A Typography Primer

Word Processing for Publishers Series

We’ve come a long way from Pica and Elite. Today there’s an almost
unlimited number of font styles and sizes to use in your writing
What’s Inside . . .
projects and tons of ways to use them. Fonts are addictive with many
of us constantly adding to our collections. For scrapbookers, fonts add Legibility 2
to the design of a well-crafted page. For self-publishers, they impact
both the design and the readability of your document. Readability 2
Terms of the Trade 2
This guide takes a look at the principles of typography and discusses
the issues that will affect your family history project. Learn how to Font Types 3
make your publication easier to read and to use type to pull the Fonts and Layout 5
reader’s eye to the things you want to emphasize.
Resources 7
 Word Processing for Publishers Series - A Typography Primer

Legibility
The typeface designer creates a font style so that each character is
easily distinguished from the others. Your responsibility is to choose
fonts that make it easy for your readers to read your narrative. Does
this mean you shouldn’t use those great fonts you love? No. What it
does mean is that decorative and script font styles are hard on the
reader’s eye and should be reserved for decorative and impact
purposes, not in long swaths of body text.

Readability
Readability is your responsibility. Here, you are helping your readers
move through your publication without straining their eyes. This
becomes an issue in longer texts, like books. There’s a reason you’re
seeing more “large type” books on the market - readability for older
eyes. Readability includes not only the choice of font style, but font
size, character and word spacing, line length and spacing between
lines.

Terms of the Trade

Many of the terms still used when discussing type issues date from
the early days of type-setting. Some of them include:
• Points. A unit of measure when discussing type. Font sizes are
measured in points. There are 72 points to an inch.
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• Pica. Also a typesetting measurement, a pica is frequently used to

describe the width of a column. There are 12 points in a pica and 6
picas to an inch.
• Kerning. The term used to describe adjusting the white space
between characters. Look at the capital “T” in this guide’s headings.
Notice how the next letter has been tucked up under the crossbar of
the “t”. The font designer created his typeface to do that so there
wouldn’t be awkward white space between the characters. Some
typefaces handle this better than others.
• Leading. Usually called line height today, it represents the distance
between lines of type. In the days of manual typesetting, a strip of
lead was used to separate each line. Today it’s a setting in your word
processor.

Font Types
There are two groups of type - serif and san-serif. There’s a
huge number of font groups. What’s the difference? While
there are all kinds of fonts, not all are suitable for the body text
- or type - of a publication. The Silly Sister font may be great
for a scrapbook page, but it would be a big headache (literally)
for anyone trying to read a 150 page family history.
The serif type group has little widgies - called serifs - at the
end of each stroke as shown in this example. San-serif
typefaces do not. Serif fonts have been considered more

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readable with the serifs helping to lead the eye across the lines. San-
serif typefaces are traditionally used for headlines as they are
considered more legible when used in large sizes. These are the tried-
and-true principals from centuries of printing experience.
Compare the readability of this paragraph with the one above. A side-by-side narrative
comparison can spotlight issues with different typefaces that brief text samples won’t. Yes,
you want to choose a typeface that supports the style or theme of your writing project, but
it should still be a readable one if your want your readers to finish your
publication.
Does this mean you need to give up on all those great
A magazine-style pullout using a
fonts you’ve collected? Not at all. They are good choices decorative font can catch the reader’s
for graphical elements that catch the eye and give eye and point her to a specific point
emphasis to parts of your project. Select a handwriting
font for an excerpt from a letter or journal to draw the eye within the narrative.
to the complete transcription within the narrative.
However, you still must consider legibility and readability
when making your choices. Which of these examples do A magazine-style pullout using a
you find more readable? decorative font can catch the reader’s
Decorative fonts are good choices for headings as they eye and point her to a specific point
will help set the tone of your project. The headlines in this within the narrative.
guide use a sort of grungy font in gray instead of black to
give a vintage look - also supported by the graphic
masthead at the top of the piece. That same font would be very
difficult to read in long swaths of smaller text but it’s quite legible as a
headline.

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What is the difference between a typeface and a font? A typeface is a

character set designed in a specific style. One typeface usually
includes multiple fonts. For example, the common Arial typeface
includes the Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Arial Extended and Arial
Round MT Bold fonts, among others. The term font is often
interchanged with typeface, which is fine as long as you realize that
there is a difference.
Speaking of fonts, as you browse font collections you will find them
grouped into several common categories including decorative, script,
old style, casual and many more. These are used to help you find just
the font you need. There are three font technologies that can impact
your use of a font. PostScript Type 1 are professional quality fonts
designed for printing needs. TrueType fonts were created for Windows
systems and work well on screen-based projects. OpenType combines
the best of both worlds with great support for documents distributed in
PDF (portable document format).

Fonts and Layout

Your choice of fonts will have an impact on your publication’s
layout. First, the size of your font impacts the width of your text
columns. One rule for determining column width is to multiply your
font’s point size by 2 and the result is the number of picas your
column width should be. For example, a 12 point font multiplied by 2
is 24 picas or 4 inches (6 picas to an inch). Having said that, I must
point out that this is not a hard and fast rule. Why? Because all 12

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point fonts are not the same. Some typefaces display larger than
others. Consider the examples on the right. Not only is there a built-in
difference in length between these fonts, but also line height. Notice Enjoy your day.
how close the Trebuchet lines are to each other compared to the other ~ Times New Roman 12pt
fonts. Use the formula described here to get you started, then take a
look at the result and make adjustments as necessary. Enjoy your day.
~ Trebuchet MS 12pt
Limit the number of fonts used within your writing. The headings and
body text help your reader understand your story’s organization. Enjoy your day.
Different level headings should have a consistent style (size, color, ~ Array 12pt
alignment, etc.) to make it quickly obvious that it’s a main heading
versus a sub-heading. This guide uses only three font styles - one for
headings, one for the “fine print” at the end of the document and one
for everything else.
Sure there are all kinds of other fonts included in the guide as
examples. Using fonts as graphical elements “outside” the narrative -
photo captions, letter excerpts or scrapbook-style graphics - allow you
to demonstrate your creativity throughout your publication.
A little typography knowledge can give your writings the emphasis
they deserve. It can help visually set the tone of the story and make the
process of reading as enjoyable as the words being read. Aren’t you
worth that extra effort?

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Resources
The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
Typography article at About.com: Desktop Publishing
Typography article at Wikipedia
I Love Typography blog

Font sites:
• Fonts.com
• The Scriptorium A Typography Primer
by Denise Barrett Olson
• exlibris This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
• FontSite.com Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
United States License. To view a copy of this license,
• Urban Fonts (free page) visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second
• Identifont (free page) Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105,
USA.
Many font downloads include a text file describing how that font is licensed. Read
these licenses before using the font as it can impact how and where you can use the For more information regarding this publication contact
font. me at http://family.moultriecreek.us or by email at
author@moultriecreek.us.