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Impeccable texts: some basic rules of typography
Font choice
At the moment thousands of different fonts exist. Any user can have to his reach some hundreds (those included with the common programs.) Although the election of the typography for a document is a question, in good part, of personal tastes (and fashions), come consensus exists between the specialists in a series of basic points. The world of typography is a fascinating one, and in this manual we have devote a whole section to it.
If what we want is a easily legible text, we must discard letters with very ornamented shapes or decorative lettering. These must be reserved for special uses (posters, titles, initials, logos...) The body text must be made up with discreet, easily legible letters (but also refined and pleasant to the reader.)
Serif and sans serif —or simply sans— are the obvious choice for body text. They’re the classical type designs, evolved through the centuries to make the experience of reading as easy and pleasurable as possible.
Thousands of available digital fonts exist, and they fall into different categories of typeface classification, something every designer should take some time to know. It’s possible to find extensive information about type history and classification in different books and websites. The one-for-all type resource on the net is, of course, Luc Devroye’s On snot and fonts, easily considered the font resource.
Specifying sizes
The most current size for the normal text is between the 10 and 12 points. A point is equivalent to 1/72 of inch. If we design a composition with multiple narrow columns, the size can be reduced to 8 or 9 points; the bigger the paper, the larger the fonts can be, and the other way around. For example, if we use oversized paper or posters, we can increase it proportionally. For the headings there are no fixed rules, but often they are specified at a 20% superior or inferior size to the text size, together with a changes of style where necessary (using bold or italics.) This means that for a text to 10 points, a subtitle (or second level heading) of reasonable size could have about 12 points. If the text is greater, to 12 points, the subtitle would have to be increased to 14-14,5 points, and so on. In printed designs, you usually specify the sizes using the absolute units of points, but you can easily calculate the sizes or calculate them only once, and print it out in a table and have it near at hand —see our own example below. Web designers can take advantage of relative units, like percentages, or em units to create layouts where all the sizes of the elements get scaled in the same way when the user chooses a different size for the text.
Don’t trust the defaults! The default size of many programs is 12 points, just a bit too large for printed text, although it’s fine for the screen. For printed documents, it is more professional and inviting to read a size of 10 to 11 points (or perhaps 10.5 points.)
Main rules for typesetting (and common mistakes)
These are some orders that would have to be followed —always! Many errors that are committed derive to apply the typewriter habits and practice (with many limitations) to word processing or DTP programs, which are much more flexible. Let us remember: an appropriate font for the body of text must be used, with a size that makes the reading comfortable.
If you are creating a document with long blocks of text, such as a book, or a long article in a magazine, never mix too many different fonts in each page. It’s hard to resist the temptation: after all you have so many fonts to choose! But the look of the page will be chaotic —or will look like a fonts catalogue. “Too many” fonts, in this case, could be an absolute maximum of 4 different fonts, including the cursives If you can get away with fewer fonts, 2 or 3, even better.
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The leading (the spacing between text baselines) is another important characteristic of the text. Many programs have a “double-space” option, reminiscing of the old days of mechanical typewriter. It’s better not to use them. All word processing programs allow to establish an exact value for the leading, be it absolute or relative. See the table of recommended values on the left side; too small or excessively big values make the reading more difficult. The difference between a text badly set (or one with the nasty double spacing) and a text with correct leading is like the night and the day.
Normally, a leading of the 120% to the 140% of the size of the text is perfect. This means that, approximately, for text at 11 points, the space between baselines of two consecutive lines must be between 13 and 15 points. For other sizes, check out the table.
Take care with the text alignment. Full justification alignment isn’t necessarily more professional-looking. Take a look to any printed publication. It will surprise to you to see that, in fact, the alignment to the left is also very commonly used. This is because left alignment is the option that obtains a better distribution of the letters in each line, without blank spaces or altering the letter spacing (adding extra letter spacing or word spacing is usually bad and best avoided, except for titles.) The other options —alignment to the right and centered alignment— must be used exclusively for short texts (captions, titles, summaries...) since they make reading more difficult.
The separation of paragraphs is very important. This is very important, not only aesthetically, but also to avoid problems with the text blocks and text flow. The paragraphs must never be split with two carriage returns. Never! Use always the paragraph options of your application. For example, see this picture which shows the dialog in Word, in Format | Paragraph. Here you specify the indents, separation between paragraphs, how to control consecutive paragraphs... this is a vital part to have professional-looking text and avoid composition problems, like unexpected line breaks and empty lines at the end or beginning of pages.
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When you want to mark the beginning of a new paragraph in the text, there are two options, mutually excluding. Use one of these two alternatives, but never both in the same text. Of course, you shouldn’t set the text with neither of the two options.:
- Bleed the first line. The standard typesetting value is of 1 em, a relative unit equivalent to the width of an M letter, and equal to the current size of the font in points. If you work in points, for example, at 11 pt, 1em equals 11 points (approximately three blank spaces.) For normal texts in a book or a magazine with regular paper size, a larger bleed, say more than a centimeter (half an inch) is too big. Again, ’t trust the program’s defaults, usually too large. Specify this first line bleeding in the program options for paragraph, not typing extra spaces or tabs! You can leave the first line with no bleeding, because it’s clear where it begins with no further changes.
- Leave some extra space between paragraphs with no first line bleeding. Again, you have to specify this extra spacing in the paragraph options of the program, never with extra carriage returns..
We must insist: never try to mark the paragraph with tabs or extra spaces. You have comprehensive contro using the paragraph control menus or palettes, and it’s the right thing to do. This will prevent the text from having problems, too.
Other professional details.
Some common mistakes that are easy to avoid and professional details which make a difference:
- Never use underlined text. Another typewriter convention, in order to emphasize a part of the text. Use italics or bold instead. Of course, when you try to imitate an old typewriter-made document, feel free to underline.
- A dot and a comma or a parenthesis should be followed by one space, not two.
- You can improve the look of the item lists using some kind of graphic element instead of simple hyphens or dots. Try using small squares, rhombus, triangles, a small icon...
- For written texts, you should take care of the quotes. Instead of the normal keyboard quotes (straight quotes: ", '), use the correct typographic quotes, the “curly quotes”. In France and Spain it’s common to use «french quotes», and in Germany and other countries in central and eastern Europe, special curly quotes, the left one placed on the baseline.
- If your text contains figures, try to use old style figures (lowercase non-lining figures) because they combine better with normal text, which is set mostly in lowercase letters. The fonts which incorporate this kind of numerals are often called “osf” (from oldstyle figures.) But if you are designing a poster or cover with upper case only, you should use normal (lining) figures instead.
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The problem with some of these punctuation marks is that they do not appear in most keyboards. The necessary combinations appear in the attached table. Luckily, most of programs correct it automatically as you type, and it’s enough with having this auto-correct option enabled in the program preferences. In web pages the typographic control has been more limited for a while and that’s why very often "the incorrect" quotes show up due to different systems, language definitions and other issues.
