): Times New Roman Georgia Arial Courier New. Above all: Don’t get too fancy. As noted above, weird looking typefaces are OK for singular effects or headings, but for the bulk text use practical, readable ones like Times (New Roman), Georgia, Computer Modern, Linux Libertine, Gentium, Charis SIL (serif), Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, Open Sans, PT Sans (sans serif) or the Liberation fonts (entire family including serif, sans serif and monospaced). They might look boring but if the reader decides not to bother with reading more than one page of blackletter or oddities like Exocet or San Fancisco, any prospective effect is somewhat moot. Another complication is added by the availability of those typefaces on the reader’s system, so you shouldn’t rely too much on specific features of an uncommon font unless you bundle it with the document – however, this can lead to license problems if the typeface is not freely distributable. If you release in an editable format, the reader can of course change the entire formatting to suit his preferences. Emphasis For emphasis words or short passages can be set italicized (weak emphasis), bold (strong emphasis) or both. SMALL CAPS and ALL CAPS are possible too, but are primarily used in titles and headings rather than bulk text. Underlining should be avoided. Using a different typeface, a differently sized font, highlighting or colour is possible but problematic: Too many fonts can give a distract- ing, incoherent result and depending on printer or display used (b/w laser, eInk), colours can be lost. In general, don’t overdo it with both amount and variation or you end up with a mess like this paragraph. Headings At the first glance creating a heading seems easy: increase font size, make bold and maybe even change the typeface. Of course knowing a few tricks can make things a lot easier in the long run and especially for longer texts. If you want to write text properly structured by headings and subheadings, the proba- bly most important thing to know how not to do it. Do not simply assign the headings a different formatting manually, but use the template doing this automatically. This seems a little pointless at first, but once you want to change the headings’ format, changing all of them individually is a major nuisance and inconsistencies are a permanent potential. This also informs the program that those lines are headings in the first place, enabling nifty features like internal linking and automatically generated table of contents. In most word processors, this feature is located in a dropdown list near the ones for font size and typeface. New Paragraphs vs. Line Breaks Often used without distinction (or line breaks not at all) but as can be seen in the following example, there is a difference. Typically, the first line of a new paragraph is indented or the vertical spacing between paragraphs is greater than between regular lines. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. Etiam rhoncus. Maecenas tempus, tellus eget condimentum rhoncus, sem quam semper libero, sit amet adipiscing sem neque sed ipsum. Nam quam nunc, blandit vel, luctus pulvinar, hendrerit id, lorem. Just in case you want to know, the nonsense above is a particular and common placeholder text known as lorem ipsum, often used for layout examples. Orphans and Widows The first or last lines of a longer paragraph standing alone at the top or bottom of a page are referred to as orphans and widows. They are generally considered layout errors and should be avoided; most word processors or layout software can prevent them automatically if the option is activated. Do it. While you’re at it, make sure that headings are not separated from the following paragraph. This is apparently not set in every template although it should be in my opinion. Ways of writing Text Plaintext The absolutely minimal solution :-). Single font, single size, the formatting possibilities of a type- writer but still problem potential with different character encodings and different line breaks. Advantages are minimal overhead and the fact that you effectively read and write the file directly, whether it’s program code or a layout description (HTML, LaTeX, Markdown). Also, even with code page incompatibilities, the text is usually still comprehensible (ASCII characters are normally the same). Using an editor capable of dealing with different standards like Notepad++, PSPad or jEdit is recommended. Word Processors Examples are MS Word, OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, AbiWord, Corel Office/WordPerfect Office, Kingsoft Office, SoftMaker Office, SSuite Office, Calligra Suite, Papyrus Autor/Papyrus Author and (possibly many) more. General In general those are WYSIWYG1 Editors, allowing to create a layout with a minimum of effort. Relatively easy to use (WYSIWYG) Built-in assistance for several tasks Often a fairly wide choice of in- and output formats Spell- and (sometimes) grammar checking Invisible formatting can break the document internally – this can be tricky to fix. Proprietary formats make cooperation difficult, compatibility can be a problem, vendor lock- in Microsoft Office The likely most widespread commercial office suite, available for Windows and MacOS. Tons of features ± Ribbon interface (new look and feel grouping options into different tabs rather than tradi- tional menus and toolbars, since Office 2007) Costs money OpenOffice/LibreOffice Possibly the best-known free office suite(s), originally based on StarOffice.

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