Tips for Typography

Quotation
• Curly quotes are the quotation marks used in good typography. There are four
curly quote characters: the opening single quote (‘), the closing single quote (’),
the opening double quote (“), and the closing double quote (”).
• "That's a 'magic' shoe." wrong
• “That’s a ‘magic’ shoe.” right
• How to convert all quotes to curly quotes.

• Don’t use quotation marks for emphasis. Use Bold or Italic (page 28).
• Each language has their own quotation marks for primary quotes and secondary
quotes. Check this link,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Summary_table
• Always put exactly one space between sentences. Here’s a paragraph with one
space between sentences: I know that many people were taught to put two
spaces between sentences. I was too. But these days, using two spaces is an
obsolete habit. Some say the habit originated in the typewriter era. Others
believe it began earlier. But guess what? It doesn’t matter. Because either way,
it’s not part of today’s typographic practice. If you have to use a typewriter-style
font, you can use two spaces after sentences. (These are also known as
Monospaced Fonts (page 90).) Otherwise, don’t.

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Question Marks & Exclamation Marks

• Ask more questions; avoid exclamations. Example,

• The exclamation point is overused. Give yourself a budget of one exclamation point
for any document longer than three pages. If you must use it, use it wisely.
• Never use more than one exclamation point in a row, unless you’re a teenager
sending a text message. Seriously.

Emoticons & Emoji

• OK in email or texts, not in formal writing.
• Emoticons and emoji, even more so than Ampersands (page 7), are casual
shorthand. So in non-casual settings—for instance, on your résumé—don’t.
• Overuse of these symbols is just as irritating as the overuse of question marks and
exclamation points, or all caps. If you find yourself punctuating every sentence
with :-) to avoid misunderstandings, learn to write better.

Semicolons & Colons

• Don’t mix them up.
• It’s used instead of a conjunction to combine two sentences (He did the crime; he
must do the time). Don’t use a semicolon to connect a subordinate clause to a
sentence (Since he did the crime; he must do the time). In that case, use a comma.
In a sentence with a conjunction, don’t use a semicolon before the conjunction (He
did the crime; and he must do the time). Use either a comma or no punctuation
before the conjunction. Or start a new sentence at the conjunction.

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• A semicolon also separates list elements with internal commas (We visited Tulsa,
Oklahoma; Flint, Michigan; and Paducah, Kentucky).
• The colon (:) usually connects the introduction of an idea and its completion (I own
three cars: a convertible, a sedan, and a minivan).
• Semicolons are often mistakenly used where a colon is correct, and vice versa.
Make sure you’ve got the right one.

Parentheses, Brackets, and Braces

• Parentheses are for separating citations or other asides from the Body Text (page
38). Brackets show changes within quoted material. Braces—sometimes known as
curly brackets—are not typically used except in technical and mathematical
writing.
• In general, these marks should not adopt the formatting of the surrounded
material.

• But sometimes, due to its slant, an italic character will collide with a roman
parenthesis. In that case, it’s fine to italicize the parentheses—readers will notice
the collision more than the departure from convention.

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Hyphens & Dashes

• Hyphens and dashes look similar, but they’re not interchangeable.

• Look Below.

• No hyphen is necessary in phrasal adjectives that begin with an adverb ending in

-ly (it’s a closely held company, not a closely-held company). Nor is a hyphen
necessary in multipart foreign terms or proper names used as adjectives (habeas
corpus appeal on the Third Circuit docket, not habeas-corpus appeal on the
Third-Circuit docket).
• Dashes come in two sizes—the en dash and the em dash. The em dash (—) is
typically about as wide as a capital H. The en dash (–) is about half as wide.
• En and em dashes are often approximated by typing two or three hyphens in a row
(-- or --- ). Don’t do that—it’s another typewriter habit. Use real dashes.

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• The em dash is used to make a break between parts of a sentence. Use it when a
comma is too weak, but a colon, semicolon, or pair of parentheses is too strong.
The em dash puts a nice pause in the text—and it is underused in professional
writing.
• Don’t use a slash ( / ) where an en dash is correct.
• Even though the en dash is used for joint authors (Sarbanes–Oxley Act), use a
hyphen for compound names. If the son and daughter of Sarbanes and Oxley
married, they’d be known as Mr. & Mrs. Sarbanes-Oxley (with a hyphen), not Mr. &
Mrs. Sarbanes–Oxley (with an en dash).
• Em and en dashes are typically set flush against the surrounding text. Some fonts
include a little white space around the em dash; some don’t. If your em dashes look
like they’re being crushed—particularly if you’re setting type on screen—it’s fine to
add word spaces before and after.
• An en dash makes an acceptable minus sign in spreadsheets or mathematical
expressions. (See also Math Symbols (page 68).)
If you need Math Symbols (page 68) infrequently—some light addition and
subtraction, the occasional negative number—you can get by without special
symbols. Use the plus sign (+) and equals sign (=) as usual. Use the en dash as a minus
sign (–) (see hyphens and dashes).

If you need to do multiplication or beyond, insert real Math Symbols (page 68)
by hand.

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• Em and en refer to units of typographic measurement, not to the letters M and N.
(Yes, the homophony is confusing. To disambiguate, loud print shops referred to
them as mutton and nut.) In a traditional metal font, the em was the vertical
distance from the top of a piece of type to the bottom. The en was half the size of
the em. Originally, the width of the em and en dashes corresponded to these units.
In today’s digital fonts, they run narrower.

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• Fans of Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style (and I am
among them—see bibliography) may know that he recommends using en dashes
with spaces rather than em dashes. Perhaps this practice is common in Mr.
Bringhurst’s native Canada. But in American typography, it’s not.

Ampersands
• Use sparingly.
• Ampersands are completely correct when they’re part of a proper name (Fromage
& Cracotte LLP).
• Otherwise, ampersands should be handled like any other contraction: the more
formal the document, the less they should be used. Here and there, but not
everywhere.

Ellipises
• Avoid using periods and spaces.
• An Ellipises is this, …. .
• he ellipsis is frequently approximated by typing three periods in a row, which puts
the dots too close together, or three periods with spaces in between, which puts
the dots too far apart.
• So use the ellipsis character, not the approximations.

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• Should you put word spaces around an ellipsis? As with the em dash (see hyphens
and dashes), that’s up to you. Typically you’ll want spaces before and after, but if
that looks odd, you can take them out. If there’s text on only one side of the ellipsis,
use a NonBreaking Space (page 12) on that side so the ellipsis doesn’t get separated
from the text.
• In certain contexts—say, fiction or screenplays—it may be common to indicate
interrupted dialogue with an ellipsis. But in most writing, the em dash is preferred.

Signature Lines

• To make a signature line,hold down the underscore key (shift + hyphen) until you
get the length you need.
• Same thing, right? Not quite. There are three good reasons to prefer underscores to
underlined word spaces.
• If you need to quickly rid a document of underlining, you might want to
select all the text and then uncheck the underlining option. But this will
wreck signature lines made out of underlined word spaces—they will
disappear.
• If you need to quickly ensure you only have one space between sentences,
you might want to search for and replace any double spaces. But this will
also wreck signature lines made out of word spaces—by partially
deleting them.
• Underscore characters don’t depend on formatting, so they will look the
same no matter where they’re copied and pasted. Underlined word spaces
may not.

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• You should depart from this rule only if the font you’re using has an underscore
character that doesn’t form a solid line when used in sequence. That’s how
underscores are supposed to work, but some fonts are uncooperative. If you see
gaps between the underscores, either use underlined word spaces, or use the
underscores from a different font. No one will know.

Apostrophes (for e.g isn’t, Don’t, won’t)

• Make sure they’re curly and point downward.
• Apostrophes always point downward. If the smart-quote feature of your writing
system is activated (see straight and curly quotes), you type an apostrophe with the
same key you use to type a straight single quote (‘).
• Wrinkles arise when an apostrophe is used at the beginning of a word (again,
assuming your smart-quote conversion is on). If you type the phrase:

This will be displayed as:

(No, you don’t need an apostrophe before the s in ’70s.)

The problem here is that the characters in front of 70s and n’ aren’t apostrophes—
they’re opening single quotes. They point upward. What you need is an apostrophe in
place of each sequence of omitted letters, so the result looks like this:

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Accented Characters (for e.g lbrecht Dürer, François)
• Don’t ignore them.
• I assume you’re writing in American English, but you might still encounter
accented characters in foreign words. Foreign words arise in two situations:
• As proper names, like people and places (Albrecht Dürer, François
Truffaut, Plácido Domingo). In names, accented characters must always
appear accurately. Otherwise, the name is misspelled.
• As loanwords used in American English. Some of these words have
become naturalized citizens and should be spelled without accents (naive
for naïve, melee for mêlée, coupe for coupé). Others have not and should
not (cause célèbre, piña colada, Götterdämmerung). Check a dictionary or
usage guide.
• How do you type these? Consult the chart of https://practicaltypography.com/
common-accented-characters.html

Foot and Inch Marks

• Use straight quotes, not curly.
• Foot and inch marks—also known as minute and second marks or prime and
double prime marks, depending on what they’re labeling—are not curly. Use
straight quotes for these marks. (' or '').
• Typography purists would point out that proper foot and inch marks have a slight
northeast-to-southwest slope to them. HTML purists would further point out that
these characters have their own escape codes (′ and ″). True, and
you are welcome to seek them out.

• Tread carefully if foot and inch marks appear within quoted material.

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• If you’re a purist whose chosen font is missing true foot and inch marks, there’s
nothing wrong with using the marks from a different font. Match the height and
weight as best you can. No one will know.
• A NonBreaking Space (page 12) in the middle of a foot-and-inch measurement will
prevent an awkward linebreak like 6’
10", and ensure that you get 6' 10”.

White-Space Characters

• There are six important white-space characters: the word space, the NonBreaking
Space (page 12), the tab, the hard line break, the carriage return, and the hard page
break. Each white-space character has a distinct function. Use the right tool for
the job.
• “But if all white space looks the same when printed, why should I care?” Two
reasons: control and predictability.
• Control means you get the intended result with the fewest keystrokes. Suppose you
need a paragraph to start at the top of the next page. What to do? If you use a hard
page break rather than a sequence of Carriage Returns (page 20), you can get the
job done with one keystroke.
• Predictability means that as you edit and reformat, you’ll get consistent results.
When you approximate a hard page break with Carriage Returns (page 20), your
text will eventually reflow, and you’ll get a large gap where you intended a page
break. Then you’ll have a new problem to diagnose and fix. But a hard page break
will always do the right thing.
• The time you invest in learning the white-space characters will be paid back in
layouts that snap together faster and require less fiddling.

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• A word processor aims to simulate a printed layout, so each white-space character
has a visible effect. An HTML document, by contrast, is a series of formatting tags.
So white space is handled more like it would be in a programming language: except
for nonbreaking spaces, any sequence of white space in HTML is collapsed to a
single word space when the document is rendered in a browser. To achieve visible
effects with white space, you need to use explicit HTML formatting tags.
• The word space has exactly one purpose: to create horizontal clearance between
two words. Likewise, the space bar has exactly one purpose: to insert a single word
space.
• Don’t use the space bar as a general-purpose white-space dispenser by holding it
down and watching the cursor glide across the screen. Though a calming sight, it
leads to anguish when formatting the document. Use exactly one word space at
a time.
• HTML supports a character called a thin space ( ) which is roughly half the
width of a word space. A thin space can be useful in situations where a standard
word space seems too large, for instance after the periods in

• “If you approve of smaller word spaces in some situations, why do you insist on
only one space between sentences, where a larger gap might be useful?” Because
you’re already getting a larger gap. A sentence-ending word space typically appears
next to a period. A period is mostly white space. So visually, the space at the end of
a sentence already appears larger than a single word space. No need to add
another.

NonBreaking Space
• Your word processor assumes that a word space marks a safe place to flow text
onto a new line or page. A nonbreaking space is the same width as a word space,
but it prevents the text from flowing to a new line or page. It’s like invisible glue
between the words on either side.

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• Put a nonbreaking space before any numeric or alphabetic reference to prevent
awkward breaks. Recall this example from paragraph and section marks:

• In the top example, normal word spaces come after the § and ¶ symbols, and the
numeric references incorrectly appear on the next line.
• In the bottom example, nonbreaking spaces come after the § and ¶ symbols. This
time, the symbols and the numeric references stay together.
• Use nonbreaking spaces after other abbreviated reference marks (Ex. A, Fig. 23),
after copyright symbols (see trademark and copyright symbols), and between the
dots in certain ellipses.
• Nonbreaking spaces can be inserted into HTML documents either with an escape
code ( ) or by typing a nonbreaking space character (using whatever key
shortcut is assigned to it in your text editor).
• If you believe in the principle that source code should be optimized for readability
—I do—then you should use the   escape code, as it makes the nonbreaking
space visible and explicit.
• Unlike other white space in HTML, a sequence of nonbreaking spaces is not
collapsed into a single word space. So theoretically, you can make larger spaces out
of nonbreaking spaces. But as with any White-Space Characters (page 11), this is
bad policy—like fixing a flat tire with duct tape.

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Trademark & Copyright Symbol
• When you need these symbols, use them. Don’t use goofy alphabetic
approximations like (TM) or (c) FOR trademark or copyright.
• If you use proper trademark symbols, they’ll appear at the right size and height. No
space is needed between the text and the trademark symbol.
• Copyright symbols appear in line with the text (© 1999). Use a NonBreaking Space

(page 12) between the copyright symbol and the year to ensure the two don’t end
up on different lines or pages.
• Many word processors automatically substitute a symbol when you type (TM), (R),
or (c). Consider turning off this feature, because references like Section 12(c) can be
silently converted to Section 12©. The spell-checker won’t detect this error, and it’s
easy to overlook while editing.
• Copyright © 2020 is redundant. Word or symbol—not both.
• I always use the nonitalicized versions of these marks, even if the adjacent text is
italicized. I think it looks better. But that’s a preference, not a rule.

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Tabs and Tab Stops
• Use it for horizontal space in the middle of a line.
• These days, the tab is used only for inserting horizontal space in the middle of a
line. If you need horizontal space at the beginning of a paragraph, adjust the first-
line indent (Look at this link of name in website). For a true tabular layout, use a
table(Look at this link of name in website), not tabs.
• The tab is not as vital as it once was, but word processors still shortchange its
capabilities. A new word-processing document has default tab stops every half
inch. These default tab stops exist so that something happens when you type a tab
in the new document. But this default behavior also suggests that what the tab key
does is move the cursor a half inch at a time. Not true.
• To get the most out of tabs, you should set your own tab stops. Avoid relying on the
default tab stops—they undermine the goals of control and predictability. As with
word spaces, also avoid using sequences of tabs to move the cursor around the
screen.
• To see your tab stops, display the ruler.

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• With the ruler visible, you can edit your tab stops.

• Tabs are used in bulleted and numbered lists to separate the bullet or number from
the text. Tabs are also used in automatically generated Tables (page 21) of contents
and Tables (page 21) of authorities to put the page numbers at the right edge of the
table.
• Tabs and tab stops have their place, but in most cases they act as a less-capable
alternative to a table. Use tabs and tab stops if your formatting task is truly simple.
If not, upgrade to a table.

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• You can fill the space in front of a tab (for instance, with periods or underscores) by
using a tab leader. Don’t approximate this effect by typing a hundred periods or
underscores manually in front of a tab. You won’t like the consequences.
• In HTML, there are no tabs or tab stops. But HTML does support Tables (page 21).
CSS layout modes called flexbox and grid can be used to arrange larger collections
of elements in tabular fashion.

First-Line Indents
• A first-line indent is the most common way to signal the start of a new paragraph.
The other common way is with Space Between Paragraphs (page 19).
• First-line indents and Space Between Paragraphs (page 19) have the same
relationship as belts and suspenders. You only need one to get the job done. Using
both is a mistake. If you use a first-line indent on a paragraph, don’t use space
between. And vice versa.

• But use your judgment—consider the width of the text block when setting the first-
line indent. For instance, narrow text blocks (3ʺ or less) should have first-line
indents toward the low end of this range. Wider text blocks should have bigger
indents.

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• Don’t use word spaces or tabs to indent the first line—as you recall from White-
Space Characters (page 11), that’s not what they’re for. Paragraphs indented with
word spaces or tabs are hard to keep consistent and waste far more time than they
save. Use the right tool for the job.

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Space Between Paragraphs
• Use 4–10 points.
• Space between paragraphs is an alternative to a first-line indent for signaling the
start of a new paragraph.
• The worst way to put space between paragraphs is to insert an extra carriage
return. (See Carriage Returns (page 20) for why.)
• As with First-Line Indents (page 17), you want the space to be large enough to be
easily noticed, but not so large that the paragraphs seem disconnected. A space
equal to 50–100% of the Body Text (page 38) size will usually suffice. The larger the
point size, the more space you’ll need between paragraphs to make a visible
difference.
•

• Is space before a paragraph equivalent to space after? Sometimes. In word

processors, the space between two paragraphs is the larger of the space after the
first paragraph and the space before the second paragraph. Thus, if every
paragraph has 12 points of space after, you’ll get 12 points of space between each
pair. But if each paragraph has 6 points of space before and 6 points after, the
space between will only be 6 points. To avoid surprises, I prefer to rely on space
after, and use space before in special circumstances. For instance, a block
quotation may need space before and after to look vertically aligned.

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Carriage Returns
• Use only when you want a new paragraph.
• but on a word processor, you only use a carriage return to start a new paragraph.
(In HTML, you use a formatting tag to denote a paragraph—a carriage return has
no visible effect.)

• As with the word space, use only one carriage return at a time. It’s common to see
multiple carriage returns used to add vertical Space Between Paragraphs (page 19).
Bad idea. If you want vertical space after a paragraph, use Space Between
Paragraphs (page 19).
• “But it’s so much easier to type two carriage returns.” I know. But in long,
structured documents, extra carriage returns create unpredictable consequences
as the document is edited. Whatever time you save with the shortcut will cost you
later.

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• What if you get a document that’s already littered with double carriage returns?
Search-and-replace works with White-Space Characters (page 11) too.

Tables
• The best tool for gridded or complex layouts.
• The good news: tables are one of the handiest tools in your word processor and
web browser. A table is usually the right solution for layout problems where White-
Space Characters (page 11) aren’t up to the task.
• Tables are useful—
• For spreadsheet-style Grids Of Numbers (page 120) or other data. In the
typewriter era, Grids (page 78) like this would’ve been made with tabs and tab
stops. These days, you’d use a table.
• For layouts where text needs to be positioned side-by-side or floating at
specific locations on the page. If making these is frustrating with the usual
layout tools, try using a table.
•

• There are many ways to format a table. But default tables have two formatting
defects you should always fix: cell borders and cell margins.

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• Cell borders are the lines around each cell in the table. Cell borders are helpful as
guides when you’re loading information into the table. They’re less useful once the
table is full. The text in the cells will create an implied grid. Cell borders can make
the grid cluttered and difficult to read, especially in tables with many small cells.

• In this example, cell borders are unnecessary. In other cases, they can be useful.
The goal is to improve the legibility of the table. When you’re ready to format your
table, I recommend turning off all the cell borders to start, and then turning them
back on as needed. (See rules and borders for more tips.)

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• Cell margins create space between the cell borders and the text of the cell.
Increasing the cell margins is the best way to improve the legibility of a dense
table.

• The default cell margins, especially in Word, are too tight. But add space gingerly—
a little goes a long way—start around 0.03ʺ and increase by increments of 0.01ʺ.
Also, there’s no need to make the cell margins the same on all sides. The top and
bottom margins can be bigger than the side margins, if that looks right.

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• In HTML/CSS, you can still use the traditional table markup to make a table. But
you can also use the newer CSS grid layout, which is now well supported in web
browsers. Its syntax is knottier than table. But by moving the table markup out of
the HTML and into CSS, it’s ultimately more flexible.

Rules & Borders

• Use them sparingly.
• In traditional printing terminology, a rule is a line; a border is a box. But in word
processors and web browsers, they’re variations of the same function. Rules and
borders can be applied to pages, paragraphs, or Tables (page 21).
• Like Centered Text (page 27), Bold or Italic (page 28), and all caps, rules and borders
are best used sparingly. Ask yourself: do you really need a rule or border to make a
visual distinction? You can usually get equally good results by increasing the space
above and below the text. Try that first.
• For borders, set the thickness between half a point and one point. Thinner borders
can work on professionally printed goods but are too fine to reproduce well on an
office printer or computer screen. Thicker borders are counterproductive—they
create noise that upstages the information inside. You want to see the data, not the
lines around the data.
•

• Similarly, don’t use patterned borders (i.e., anything other than a single solid line,
like dots, dashes, or double lines). They’re unnecessarily complicated.
• With rules, you have more latitude because they don’t accumulate the way borders
do. If you want to make a rule thicker than one point or use a pattern, go ahead.
But thick or patterned rules still wear out their welcome faster than the classic
half-point solid rule.

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• Never make rules and borders out of repeated typographic characters, like
punctuation, hyphens and dashes, or Math Symbols (page 68). Especially ridiculous
is the habit in certain offices of using stacked parentheses to make a vertical line.
Not only is it uglier than a vertical rule, it’s much harder to assemble. These are
typewriter habits. They’re obsolete.
• If you attach a rule to Headings (page 47), try putting it above the heading (rather
than below, which is usually the default). Then the rule will separate the end of the
previous section and the current heading, instead of separating the current
heading from its own section.

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Space above & below
• Space above and below works on the page for the same reason a dramatic pause
works when you’re talking. You draw a listener’s attention through contrast.
Loudness is an effective form of contrast. But so is silence.

• Likewise with the written word. Formatting tools like point size, color, and Bold or
Italic (page 28) have a role to play. But careless typographers mate them
indiscriminately, breeding noise. Space above and below gives you
emphasis without adding a single mark to the page.

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• How much space to add is a judgment call. Semantically, Headings (page 47) relate
to the text that follows, not the text before. Thus you’ll probably want the space
below to be smaller than the space above so the heading is visually closer to the
text it introduces.
• There is an upper limit. For instance, on a website, you wouldn’t want to add so
much space before a heading that it disappears below the bottom of the browser.
• If you’re already using Space Between Paragraphs (page 19), the space you add
around a heading should be larger, to create a distinction.

Centered Text
• It’s boring—use sparingly
• Centered text is overused. It’s the typographic equivalent of vanilla ice cream—safe
but boring. It’s rare to see text centered in a book, newspaper, or magazine, except
for the occasional headline or title. Asymmetry is nothing to fear.

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• Yet it is feared. So for all the fans of centered text, a poem:

• Whole text blocks should not be centered. Centering makes text blocks difficult to
read because both edges of the text block are uneven. Centered text blocks are also
difficult to align with other page elements. See Headings (page 47) for better
options.

Bold or Italic
• Bold or italic—think of them as mutually exclusive. That is the rule #1.
• Rule #2: use bold and italic as little as possible. They are tools for emphasis. But if
everything is emphasized, then nothing is emphasized. Also, because bold and

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 italic styles are designed to contrast with regular roman text, they’re somewhat
harder to read. Like all caps, bold and italic are fine for short bits of text, but not for
long stretches.

• With a serif font, use italic for gentle emphasis, or bold for heavier emphasis.

• If you’re using a sans serif font, skip italic and use bold for emphasis. It’s not
usually worth italicizing sans serif fonts—unlike serif fonts, which look quite
different when italicized, most sans serif italic fonts just have a gentle slant that
doesn’t stand out on the page.

• Foreign words used in English are sometimes italicized, sometimes not, depending
on how common they are. For instance, you would italicize your bête noire and
your Weltanschauung, but neither your croissant nor your résumé. When in doubt,
consult a dictionary or usage guide. Don’t forget to type the Accented Characters
(page 10) correctly.
• Characters adjacent to the outside edges of the emphasized text—like punctuation,
Parentheses, Brackets, and Braces (page 3)—do not get the emphatic formatting.
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• If you need another option for emphasis, consider all caps or Small Caps (page 30).
• Some fonts have both a bold style and a semibold style. You can use either for
emphasis. I usually prefer bold to semibold because I like the greater contrast with
the roman. But semibold is a little easier to read.
• Some fonts have styles that are heavier than bold, like black or ultra. These weights
are usually intended for large sizes (for instance, headlines) and don’t work well at
Body Text (page 38) sizes.

Small Caps
• Use real small caps; avoid fakes.
• Small caps are short capital letters designed to blend with lowercase text. They’re
usually slightly taller than lowercase letters.
• I’m a big fan of small caps. They look great and they’re very useful as an alternative
to Bold or Italic (page 28) or all caps.
• But most people have never seen real small caps. They’ve only seen the ersatz
small caps that word processors and web browsers generate when small-cap
formatting is used.

• Small-cap formatting works by scaling down regular caps. But compared to the
other characters in the font, the fake small caps that result are too tall, and their
vertical strokes are too light. The color and height of real small caps have been
calibrated to blend well with the normal uppercase and lowercase letters.

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• Therefore, two rules for small caps:
• Don’t click on the small-cap formatting box in your word processor. Ever. This
option does not produce small caps. It produces inferior counterfeits. (Even
when you’re using a font with real small caps.)
• The rules for all caps also apply to small caps: use small caps sparingly, add
Letterspacing (page 42), and turn on Kerning (page 43).
• Now for the bad news. If you want real small caps, you’ll have to buy them—they’re
not included with times new roman or any other system font.
• Sometimes, small caps come in their own font file that shows up separately in the
font menu. When you want small caps, you format the text with the small-cap font.
Other times, small caps are included in the main font file as an opentype feature
(named smcp). But either way, you can also use paragraph and character styles to
apply small caps, and eliminate the tedium of finding them.
• With small caps, it’s up to you whether to use regular capital letters at the
beginning of capitalized words. I prefer not to.
• I deliver my fonts (see mb fonts) with separate sets of smAll-Caps (page 40) fonts
with the Letterspacing (page 42) already baked in. This saves labor. It also allows
you to get properly spaced small caps in any program, even those that don’t
support OpenType features or Letterspacing (page 42). (Including web browsers—
see Letterspacing (page 42) for more.)
• After years in the wilderness, the CSS property font-variant: small-caps is now
safe to use. By default, it will access the OpenType small caps in the font—if they
exist. Otherwise, you’ll get the same old inferior counterfeits.

Color
• In typography, color is a term with two meanings.
• First, typographers will sometimes speak of a font as creating a certain color
on the page—even when it’s black. Used this way, the word encapsulates a set
of hard-to-quantify characteristics like darkness, contrast, rhythm, and texture.
• The second meaning is the usual one—color as the opposite of black & white.
This was once an irrelevant topic, as most of us had to be satisfied with
monochrome laser printers. These days, color printers are ubiquitous and
more writing is delivered on screen. So color has become a practical
consideration.
• On a page of text, nothing draws the eye more powerfully than a contrast between
light and dark colors. This is why a bold font creates more emphasis than an italic
font. (See also Bold or Italic (page 28).)

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• The perceived intensity of colored type depends not just on the color, but also the
size and weight of the font. So a thin or small font can carry a more intense color
than a heavy or large font.
• I’m not saying it can never be done well, but when someone puts colored type on a
colored background, I usually wish they hadn’t.
• In Print:
• Body Text (page 38) in printed documents (e.g., Résumés (page 113), Research
Papers (page 107), letters) must always be set in black type. No exceptions.
• At a typical body-text point size, color isn’t effective as a form of emphasis.
Small letterforms don’t cover much surface area on the page, so colored text
isn’t noticed unless it’s loud.
• Professionally printed documents (e.g., Letterhead (page 110), Résumés (page
118)) can include text set in color, but use it judiciously. Multiple shades of one
color are usually better than multiple contrasting colors.
• In laser-printed documents, avoid white text on a dark background, known as
knockout type. Knockout type uses about 20 times more toner than normal,
making it an expensive typographic effect.
• On Website:
• The horse may be long out of the barn on this one, but on the web, the same
rule of restraint applies: less color is more effective. When everything is
emphasized, nothing is emphasized.
• Consider making your text dark gray rather than black. Unlike a piece of paper
—which reflects ambient light—a computer screen projects its own light and
tends to have more severe contrast. Therefore, on screen, dark-gray text can be
more comfortable to read than black text. That’s why many digital-book
readers let you reduce the screen brightness or change the text color.
• Color remains the idiomatic way to denote clickability on the web. So feel free
to use color (with or without underlining) for hyperlinks. But be careful using it
on non-clickable text, as it may confuse readers.
• In PDFs:
• PDFs are read on both screen and paper, so which set of rules you follow
depends on how you expect the PDF to be used. If there’s a reasonable chance
the PDF will be printed, don’t bother with dark-gray Body Text (page 38)—it’ll
look gritty and strange when printed.
• The human eye can more easily distinguish light colors than dark. This is why a
paint store will have 50 shades of white and only two shades of black. So if you’re
using light colors, make gentle adjustments; dark colors need bigger adjustments.
• Liturgical rubrics are so named because they were originally printed in red. Red has
been the favored second color in typography for hundreds of years. To get the most
vibrant-looking red, use an old printer’s trick—make it slightly orange.
• Color on a printed page is made by two techniques. With spot color, one ink is used
to make the color. With process color, four inks are combined (cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black). Spot color is traditionally preferred for projects that involve one
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 or two colors, like Letterhead (page 110) and Résumés (page 118). Spot color
produces the most pure and saturated colors. It also permits special ink effects
(e.g., fluorescents, metallics, varnishes). Process color is used for printing color
photographs and other continuous-tone images (jobs for which spot color is
ineffective). Process color used to be an expensive technique, mostly restricted to
commercial magazines and catalogs (Color laser printers also use a process-color
technique, but they combine colored toners rather than inks.). But internet
printing services like MOO and 4by6.com have made process color available to
anyone. So why not print everything in process color? The problem is that process
color works by layering multiple colors, and changing the balance of those colors
by applying a halftone pattern to each. The halftone pattern isn’t visible in color
photographs. But it’s visible in type, because it’s a solid color. Halftone patterns
also create a gritty edge on small text, which affects legibility. Therefore, process
color isn’t ideal for Letterhead (page 110) or Résumés (page 118).
• Pro designers sometimes malign gradient fills as a signifier of amateur design. Like
any design tool, they can be used well—or poorly. In the physical world, most of the
color we see is essentially a gradient, because natural light falls unevenly. With
type, a background gradient that gently changes brightness can give a natural
sense of dimensionality.

Presentations
• Consider the size and lighting conditions.
• As I said in who is typography for, you should “work hard to see your text as an
actual reader will”. With presentations, that advice applies on a physiological level.
• Why? Because your readers—i.e., the people in the audience—will be viewing your
slides under completely different lighting conditions than you, while you’re writing
them. You’re probably sitting in a well-lit room, looking at the slides on a relatively
small laptop or desktop screen. To you, the white background you chose for your
presentation looks pleasant and elegant.
• But if your audience is in a dimmed room, their pupils will be dilated, and their
eyes more sensitive to bright light. So when those white slides are projected at epic
scale, they’ll just become a series of GIANT WHITE RECTANGLES floating in the
air for forty minutes. Staring at GIANT WHITE RECTANGLES for that long is
painful. It will cost you reader attention. Under those circumstances, why should
anyone be surprised that audiences hate digital slide presentations? And,
ultimately, the speakers who use them?
• To be fair, it’s not entirely your fault. The default themes packaged with
presentation programs encourage you to pick something bright and kicky. This
may help improve your productivity and job satisfaction. But it will not help your
audience read.
• So if your presentation will be given in a darkened room—here comes the simple
tip I promised—optimize your slides for reading in the dark.

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 • Before you start adjusting the typography, put yourself in the reading
environment of your audience. Turn off the lights and darken your workspace
so that the only light is coming from your computer screen.
“Whoa! That’s bright!” Now you’re getting it.
• Then, in your presentation program, start with a black background. Not dark
gray, nor a dark gradient—just black.
• You want to get the words on screen using the fewest photons possible. So try
a thin sans serif font. (Nothing wrong with a serif font, but they don’t typically
come in lighter weights.)
• As for font color, pure white type on a black background can have an
uncomfortable degree of contrast. So start your font at 50% gray and brighten
it from there. When it’s legible, stop. The thinner the font is, the brighter it will
need to be.
• Pick a base point size that lets you fit 12–15 lines of text on screen. Not that
you’ll ever be putting that much on a slide. (I hope.) But that’s a comfortable
reading size. As much as possible, use this same point size for every slide—
even if there’s only one line of text on screen. Constantly changing the point
size between slides is annoying. (Often, presentation programs will
automatically resize the text to fit the slide. Turn this feature off. Better to
change your text to suit the point size than vice versa.)
• Beyond that, the other typographic guidelines apply. In particular, use Color
(page 31) with restraint—prefer pale shades over bright ones. And avoid
Centered Text (page 27).

• Let’s see how this works in practice. (Look on the image to appreciate it at full size /
full horror.)

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Before
• Giant white rectangle.
• Boring system font.
• point size too large.
• line spacing too tight.
• Huge centered headline.

After
• Calm black rectangle.
• concourse font in pale gray.
• Point size reduced; line spacing increased.
• Headline neither huge nor centered.

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• More “white space” (which in this case is actually black space).

• If your presentation won’t be given in a darkened room, the text-color problem is

less urgent. Still, you should avoid putting pure black type on a pure white
background. Making the background light gray, or the type dark gray, will reduce
contrast and improve reading comfort.

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• You notice the pale gray background of the above slide mostly because here on the
web page, it’s surrounded with pure white. But when projected under ordinary
lighting, that pale gray will read as white. This is an optical phenomenon known as
simultaneous contrast, which you might remember from middle-school science
class. For instance, in the diagram at left, the center boxes don’t appear to be the
same shade of gray, but they are.
• Do you really need list bullets? Maybe not. In Body Text (page 38), bullets make the
start of each list item visually distinct from the start of a new line or paragraph. But
in a presentation, if all your powerful points are less than one line, you can omit
the bullets (as in the example above).
• Recall from Maxims of Page Layout (page 37) that it’s wise to design outward from
the text, not inward from the page edges. This is relevant to presentations, as the
wide aspect ratios of computer screens are inconvenient for typography (and
especially those of HD-style displays). Feel free to confine your presentation layout
to less than the full width of the screen. No one will be bothered that you didn’t fill
the whole space. But be consistent across all your slides.

Maxims of Page Layout

• Successful typography requires you to pay attention to the whole, not just the
parts. These maxims summarize the key principles I keep in mind when I’m laying
out a document.
• Decide first how the Body Text (page 38) will look. Why? Because there’s
more Body Text (page 38) than anything else. Four decisions—point size, line
length, line spacing, and font—largely determine the appearance of the Body
Text (page 38). Therefore, these decisions have the biggest influence on the
legibility of the text and the overall appearance of the document.
• Divide the page into foreground and background. The foreground contains
the most important page elements. (Hint: the body text is usually one of them.)
The background contains everything else. Don’t let the background elements
upstage the foreground elements. And remember that you have a limited
number of tools for making distinctions: position, size, font, and sometimes
Color (page 31). (See Letterhead (page 110) for an example of how to handle the
foreground–background relationship.)
• Make adjustments with the smallest visible increments. Typography thrives
on fine details. The difference between not enough and too much can be small.
• When in doubt, try it both ways. Don’t try to resolve typographic decisions
with logic. There’s no substitute for making samples of two options and
getting a visual reaction.

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 • Be consistent. Typography quietly describes to readers a structure and
hierarchy. Things that are the same should look the same. Things that look
different should actually be different. Without consistent treatment of similar
elements, the document will come across as random and meandering.
• Relate each new element to existing elements. The only time you have
unfettered discretion is when the page is blank. After that, the page is like a
jigsaw puzzle that becomes more constrained with each new piece. A grid can
help organize this process.
• Keep it simple. A principle as true in typography as anything else. If you think
you need three colors and five fonts, think again. If you think you need a logo
in the upper left corner of every page, think again. If you think you need to
clutter the edges of the page with useless nonsense, think again.
• Imitate what you like. Why reinvent the wheel? If you see typography you like
—in a book, on a sign, at a website—emulate it. Learning to see what’s good
about other examples of typography makes it easier to solve problems in your
own layouts.
• Don’t fear white space. A lot of mediocre typography results from a perceived
need to fill space. Things get too big or spread out. Work outward from the
text, not inward from the page edges. If the text looks good, the white space
will take care of itself.

Body Text
• The four important considerations are:

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• Though I’ll stop short of calling it a rule, I strongly recommend using a serif font—
not a sans serif font—for body text in print. Most books, newspapers, and
magazines use serif fonts for body text. It’s the traditional choice and still the best
choice.
• On the web, body text can be in a sans serif or serif font. Sans serifs were once
preferred for screen text because they rendered better on the lower-resolution
screens of the past. (That’s why most graphical user interfaces are built around
sans serif fonts). But on today’s screens, serif fonts look equally good.

Hard Line breaks

• The hard line break moves the next word to the beginning of a new line without
starting a new paragraph.

• A hard line break can help control text flow when a carriage return won’t work. For
instance, this heading breaks awkwardly:

• Suppose you want the line to break before finished. That way, the first line will end
in a more logical place and the two lines will be balanced. If you use a carriage
return, you’ll get:

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• Not what you want. Instead, put a hard line break after to be:

• Hard line breaks are also useful for separating the lines of an address (for instance,
on Letterhead (page 110)). See Centered Text (page 27) for another example of the
hard line break in use.

All-Caps
• It is fine for less than one line.
• All-caps text—meaning text with all the letters capitalized—is best used sparingly.
• At standard body text sizes, capital letters—or simply caps—are harder to read
than normal lowercase text. Why? We read more lowercase text, so as a matter of
habit, lowercase is more familiar and thus more legible. Furthermore, cognitive
research has suggested that the shapes of lowercase letters—some tall (d h k l),
some short (a e n s), some descending (g y p q)—create a varied visual contour that
helps our brain recognize words. Capitalization homogenizes these shapes, leaving
a rectangular contour.

• That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use caps. But use them judiciously. Caps are
suitable for Headings (page 47) shorter than one line (e.g., “Table of Contents”),
headers, footers, captions, or other labels. Caps work at small point sizes. Caps
work well on Letterhead (page 110) and Résumés (page 118). Always add

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 Letterspacing (page 42) to caps to make them easier to read, and make sure
Kerning (page 43) is turned on.
• DON’T CAPITALIZE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS. THIS HABIT ORIGINATED WITH
LAWYERS AND HAS INFECTED SOCIETY AT LARGE. MANY WRITERS SEEM TO
THINK THAT CAPITALIZATION COMMUNICATES AUTHORITY AND
IMPORTANCE. “HEY, LOOK HERE, I’VE GOT SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY! I
DEMAND THAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!” BUT A PARAGRAPH SET IN ALL
CAPS IS VERY HARD TO READ. IT’S EVEN WORSE IN BOLD. AS THE PARAGRAPH
WEARS ON, READERS FATIGUE. INTEREST WANES. HOW ABOUT YOU? DO YOU
ENJOY READING THIS? I DOUBT IT. BUT I REGULARLY SEE CAPITALIZED
PARAGRAPHS THAT ARE MUCH LONGER THAN THIS. DO YOUR READERS A
FAVOR. STOP CAPITALIZING WHOLE PARAGRAPHS.
• All-caps paragraphs are an example of self-defeating typography. If you need
readers to pay attention to an important part of your document, the last thing you
want is for them to skim over it. But that’s what inevitably happens with all-caps
paragraphs because they’re so hard to read. To emphasize a paragraph, you have
better options. Use rules and borders. Add a heading that labels it Important. Run
it in a larger point size. But don’t capitalize it.
• There are two ways to put caps in a document. The popular method is to engage
the caps-lock key at the left edge of the keyboard and type away. That works, but it
makes capitalization a permanent feature of your text.
• The preferred method is to apply all-caps formatting to normally typed text. That
way, you can toggle capitalization on and off without retyping the text itself.

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• Nicer professional fonts include Alternate Figures (page 64) and punctuation that
are designed to align correctly with caps. These alternates are available as
opentype features.

• To those holdouts who type Emails (page 56) in all caps: enough already. YOU
DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT. WE CAN HEAR YOU JUST FINE.

Letterspacing
• Use 5–12% extra space with caps, but not with lowercase (sometimes you may have
to do it with lowercase).
• Letterspacing (also known as character spacing or tracking) is the adjustment of
the horizontal white space between the letters in a block of text. Unlike Kerning
(page 43), which affects only designated pairs of letters, letterspacing affects
every pair.

• Capital letters usually appear at the beginning of a word or sentence, so they’re

designed to fit correctly next to lowercase letters. But when you use capital letters
together, that spacing looks too tight. That’s why you always add 5–12% extra
letterspacing to text in all caps or Small Caps (page 30). This is particularly
important at small sizes.

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• (Architects love to do this with lettering on building exteriors. I wish they’d stop.)
These are not absolute limits—use your judgment. But avoid the common error of
spreading letters too far apart. If the spaces between letters are large enough to fit
more letters, you’ve gone overboard.

• As with Kerning (page 43), if you use paragraph and character styles to make a style
with all caps or Small Caps (page 30), include letterspacing as part of the style
definition.

Kerning
• Kerning is the adjustment of specific pairs of letters to improve spacing and fit. (It’s
distinct from Letterspacing (page 42), which affects all pairs.) Most fonts come with
hundreds and sometimes thousands of kerning pairs inserted by the font designer.
• Below, notice how kerning reduces the large gaps between certain letter pairs,
making them consistent with the rest of the font.

• Always use
kerning. If
you use
paragraph
and
character
styles, turn
on kerning
as part of
your style

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 definitions (It’s also possible to manually kern letter pairs. For professional
typographers, this is a mandatory skill, but for everyone else, the built-in kerning is
just fine.).

Metrics vs. Optical spacing

• Use Metrics always; optical for emergencies.
• If you use Adobe InDesign—You might have noticed the popup menu that gives you
a choice between “metrics” and “optical” font spacing.

• Despite the benign-sounding name, optical spacing will mangle your font. It is akin
to putting your finest cashmere sweater in the washing machine. So always use the
“metrics” option.
• This setting controls the way InDesign lays out your type:
• Metrics spacing relies on the character-spacing information inside the font—
that is, the information about character widths and Kerning (page 43) pairs
that the font designer put there. When you use metrics spacing, you’re seeing
the font the way the designer intended.
• Optical spacing completely junks all this character-spacing information.
Instead, it applies a patented spacing algorithm that guesses what the width
and Kerning (page 43) of every character should be. To no one’s surprise, it
often guesses wrong.
• In this type designer’s opinion, the spacing of a font—that is, the design of the
white spaces—is far more consequential to its appearance than the design of the
black shapes. If you buy a professional font, and then run it through the optical-
spacing wringer, you’re throwing away most of what you paid for.

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• Still, don’t take my word for it. Compare these samples, showing equity with
metrics spacing on top, and optical spacing on the bottom:

• In metrics spacing, the spaces bewteen nu and un are visually balanced. But in
optical spacing, the u is pushed to the left, so nu looks tighter than un.
• In metrics spacing, the spaces between un and no are visually balanced. But in
optical spacing, the o (and all rounded letters) are squished closer to flat letters like
n.
• In metrics spacing, the t has the space it needs on the left, so that a combo like ntit
looks even. In optical spacing, the space within nt and it shrinks, becoming darker
than the ti space.
• “The optical-spacing row on the bottom looks OK to me.” I’ve enlarged these 11
letters to convince you that spacing differences exist. But yes, in a headline, these
differences are less bothersome, because there’s still plenty of space between each
pair. The real problem arises when you return to ordinary point size. These
asymmetries accumulate across hundreds of letter pairs, resulting in Body Text
(page 38) that’s jittery and uneven.
• The goal of spacing letters in a font is to give typeset text an even Color (page 31),
minimizing dark and light spots. Optical spacing does well enough with letters that
are symmetric—say, an uppercase H or lowercase n.
• But those are easy. As we can see above, achieving the same evenness is harder
with asymmetric letters like lowercase a or r or t. But it’s also vital, because these
letters occur so frequently in text. This is why humans outperform the machine on
font spacing.
• “So what is optical spacing good for?” Optical is the emergency option if you find
yourself working with:
• A font that has bad spacing (for instance, the client has insisted on such-and-
such free font) or;
• A font that’s being pressed into service beyond its designed capacity (for
instance, a body-text font being used for a headline).

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• If such an emergency arises, break the glass. Try optical spacing. Judge with your
eyes whether it helps.
• Otherwise—metrics.
• Why do these spacing differences matter more at small point sizes than large? Our
eyes perceive light and dark differently as type reaches the lower limit of our ability
to detect visual detail. See Screen-Reading considerations (page 61).
• Abuse of optical spacing is especially pronounced among American book
designers. Magazine and newspaper designers tend to use metrics spacing. But this
isn’t surprising—books have smaller design budgets, most of which is spent on the
cover, not the interior.
• Still, I blame Adobe for coining the misleading names “metrics spacing” and
“optical spacing” in the first place. If these options had been named accurately—
e.g., “original spacing” and “synthetic spacing”, or “nice spacing” and “shitty
spacing”—InDesign users would likely have made better choices.

Paragraph and Character Styles

• Implementing good typography can be a chore and a bore. Paragraph and
character styles eliminate most of the drudgery.
• Styles are the DNA of document layout. Styles make it easy to control typography
across a document or website. They can also be reused across multiple documents
or Websites (page 123). The result is better, more consistent typography with less
work each time.
• Do you verify your spelling by having a human being read your draft? No, you use
an automated spell-checker. Do you copy a document by putting each page on the
photocopier glass? No, you put the whole thing in the sheet feeder.
• If you plan to have a long-term relationship with good typography, I recommend
you learn how to use styles too.
• why you should care about styles
• Styles let you define sets of formatting attributes that get applied together. So
instead of selecting a heading, changing it to 13 point, bold, and all caps, you
can define a style that includes these three attributes, and apply the style to
the heading. What’s the benefit? When you come across the next heading, you
don’t need to individually apply those three attributes. You apply the style you
defined before. The Headings (page 47) will then match.
• Styles let you change formatting across a class of related elements. Suppose
you want to change your Headings (page 47) from 13 point to 13.5 point.
Instead of selecting each heading separately and changing the point size—a
tedious project—you can change the point size in the heading style definition
from 13 point to 13.5 point. Headings (page 47) using that style will be
automatically updated. What’s the benefit? Updating the formatting is
centralized and automatic. You can experiment with formatting and layout
ideas with little manual effort.

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 • Styles can inherit formatting from other styles. A change to the parent style
will propagate to all the substyles. But a change to the substyle will only affect
that one style. What’s the benefit? Inheritance adds another layer of
centralized automation—it’s like having styles of styles. You can define a set of
foundation styles and use them as the basis for more elaborate styles.
• how to use styles effectively
• In word processors, character styles can incorporate attributes of words and
sentences, like font, point size, Letterspacing (page 42), Bold or Italic (page 28),
all caps, and Small Caps (page 30).
• Paragraph styles can incorporate those attributes and also layout attributes
like line spacing, First-Line Indents (page 17), and rules and borders.
• (CSS doesn’t make a distinction between these two kinds of styles, but it’s
analogous to styles applied to inline elements (like <em>) vs. block-level
elements (like <div>).)
• As a rule of thumb, any time you have two document elements that should be
formatted identically, you’ll want to use a style.
• Initially, you may be inclined to define styles like <Caslon Bold 11.5 point>.
That’s better than applying the same formatting manually. But it overlooks
another benefit of styles, which is to define formatting in terms of what each
paragraph is used for, rather than how it looks. If you’re creating a style for a
block quotation, the name <Caslon Bold 11.5 point> is not as good as <Block
Quotation>. And later, if you change the formatting, the name will still be
accurate.
• Word processors come with a long list of built-in styles. Word, for instance, has
<Heading 1> through <Heading 9>, <Quote>, <Caption>, <Header>, <Footer>,
and so on. Many of these styles are wired into other functions. It’s good
practice to modify the built-in styles when possible rather than create
new ones.
• When you do this, you’ll also notice that many built-in styles are woefully ugly.
For example, Word’s <Header 1> is 14-point blue Cambria, a style with no
redeeming qualities. I’m not worried that you’d use it without fixing it first. At
this point, you know better.

Headings
• Have fewer levels, subtler emphasis.
• Headings present two problems: structural and typographic. Cure the structural
problem and the typographic problem becomes simpler.

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• The structural problem is that writers often use too many levels of headings. This
leads to increasingly desperate attempts to make them visually distinct, usually
with injudicious combinations of Bold or Italic (page 28), underlining, point size, all
caps, and First-Line Indents (page 17). The result is trainwrecks like this:

• Headings are signposts for readers that reveal the structure of your argument. Note
that I didn’t say the structure of your document. Headings that announce every
topic, subtopic, minitopic, and microtopic are exhausting. If you write from an
outline, that can be a good starting point for your headings, but don’t stop there—
simplify it further.
• Limit yourself to three levels of headings. Two is better. Readers should be able to
orient themselves from the headings. With more than three levels, that task
becomes hopelessly confusing. You may know your argument inside out, but no
one else does (or will).
• Once you’ve cured the structural problem, work within these typographic
parameters:
• Don’t use all caps. If your headings are full sentences, then they’re too long for
caps. And Always Avoid Title Case, Because Your Headings Aren’t Titles.
• Don’t underline. Why? Review underlining.
• Don’t center, subject to the exceptions in Centered Text (page 27).
• The best way to emphasize a heading is by putting space above and below,
because it’s both subtle and effective.
• Use bold, not italic. For headings, bold is easier to read than italic and stands
out better on the page. And since the choice is Bold or Italic (page 28)—not
both—you should prefer bold. But even then, it’s an option, not a requirement.
Non-bold headings work too.
• It’s fine to make the point size bigger, but just a little. Use the smallest
increment necessary to make a visible difference. If your text is set in 12 point,
you needn’t go up to 14 or 15 point. Try a smaller increase—to 12.5 or 13 point.
• Only use two levels of indenting, even if you use more than two levels of
headings. Some writers like to indent every heading a little farther. Bad idea. It
ends up looking random and messy.
• Suppress Hyphenation (page 49) in headings, and use the Keep Lines Together
(page 53) and keep with next paragraph options to prevent headings from
breaking awkwardly.
• See Hierarchical Headings (page 54) for a contrarian suggestion about how to
number headings.
• If you’re using bold in your heading, you can also try reducing the point size by a
half or full point. If your font has a relatively heavy bold style (like times new

Page 48 of 136
 roman), reducing the size can offset the effect of the darker Color (page 31), giving
you subtler emphasis.
• Certain web-design pundits claim that modular scale—that is, multiplying the
Body Text (page 38) by a recurring ratio—is a useful method of sizing web
headings. I disagree. Yes, mathematical tools can guide certain typographic choices
(see Grids (page 78), for instance). The risk with these shortcuts is that they
encourage typographers to satisfy themselves with numerical justifications—I used
the golden ratio, therefore it must look good!—at the expense of developing visual
judgment. When your headings look right, they are right—and if so, the ratio
matters not a whit. (FWIW, I’ve never used a modular scale to size type. And never
will.)

Hyphenation
• Mandatory for Justified Text (page 51); optional otherwise.
• Hyphenation is the automated process of breaking words between lines to create
more consistency across a text block.
• In Justified Text (page 51), hyphenation is mandatory.
• In left-aligned text, hyphenation evens the irregular right edge of the text, called
the rag. Hyphenation is optional for left-aligned text because the rag will still be
somewhat irregular, even with hyphenation. Hyphenation doesn’t improve text
legibility. In this case, consider turning it off.
• As line length gets shorter, hyphenation becomes essential. Why? With
hyphenation off, your word processor or web browser can only break lines at word
spaces. As the lines get shorter, there are fewer words and hence fewer possible
break points in each line, making awkward breaks more likely.

Page 49 of 136
• Sometimes you may want to suppress automatic hyphenation. For instance,
Headings (page 47) are relatively short, so hyphenation often causes more
problems than it solves.

• Hyphenation can be suppressed in a single paragraph, or a set of paragraphs, if you

suppress hyphenation within paragraph and character styles.

• In word processors, you can exert rudimentary control over automatic

hyphenation. If you’re curious, search your help file for “hyphenation options.”
Over the years, I’ve never touched these, so I doubt you’ll need to either. The
nonbreaking hyphen and the optional hyphen solve most hyphenation problems,
and even those are pretty rare.
• In web browsers, you can exert almost no control over automatic hyphenation, so if
you use CSS hyphenation, be prepared for some clunkers.
• If you’re using a web content-management system like WordPress, an alternative
hyphenation method is to use a plugin that puts soft hyphens (aka Optional
Hyphens (page 52)) in the text. Soft hyphens are well supported in web browsers,
even browsers that don’t support CSS hyphenation (e.g., desktop Chrome). This
also allows somewhat more control over hyphenation. But it’s more work. If your
project demands full justification, this might be worth it. Otherwise, probably not.
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Justified Text
• Justified text is spaced so the left and right sides of the text block both have a clean
edge. The usual alternative to justified text is left-aligned text, which has a straight
left edge and an uneven right edge. Compared to left-aligned text, justification
gives text a cleaner, more formal look.
• Justification works by adding white space between the words in each line so all the
lines are the same length. This alters the ideal spacing of the font, but in
paragraphs of reasonable width it’s usually not distracting.

• If you’re using justified text, you must also turn on Hyphenation (page 49) to
prevent gruesomely large spaces between words, as shown in the example below.
•

• Justification is a matter of personal preference. It is not a signifier of professional

typography. For instance, most major U.S. newspapers and magazines use a mix of
justified and left-aligned text. Books, on the other hand, tend to be justified.

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• Keep in mind that the justification engine of a word processor or web browser is
rudimentary compared to that of a professional page-layout program. So if I’m
making a word-processor document or web page, I’ll always left-align the text,
because justification can look clunky and coarse. Whereas if I’m using a
professional layout program, I might justify. But the choice is yours.
• If you’re using justification in a high-end page-layout program, you’ll have the
choice of distributing the extra space in each line between words or between
letters (or some combination). Please—put it between the words. Type designers
spend a lot of time getting the spacing between characters right. (Some of us would
even say spacing is the essence of type design.) If your character spacing is
changing from line to line, your justified text block will look horrible. For another
instance of this problem, see Metrics vs. Optical spacing (page 44).

Optional Hyphens
• Mark a Hyphenation (page 49) location.
• The optional hyphen, also known as the soft hyphen, is usually invisible. The
optional hyphen marks where a word should be hyphenated if the word lands at
the end of a line. You can put multiple optional hyphens in a word.
• Why would you want to do this? Some words bedevil Hyphenation (page 49)
engines. For instance, TrueType will often get hyphenated as Tru-eType , as in the
example below, from a rival typography book:

• To prevent this, I put an optional hyphen in the middle (True~Type). Then it will be
hyphenated correctly.
• How do you know if a word
won’t be hyphenated correctly?
The problem usually afflicts
words that aren’t in a standard
hyphenation dictionary, like
jargon words, unusual proper
names, and words with
nonstandard spellings, like
trade names. As Justice Potter
Stewart might have said, you’ll
know it when you see it.
Page 52 of 136
• Even though you type a key to insert an optional hyphen, you won’t see it until it’s
needed. And obviously, if your automatic hyphenation is turned off, you’ll never
see it.
• For the Hyphenation (page 49) in this book, I used Frank Liang’s hyphenation
algorithm(http://tug.org/interviews/liang.pdf) to insert optional hyphens when each
page is generated. (I’ve released this code(http://github.com/mbutterick/
hyphenate)as an open-source hyphenation module for Racket.) Though CSS
notionally supports hyphenation with the hyphen property, it’s not
supported(http://caniuse.com/#search=hyphen) as well as the optional hyphen.

Keep Lines Together

• Keep lines together ensures that all lines in a paragraph appear on the same page.
If the last line of the paragraph won’t fit on the current page, the whole paragraph
will be moved to the next page.
• Use this option with Headings (page 47) to prevent them from starting at the
bottom of one page and continuing at the top of the next. That looks bad.
• Like Widow and Orphan Control (page 63), keeping lines together will create gaps
at the bottom of pages. But unlike Widow and Orphan Control (page 63), you only
want to keep lines together in special situations, not as part of your default text
formatting.
• Why? Keeping lines together is a blunter technique. It only works on whole
paragraphs, so the longer the paragraph, the bigger the gap.
• If you need to make groups of elements stick together, the keep-lines-together
option works well with Hard Line breaks (page 39). Recall that Hard Line breaks
(page 39) don’t create a new paragraph, but rather a set of lines. Keeping lines
together will ensure this set of lines appears on a single page.
• For instance, it’s helpful to keep lines together in signature blocks:

Page 53 of 136
• Here, you’d put a hard line break at the end of each line. Then you’d set the whole
signature block—which is a single paragraph—to keep lines together. That way,
you’ll never have to worry that half the block will end up on one page and half on
the next. All of it travels together.

Hierarchical Headings
• Traditionally, hierarchical headings start with roman numerals at the top level (I, II,
III); then switch to capital letters (A, B, C); then numerals (1, 2, 3); then lowercase
letters (a, b, c); then romanettes (i, ii, iii); and then variations of the above using two
parentheses instead of one, or other barely visible changes. This is a terrible way to
label hierarchical headings.
• Roman numerals and romanettes stink. They’re difficult to read. (Quick, what
number is XLIX?) They’re easy to confuse at a glance. (II vs. III, IV vs. VI, XXI vs.
XII.) If what we mean by I, II, III is 1, 2, 3, then let’s just say so.
• Letters aren’t much better. Though we immediately recognize A, B, C as
equivalent to 1, 2, 3, the letter-to-number correlation gets weaker as we go past
F, G, H. (Quick, what number is T?) If what we mean by J, K, L is 10, 11, 12, then
let’s just say so.
• Mixing roman numerals and letters results in ambiguous references—when
you see a lowercase i, does it denote the first item or the ninth item? Does a
lowercase v denote the fifth item or the 22nd item?
• By using only one index on each header, it’s easy to lose track of where you are
in the hierarchy. If I’m at subheading d, is that d under superheading 2 or 3?

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• If you need to write a document with hierarchical headings, take a cue from
technical writers, who solved this problem long ago—by using tiered numbers
as indexes for hierarchical headings.

• So instead
of:

• You’d have:

• To my eyes, this system is more understandable—because it only uses

numbers, it avoids ambiguity or miscues. It’s also more navigable—because
every tiered number is unique, it’s always clear where you are in the hierarchy.
And every word processor can automatically produce tiered numbering.
Consider it.
• CSS will produce numbered headings by default if you use the <ol> (ordered
list) tag, but tiered numbers require a little extra work—investigate the
counter-increment property.

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Emails
• Use System Fonts (page 56) or don’t bother.
• What about typography within emails? Unfortunately, due to the technical
constraints of email systems, your options are limited.
• Unlike a PDF, fonts don’t get transmitted with an email. So even though you can
compose an email in any font you like, recipients won’t see that font unless they
also happen to have it installed. Moreover, recipients get their email using a variety
of hardware and software, which have inconsistent and unpredictable typographic
capabilities.
• This leaves two plausible policies:
• If you must format your emails, stick with common System Fonts (page 56),
and make sure your messages don’t rely on spacing tricks specific to the font.
(Those of you who insist on aligning things with multiple word spaces were
already warned.) Simpler is better.
• Or you can just treat email as a typography-free zone. This is my policy.
• A lawyer I know appends a 200-kilobyte scan of his business card to every email.
Nobody likes him. Use text, not an image, so your contact information can be
copied and pasted easily.

System Fonts
• Avoid if you can, choose wisely if you can’t.
• System fonts are the fonts already installed on your computer. Some are better
than others. In printed documents they present three problems.
• Many system fonts aren’t good. The Windows and Mac OS libraries have
improved, but they’re still minefields of awful fonts. I won’t name names, but
my least favorite rhymes with Barial.
• Many system fonts have been optimized for the screen, not print. This comes
at the cost of design details, which have been sanded off because they don’t
reproduce well on screen (e.g., Georgia, Verdana, Cambria, and Calibri).
Screen-optimized fonts look clunky on the printed page(In one square inch, an
LCD screen that displays 100 dots per inch has less than 3% of the resolution
of a laser printer with 600 dots per inch, so rendering a font accurately is
much more difficult. See Screen-Reading considerations (page 61).).

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 Compare the two fonts above. In basic appearance, they’re similar. But Georgia
was optimized for the screen; Miller was optimized for print. See the difference?

• All system fonts are overexposed. Because these fonts are included with
billions of computers, they’re used all the time. Not every typography project
demands novelty. But if yours does, look elsewhere. For instance, please don’t
adopt the slogan “A Design Firm Unlike Any Other” and then set it in
Helvetica.
• If you’re limited to system fonts, consult this chart and choose wisely. For
print, the A list is best. For screen display, like Presentations (page 33) and
Websites (page 123), the A and B lists are fine. They’re also suitable for sharing
draft documents. Avoid the C list if you can. F list, kapu (WARNING:This chart
is offered only as a harm-reduction device. In the long term, a diet of system
fonts can be harmful to your health. My official advice remains the same:
professional writers should use professional fonts. In the pages following, I
suggest professional alternatives to the most common system fonts.).

• Fonts plausible for Body Text (page 38) are marked with ★. Others are usable
for special purposes (for instance, Letterhead (page 110)).
• This chart includes all the common Windows and Mac system fonts, plus the
Microsoft Office fonts. System configurations differ, so not every font will be
on your computer.
• These rankings represent a blend of practical and aesthetic considerations, not
absolute merit. Some fonts on the F list aren’t bad. They’re just inapt for
professional writing. Similarly, some fonts on the A list are not my favorites,
but they’re reasonably useful.

Page 57 of 136
Page 58 of 136
• “My PDF will probably be read on screen. Shouldn’t I use a screen-optimized
system font?” No. In Windows, certain system fonts (e.g., Georgia, Calibri) have
been optimized by Microsoft for user-interface purposes. This is
accomplished with hinting, which is extra software code stored in the font itself.
Windows relies on this hinting when it draws text on screen (e.g., in Microsoft
Word, or in a web browser). Adobe uses its own text-rendering technology in
Acrobat so that PDF documents display the same way on screen regardless of the
underlying operating system.
• “But if I use a print-optimized professional font in my PDF instead of a system font,
my readers probably won’t have the same font installed.” Right. But it doesn’t
matter. When you generate a PDF, your fonts are embedded in the PDF to preserve
the formatting.
• This is not true, however, on the web. Web browsers use the text rendering of the
operating system. Thus, in Windows browsers, screen-optimized system fonts have
traditionally held an advantage, because they look good and they’re already
installed. (Indeed, the Microsoft fonts Georgia and Verdana were specifically
created for web use.) But this advantage is rapidly fading with the advent of screen-
optimized webfonts and the general shift toward higher-resolution screens. Still,
for now, using professional fonts on a website requires a little more legwork than it
does in PDF.
• Yes, I dislike Arial more than Comic Sans. Though it’s the undisputed king of the
Goofy fonts (page 60), Comic Sans is at least honest about what it is. But Arial is
merely a bland, zero-calorie Helvetica substitute.

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• For many, the two are indistinguishable. But for typographers, Arial contains none
of the consistency and balance that makes Helvetica successful. For instance, the
ends of the lowercase a, c, e, g, s, and t in Helvetica are exactly horizontal. In Arial,
those ends are sloped arbitrarily. Reading Arial is like trying to have dinner on a
tippy restaurant table.
• Still, the main issue is overuse. After 25 years as a system font, Arial has achieved a
ubiquity that rivals times new roman. And like Times New Roman, Arial is
permanently associated with the work of people who will never care about
typography.
• You’re not one of those people. So use Avenir. Use Franklin Gothic. Use Gill Sans.
Use one of the fonts listed in helvetica and arial alternatives. Or use something
completely different. But don’t use Arial. It’s the sans serif of last resort.

Goofy fonts
• Don’t use them.
• I once met a lawyer who had set his Letterhead (page 110) in a font called Stencil:

Who were his target clients? Army-surplus stores? He explained that he wanted
something distinctive.
Distinctive is fine. Goofy is not.

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 From the top: no, no, no, no, and hell no.
• Novelty fonts, script fonts, handwriting fonts, circus fonts—these have no place in
any document created by a professional writer. Save them for your next career as a
designer of breakfast-cereal boxes.
• Don’t misunderstand—I completely believe in the power of a font to make an
impression. Some of these fonts might be useful in a sign or a billboard, where the
goal is to attract attention using limited space. But in a document that invites the
patience and attention of a reader, a goofy font is as subtle as a jackhammer in a
library. And equally unwelcome.

Screen-Reading considerations
Q. How does screen reading affect typographic choices?
A. Less and less.
Over the last 30 years, the quintessential problem of digital typography has been how
to make fonts look good not only on high-end publishing equipment, but also coarser
devices like laser printers and personal-computer screens.
These days, the hardware differences between these devices have largely
disappeared. Thus, with screens becoming more paper-like than ever, there’s
declining need to make special accommodations for screen reading.
how digital type works
Whether it’s displayed on screen or printed, the computer draws a digital letterform
the same way: by scaling a glyph shape to a certain size and activating the pixels that
are inside the shape. Thus, the quality of rendered digital type depends on two
factors:
• The number of pixels available (known as resolution, usually measured in dots
per inch)
• The number of colors each pixel can display (known as color depth, measured
in possible colors per pixel).

Page 61 of 136
• But more pixels aren’t always better. At the high end, all reading is constrained by
the physiology of the human eye. The eye’s limit of perceivable detail is usually
estimated to be 1–2 arcminutes. (An arcminute is 1/60th of an angular degree in the
field of vision.) Therefore, pixels smaller than one arcminute are superfluous,
because we can’t resolve differences that small. (If we assume we can see a pixel
that’s one arcminute wide, the calculation of pixels per inch visible at a certain
distance is equal to the number of arcminutes that fit into an inch at that radius. So
for a screen 24ʺ away, we divide the number of arcminutes in a circle (360 × 60 =
21600) by the circumference at radius 24ʺ (2π × 24ʺ = 150.80ʺ). Then 21600 / 150.80ʺ
= 143.24.)
• Because this limit is an angular measure, perceivable detail varies in direct
proportion to reading distance. For instance, my desktop monitor is about 24ʺ
away, which means I can see about 143 dots per inch. But on a tablet or phone held
at 12ʺ, I can see twice that, or 286 dots per inch (which becomes four times as many
pixels per unit of area).
• a short history of display hardware
• For the first 20 years of digital typography, computer screens barely improved.
They were stuck—yuck—in the range of 75 dots per inch. During that time,
companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe developed technologies that were
meant to make digital fonts look better on screen. During the desktop-
publishing era of the late ’80s, the big jump was from bitmap fonts (which only
look good at one certain size) to outline fonts (which can be scaled to any size).
Still, screen typography was mostly an afterthought.
• The project of improving screen type became more urgent with the advent of
the web. Some of the best-known fonts emerging from these efforts were
Microsoft’s Verdana, Georgia, and Calibri, all of which were heavily optimized
for screen reading. At the turn of this century, it was true that certain fonts
looked better on screen, and others looked better in print. These fonts became
the starting point for those designing onscreen typography.
• But since 2010, screen hardware has been making up for lost time. High-
resolution screens first emerged in smartphones, then spread to tablets,
laptops, and now desktops. For instance, my smartphone display has a
resolution of 326 dots per inch, and my desktop monitors have a resolution of
185 dots per inch, both of which exceed the limits of human vision. (By the
way, if you haven’t upgraded to a 4K desktop monitor, it’s well worth it. See the
infinite-pixel screen.)
• what does this mean for screen typography?
• For font choice, it means you should use whatever font you’d prefer on the
printed page. Those traditional “screen-optimized fonts” of the ’90s were
optimized for screens of what we will soon consider a more primitive era.
Fonts like Georgia and Calibri have no special legibility benefit on today’s
screens. (Like all System Fonts (page 56), they still have the benefit of being
installed on nearly every computer, however, so they’re still useful for sharing
draft documents with colleagues.)
• As for Page Layout (page 75), most screens are smaller in height and width
than the traditional 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ printed page. So if you’re certain that a document
will only be read on screen, it could make sense to shrink the Page Margins
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 (page 70) and raise the point size to adjust for this difference. But if a
document could also be printed—most downloadable PDFs would fall into this
category—then it’s best to stick with a print-optimized layout.
• The definitive article on this subject is Beat Stamm’s Raster Tragedy(http://
rastertragedy.com/), which has been updated steadily since its original release in
1997. Perfect for those still in the hunt for their ultimate font-nerd badge.

Widow and Orphan Control

• Picture a paragraph that starts at the bottom of one page and continues at the top
of the next. When only the last line of the paragraph appears at the top of the
second page, that line is called a widow. When only the first line of the paragraph
appears at the bottom of the first page, that line is called an orphan.
• Widow and orphan control prevents both. Orphans are moved to the next page
with the rest of the paragraph. To cure widows, lines are moved from the bottom of
one page to the top of the next. It’s a little more complicated than it sounds,
because curing a widow cannot create a new orphan, nor vice versa.
• Be aware that if you use widow and orphan control, you will frequently see blank
lines at the bottom of your pages. This is normal, since lines must be transplanted
to cure the problem.
• Widow and orphan control in a word processor is all-or-nothing. You can’t control
widows and orphans separately, even though widows are more distracting. Why?
Orphans appear at the beginning of a paragraph, so they’re at least a full line. But
widows can be any length, even a single word, because they appear at the end of a
paragraph.
• Do you need widow and orphan control? Try it. See how it looks. In my own work, I
approach widow and orphan control the same way I approach Ligatures (page 73)—
I only use it if widows and orphans are causing a visible problem. Otherwise, I find
that the blank lines at the bottom of the page are more annoying than the widows
and

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 orphans.
• You can also cure isolated widows and orphans with some judicious editing. But
don’t use a hard line break or carriage return.
• Widows & orphans aren’t typically an issue on the web, because web content
doesn’t naturally span multiple pages. Browsers, however, are happy to put a small
word alone on the last line of a paragraph, which always looks bad. You can fix this
with a NonBreaking Space (page 12) and a little clever programming.

Alternate Figures
• Though we think of a font as a set of characters with a uniform visual appearance,
the genesis of these characters is anything but uniform. Our writing system brings
together characters that were originally handwritten by people in different
countries, in different centuries. To achieve a uniform appearance, a type designer
has to harmonize these disparate forms.
• I can’t explain why typographers adopted the term figures rather than the perfectly
good numerals. But that’s how it is.
• Our uppercase alphabet came from the inscriptional capitals of the Romans. Our
lowercase alphabet came from the European uncial alphabets of the Middle Ages,
which themselves evolved from scribal approximations of the uppercase alphabet.
• But our figures were invented in India. They spread westward through the
influence of Persian and Arab mathematicians. Traditionally they were known as
Arabic numerals, but latterly as Hindu-Arabic numerals. Indic and Arabic
languages, of course, look very different from European languages. Thus, figures
have always presented a challenge for type designers, as they rely on shapes that
are found nowhere in the uppercase and lowercase alphabets.
• Type designers have met this challenge by devising sets of alternate figures,
intended for different typographic contexts. Three things to know in advance:
• It’s never wrong to use the default figures in your font—namely, the ones you
get when typing the keys 0–9. Those are put in the default position because
they’re intended to work well across a range of contexts.
• Not every font has every set of alternate figures listed here. Alternate figures
are added based on the type designer’s impression of how the font will be
used, and whether the alternates will be useful.
• If alternate figures are included in your font, they’ll be implemented as
opentype features. Those caveats also apply, especially pertaining to
application support.
• Lining Figures
• These are the most common figures. They’re also the ones you’re most likely
to find in the default position of a font. Lining refers to the fact that figures
“line up” at the top and bottom. Lining figures can be used in any situation.
Lining figures are always preferred for all caps text because they come closest
to cap height (Lining figures are usually the same height as caps, but not
Page 64 of 136
 always.
Some fonts
have lining
figures
that fall
between
lowercase
and cap height
(for instance,
equity)).

• Oldstyle figures
•Unlike
lining
figures,
oldstyle
figures are
designed to
look more like
lowercase
letters. The
ones in equity
(shown
below) are
typical—some are short, some descend below the baseline, and some ascend.
You won’t be surprised to hear that oldstyle figures work best in lowercase
body text (“Oldstyle” is a curious term for these, because the oldest figures—
the original Hindu-Arabic numerals of the first century—look more like lining
figures. They’re also sometimes called lowercase or medieval figures.)

Page 65 of 136
 • Still, I won’t say that they’re inherently better than lining figures for that
purpose. As with Justified Text (page 51), you’ll see it done both ways in
professional typography. And in context, oldstyle figures sometimes look a
little, well, old. So the choice is yours.
• With caps, however, you should not use oldstyle figures. They look wrong.
• tabular & proportional figures
• Tabular figures are set on a fixed width. That way, each figure occupies the
same horizontal space on the page (somewhat like a monospaced font).
Proportional figures are not likewise uniform: the figures are set on varying
widths that suit the shape of the figure.

• Note that whether figures are lining or oldstyle is separate from whether
they’re tabular or proportional. In fact, some fonts (like concourse) have all
four possible combinations—lining proportional, lining tabular, oldstyle
proportional, and oldstyle tabular.
• In Body Text (page 38), proportional figures are preferred because they tend to
have more even spacing and a more consistent appearance. But tabular figures
are essential for one purpose: vertically aligned Columns (page 80), like you
find in Grids Of Numbers (page 120).
• That said, the default figures on many fonts—especially System Fonts (page 56)
—are tabular lining figures, so they can move easily from your word-processing
document to your spreadsheet. To check if your font has tabular figures, type a
line of zeroes above a line of ones. If they’re the same length, then your font
has tabular figures.

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 •No
version
of

Microsoft Excel supports OpenType features. So if you want tabular figures in

your Excel spreadsheet—and I think you do—you must limit yourself to fonts
with tabular figures in the default figure positions. If you’re considering the
purchase of a professional font to use in Excel, you should investigate this
before you buy. (Numbers on the Mac supports OpenType features, so this
caveat does not apply.)
• High-end professional fonts include even more alternate figures as OpenType
features: superiors, inferiors, ordinals, vertical fractions, diagonal fractions,
and more. They’re beyond the scope of this book. But when you’re ready,
they’ll be waiting.

Keep with the next paragraph

• Always use with Headings (page 47).
• Keep with next paragraph binds the last line of a paragraph to the first line of the
next. It ensures no page break happens between the two paragraphs. It’s like Keep
Lines Together (page 53), except it works between paragraphs instead of within a
paragraph.
• Always use this option with Headings (page 47). It looks bad if a heading appears at
the bottom of a page and the text it’s introducing starts on the next page. Keeping
with the next paragraph prevents this.
• The keep-with-next-paragraph option is
a little boring on its own. It gets more
interesting when used with its friend,
the keep-lines-together option. For
instance, I once had to prepare a jury-
instruction form with many entries
like this:

• Here, the name of the jury instruction is one paragraph, and the four choices below
are a second paragraph. The four choices won’t get separated from each other
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 because they’re glued together with the keep-lines-together option. But we don’t
want the instruction name getting separated from the choices either. By setting the
instruction name to keep with next paragraph, all five lines will move as a unit.

• Why didn’t I make the whole block one paragraph? So I could apply a separate
paragraph style to the names of the instructions, and reformat all of them as a
group. (See paragraph and character styles.)

Math Symbols
• Use real symbols, not alphabetic characters.
• If you need math symbols infrequently—some light addition and subtraction, the
occasional negative number—you can get by without special symbols. Use the plus
sign (+) and equals sign (=) as usual. Use the en dash as a minus sign (–) (see
hyphens and dashes).
• If you need to do multiplication or beyond, insert real math symbols by hand.

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• The

multiplication symbol is also properly part of dimensional notations.

Responsive Web Design

• Responsive web design is a technique that allows web layouts to reflow to suit the
scale and dimensions of the user’s screen (or viewport, in CSS parlance).
• In this way, rather than trying to confect a one-size-fits-all layout, a web designer
can specify changes for small screens (e.g. tall-format mobile phones) and large
screens (e.g., wide-format desktop screens), and sizes in between. For instance,
responsive design is used on many sites (including this one) to collapse a multi-
column layout into a single column for mobile devices.

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• A reasonable idea, as far as it goes. But in practice, designers hoping to solve their
screen-size problem with responsive web design have discovered that they now
have two problems.
• The main challenge, of course, is getting the typography right. Early in the
responsive web era, it was common to see layouts with navigation and images
carefully engineered to scale up and down with the screen size. Meanwhile, the
Body Text (page 38) was largely ignored—set at a fixed point size, and allowed to
reflow from edge to edge, regardless of the screen width. Not good.
• Therefore, for those embarking on a responsive-design project, one key reminder:
the rules of good typography don’t change with screen size.
• In Page Margins (page 70), I said that one shouldn’t treat the edges of a piece of
paper as the boundaries of the text block. Likewise in responsive web design—the
edges of the screen are not the end. Just the beginning.
• Start by considering line length, because it’s the hardest to manage in a
responsive layout. Regardless of screen width, the optimal line length is still
45-90 characters. As you test your layout, make sure that text elements stay
within this range.
• The easiest way to maintain consistent line length is by scaling the point size
and element width at the same rate. These days, this is especially easy thanks
to the vw unit in CSS, which lets you specify measurements as a fraction of the
current viewport width.
• Or, if you want text to reflow inside a layout element, include a max-width CSS
property on that element to ensure that the line length is bounded. As above,
the vw unit is your friend.
• Be careful tying mobile layouts to CSS media queries based on pixel width. As
mobile phones have gotten bigger, many sites are setting this threshold higher.
(I’ve seen it as high as 1400 pixels.) The problem is that this causes the mobile
layout to show up even in reasonably sized desktop browser windows.
• Unfortunately, CSS media queries can’t distinguish desktop from mobile devices. If
you really want to serve a mobile layout to large mobile devices, consider using
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 JavaScript rather than media queries to detect mobile vs. desktop and load an
appropriate stylesheet.
• This last suggestion will cause certain responsive-design purists to squeal in
horror. But due to differences in reading distance, a pixel on a desktop display and
a pixel on a mobile screen are not the same. See Screen-Reading considerations
(page 61).
• Starting in 2004, a number of web designers proposed the idea of responsive web
design, including Cameron Adams(http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/
ResolutionLayout/) and Marc van den Dobbelsteen(https://alistapart.com/article/
switchymclayout) (who dubbed the technique “Switchy McLayout”). But the
technique didn’t take off until around 2010, when browser support for CSS media
queries(https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-mediaqueries)—the key mechanism for
specifying layout changes—became widespread.
• On this site, I use JavaScript to serve different weights of the body-text font to
devices based on their typical rasterization characteristics. For instance, Windows
users get a slightly heavier version than Mac users, to account for lighter screen
rasterization.

Page Margins
• One inch is not enough.
• Page margins set the default territory your text occupies on the page. Because they
determine the maximum width of the text block, page margins have the greatest
effect on line length. (point size also affects line length, though more finely.) As
page margins increase, line length decreases, and vice versa.
• In print
• Most word processors default to page margins of one inch. On standard 8.5ʺ × 
11ʺ paper, that produces a line length of 6.5ʺ. That was fine for the Monospaced
Fonts (page 90) of the typewriter era, which used a lot of horizontal space. But
for proportional fonts, they’re too small.
• At 12 point, left and right page margins of 1.5–2.0ʺ will usually give you a
comfortable line length. But don’t take that range as an absolute—focus on
getting the number of characters per line into the right range (see line length).
The smaller the point size, the larger the page margins will need to be, and vice
versa. (A gutter margin is extra space on the inner edge of a page, used to
account for a binding. In a duplex (two-sided) document, the gutter margin will
automatically alternate sides.)
• On the web
• Originally, web browsers had no concept of margins—text simply flowed from
one edge of the window to the other. That wasn’t a huge problem at the time,
because computer screens were much smaller. With the advent of CSS, web
designers could use the margin and padding properties to create space
between text and the edge of its containing block.

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 • Nevertheless, the web has never shaken the edge-to-edge design idiom. Many
of today’s Websites (page 123) still look like they were created by designers who
got paid by the square inch. Just as it’s important in print to let go of typewriter
habits, it’s important on the web to let go of the 1994 habits.
• To preserve text legibility, web pages need big margins too. There isn’t one
margin size that will work for all web pages, but the core advice is the same as
on the printed page—focus on line length. As you do that, you’ll find your
margins getting bigger. Don’t panic.
• Fear of white space
• “But if I use bigger margins, won’t a lot of the page be empty?” Sure. Is that a
problem?
• The 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ paper size, and the sizes of computer screens, are standards
imposed on us by history and tradition. They are arbitrary. They do not
represent anyone’s idea of a convenient size for good typography. But with
page margins, you can reshape them. (In 1921, the U.S. government introduced
both 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ and 8ʺ × 10.5ʺ as standard paper sizes. The smaller size caught
on within U.S. government agencies; the larger, with everyone else. It wasn’t
until 1980 that the whole U.S. government finally settled on 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ.)
• As proof, consider a print example. Are there any publications that use 8.5ʺ × 
11ʺ paper? Yes, it’s the approximate size of many magazines. But do any of
those magazines run text in a single block on the page with one-inch margins?
No—never. They use multiple-column layouts or find other ways to divide
the page.
• So are there any publications that do run text in a single block on the page?
Sure—books are usually set in a single column. But do you ever see a book
printed on 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ paper? No—never. It would be too big for comfortable
reading.

• Professional typographers never use 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ paper with a 6.5ʺ line length.
Neither should you. Whether you’re writing for print or the web, set your text
according to the principles of good typography. The white space will take care
of itself. The pleasure of reading an effectively designed document will soon
outweigh the unfamiliarity of extra white space around the edges.
• “But with those big margins, I won’t get nearly as many words on the page.” Oh
really? Let’s address that fear with a word-processor exercise that brings
together some of what you’ve learned so far.
• Start a new document in your word processor. Paste in a text of at least
1000 words.
• Format this new document as follows: page margins of 1ʺ per side, font is
times new roman, point size is 12, line spacing is “Double” (if you’re using
Word; if not, use exactly 28 points), first-line indent is 0.5ʺ, and no Space
Between Paragraphs (page 19). I’ll call this document A. (With a 12-point
font, “Double” line spacing in Word works out to be 28 points. (If that
seems like peculiar math, I agree. See line spacing.) I’m using it here
because it’s the line-spacing option many people select by default.)
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 • Start another new document in your word processor. Paste in the
same text.
• Format this second document as follows: page margins of 2ʺ per side, font
is still Times New Roman, point size is 11, line spacing is exactly 15 points,
first-line indent is still 0.5ʺ, and still no Space Between Paragraphs (page
19). I’ll call this document B.
• Print both documents. Which one looks more like a professionally typeset
book: A or B? (Shortcut: the “before” and “after” samples in Research
Papers (page 107) are pretty close to the formatting of documents A and B.)
• Which document is more comfortable to read: A or B?
• Which document contains more words per page: A or B? Hint: use word
count. See line length for instructions.
• I’m guessing you answered B to the last three questions. If so, you’re
seeing how good typography can be a benevolent force—it improves the
appearance and legibility of your text with no compromise in words
per page.
• A gutter margin is extra space on one side of a printed page that accounts for a
binding. In a duplex (two-sided) document, the gutter will automatically alternate
sides.
• In a printed document, do your margins all have to be the same size? No. To fit
more text on the page, reduce the top and bottom margins. Your line length will
stay the same, but you’ll get more lines per page. To make the text block appear
centered vertically, try making the bottom margin about a 0.25ʺ larger than the top
margin. Otherwise, the text block can look like it’s sagging. Finally, there’s no rule
that a text block has to be centered on the page horizontally. For an asymmetric
layout, make the difference between the left and right margins at least 1ʺ to make
the asymmetry obvious.
• The best way to judge a layout is with your eyes, not with a calculator. But
typographers have long enjoyed fiddling with layouts that incorporate specific
mathematical ratios. Most famous among these is the golden ratio, which is
approximately 1.618 : 1. For instance, if you set page margins of 2.23ʺ on all four
sides of 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ paper, the proportions of your text block will be close to the
golden ratio.

Ligatures
• Optional unless the letters f and i collide.
• Ligatures were invented to solve a practical typesetting problem. In the days of
metal fonts, certain characters had features that physically collided with other
characters. To fix this, font foundries cast ligatures fonts, which combined the
troublesome letters into one piece of type.

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• The most common ligatures involve the lowercase f because of its overhanging
shape. Other ligatures also exist—some practical, some decorative, some
ridiculous.
• Digital fonts don’t have physical collisions, of course. But certain letter
combinations might still overlap visually. The only time ligatures are mandatory is
when you have an actual overlap between the letters f and i. Check this
combination in the bold and italic styles too.

• The font in the first row, concourse, has an fi combination that doesn’t collide.
That font will work fine without ligatures. But equity, in the second row, has fi (and
other) collisions. Turn on ligatures to correct these collisions, as seen in the
third row.
• Beyond that, ligatures are largely a stylistic choice. To my eye, they can make Body
Text (page 38) look somewhat quaint or old-fashioned. If you like that look, great. I
don’t. So unless characters are actually colliding, I generally keep ligatures
turned off.
• Is it possible to insert ligatures manually? Yes. You can either insert them as you
type from a character palette, or you can search and replace at the end. In HTML,
you can enter the escape codes for the ligature glyphs. But I don’t recommend this.
Manual ligatures can confuse spelling checkers, Hyphenation (page 49) engines,
and search indexers, and generally cause more problems than they solve.
• Despite the name, ligatures don’t always connect two glyphs—sometimes they
create separation, as in the italic gy ligature.
• I mentioned ridiculous ligatures—at the top of my list is the Th ligature included
among the default ligatures in certain Adobe fonts, like Minion. It’s frippery,
amputating two perfectly good letters to make one ungainly hybrid. Worse,
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 because Th is such a common letter combination, this ligature shows up all the
time in Body Text (page 38). Just say no. (To the ligature, but also to Minion—see
Minion Alternatives (page 96).)

Page Layout
Page from the Kelmscott Chaucer, printed by William Morris, 1896.

• Type composition was about picking the right characters. text formatting was
about the visual appearance of those characters. Page layout is about the
positioning and relationship of text and other elements on the page.
• In fine printing, typographers usually get to choose the page size of their
documents. But you don’t—most of the documents a writer prints will be on
standard printer paper. And on the web, your reader essentially chooses the size.
• That’s no reason to tolerate mediocrity. English artist and printer William Morris
famously rebelled against mechanized, mass-produced typography—in the 1890s.
He went on to produce a series of beautiful books intended to remind readers and
writers what was possible on the printed page, in contrast to the coarse ritual of
industrialized printing.

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• Today, the struggle continues. Word processors and web browsers beckon us with
default settings and templates that promise great results with no effort.
• But you only get out what you put in. Don’t accept the defaults. You can do better.
• Centered Text (page 27)
• Justified Text (page 51)
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 • First-Line Indents (page 17)
• Space Between Paragraphs (page 19)
• line spacing
• line length
• Page Margins (page 70)
• Body Text (page 38)
• Hyphenation (page 49)
• block quotations
• bulleted and numbered lists
• Tables (page 21)
• Rules & Borders (page 24)
• Space above & below (page 26)
• Widow and Orphan Control (page 63)
• Keep Lines Together (page 53)
• keep with next paragraph
• page break before
• Columns (page 80)
• Grids (page 78)
• Paragraph and Character Styles (page 46)
• Maxims of Page Layout (page 37)
Page Break Before
• Alternative to hard page breaks.
• Page break before forces a paragraph to start at the top of a new page. Visually,
there’s no difference between using the page-break-before option and typing a
hard page break in front of the paragraph. But that’s only efficient for the
occasional paragraph.
• The page-break-before option is intended to be incorporated into paragraph and
character styles so all paragraphs of a particular style will start at the top of a new
page. For instance, you might apply it to your top-level heading style. In a long
document, typing hard page breaks in front of each heading would be tedious.
• A small wrinkle arises when you use page break before with Headings (page 47)
that have space above and below. Your word processor, trying to be helpful, will
ignore the space-above setting if the heading is the first thing on the page. If that’s
what you want, great. But if it’s not, you’ll have to devise a suitable workaround.

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Grids
• It is A guide, not a panacea.
• A grid is a system of horizontal and vertical lines that can guide layout choices.
Grids have been part of Page Layout (page 75) since the Gutenberg Bible. The pages
below use a grid of four vertical and two horizontal lines.

• In moderation, grids can be useful. But in the words of Dutch designer Wim
Crouwel, “The grid is like the lines on a football field. You can play a great game in
the grid or a lousy game.” The grid might be the starting point. But the eye must
always be the final judge.
• Grids are helpful when they encourage consistency. They make it easier to relate
elements on the page to existing ones (a principle suggested in Maxims of Page
Layout (page 37)). If your layout seems messy or aimless, move elements onto
the grid.
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• Grids are not helpful when they create a false sense of security—I aligned
everything to my grid, therefore my layout is solid. For instance, a few years ago,
web designers were fixated on the 960 grid system. If it got people curious about
grids, OK. But it also proved that if you take ugly shit and align it to a grid—it’s still
ugly shit. (look at next page)

• A few tips for using grids effectively:

• Grids can guide positioning (= where an element goes on a page), sizing (= the
height and width of an element), or alignment (= how two elements relate to
each other). Grids can apply to visible elements (say, a text block) and invisible
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 ones (say, Page Margins (page 70), Space Between Paragraphs (page 19), or
First-Line Indents (page 17)).
• A coarser, simpler grid encourages more consistency, because there are fewer
ways to align items. A complicated grid, by contrast, might as well be no grid
at all.
• Grids don’t have to be rigid or symmetric—in fact it’s usually better if they’re
not. For instance, in the Gutenberg spread above, the Columns (page 80) of
text are the same height and width. But the margins within each page are all
different. Corollary: if you want to use mathematical ratios to set up your grid,
fine. But these ratios don’t guarantee a good layout on their own. Rely on your
eyes, not your calculator.
• A grid can emerge from experimentation rather than being defined in advance.
For instance, all the sample documents are built around simple grids. This is a
consequence of organizing elements more consistently. But I don’t emphasize
the grid-ness because I want readers to focus on typographic consistency
(which is the end goal), not grids per se (which are merely a means to
that end).
• Not everything needs to go on the grid. For instance, with print or PDF
projects, I often start with a pica grid (one pica = 12 pts). I use this to derive a
coarser grid that controls the position and size of the text blocks. But if it turns
out that a certain set of indents look right at 2.5 picas, I’m not going to
freak out. (Because I like web layouts that scale, I often start with a grid of
1rem (tied to the viewport with a media query) or 1vw.)
• A baseline grid is a special grid that restricts where the baseline of a line of text
can appear. These grids are typically used in wide multi-column layouts
(imagine a newspaper page) where uneven baselines would be distracting. In
book or website layouts, however, I think baseline grids impose too much
rigidity (and too much work) for too little benefit. I don’t use them.
• Fans of mathematical ratios in grids (also known as modular scales)
sometimes compare them to music. For instance, Robert Bringhurst says “a
modular scale, like a musical scale, is a prearranged set of harmonious
proportions”. (The Elements of Typographic Style, p. 166.)
• As a musician, I find this metaphor incomplete. Sure, music is written on a grid
of harmony and rhythm. But performers don’t rigidly adhere to these grids.
Indeed, music that was locked perfectly to a grid would sound sterile and
boring. Just as the performer’s ear is the ultimate judge of the music, the
typographer’s eye is the ultimate judge of the page.

Columns
• Fine in print, not on the web.
• They’re unusual in word-processor layouts, but I don’t object to columns in a long
document. Columns are an easy way to get a shorter and more legible line length
without using large Page Margins (page 70). On a standard 8.5ʺ × 11ʺ page, two or

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 three
columns
are fine.
Four is
too many.
• Usually
columns
look
neatest
when the
rows of
text are
aligned
vertically
between
columns
(i.e., as if
they were
sitting on the same baseline). Look at a decent newspaper for an example. Getting
this result takes a little extra effort. Note your line spacing and make sure any
Space Between Paragraphs (page 19) works out to a whole multiple of the line
spacing. The two most common options: set Space Between Paragraphs (page 19)
to zero, or set it to be the same as the line spacing.
• On the web, though most of today’s web browsers support CSS-based columns, as
a design tool they’re not that useful. Practically speaking, columns need to fit
inside a fixed vertical space. But by its nature, a web page has an indefinite bottom
edge. Still, columns can be useful in situations where you have a small amount of
text or a list of links that can fit on a browser single screen. See System Fonts (page
56) for an example of this technique.

Web and Email Addresses

• Don’t hyphenate.
• Web addresses identify a location on the internet. They usually look like http://
www.somelongname.com/folder/subfolder/page.html. Email addresses usually
take the form nameofperson@somelongname.com.
• In web pages, web and email addresses are usually hidden from view behind
hyperlinks, so they don’t cause typographic trouble.
• But in print, web addresses present two problems.
• The first problem: web addresses can be long. Really, really long. Running the
whole web address may be fine if you can bury it in a footnote. But it’s useless if
you’re hoping readers will type the address on their own.
• For a more usable web address, use an address-shortening service like TinyURL
(http://tinyurl.com/) or Bitly (http://bitly.com/). These services take a web address of
any length and convert it into a short address like http://tinyurl.com/p5wf3c. This
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 is easier to read and type. But it doesn’t reveal the underlying web address. It also
isn’t guaranteed to work permanently. (One problem with shortening services is
that there’s no guarantee they’ll last as long as your document. Though that’s also
true of the material at the underlying link. If you need to guarantee permanence:
print it.)
• If you put a web address in a footnote or endnote, consider running the long
version with a shortened version next to it. Then you’re covered. For instance:

• The second problem: web addresses are difficult to wrap onto multiple lines. A web
address is one unbroken string of characters. You don’t want your web address
hyphenated, because readers will likely mistake the hyphens for part of the
address. Therefore, use Hard Line breaks (page 39) to set the points where the web
address should wrap onto the next line.
• Email addresses are shorter than web addresses and thus not as painful. But they
shouldn’t be hyphenated either, for the same reasons.
• Word processors have an annoying default habit of making every web and email
address underlined and blue. That might make some sense if you’re creating a PDF
that needs to include hyperlinks. But it makes no sense at all if you’re creating a
document that needs to be printed.

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• What about typography within Emails (page 56)? Your options are limited. Unlike a
PDF, fonts don’t get transmitted with an email. So even though you can compose
an email in any font you like, recipients won’t see that font unless they also happen
to have it installed. Moreover, recipients read email on a variety of devices, which
have different and unpredictable typographic capabilities. My policy: treat email as
a typography-free zone.

Font Basics
• What are fonts?
• Fonts control the visual appearance of all text rendered by a computer. Every
word you read on screen—whether through your word processor, web browser,
or mobile app—uses a font. As does every word that the computer prints.
• Fonts are not programs, like your word processor or web browser. They’re
static data files, like MP3s or PDFs. Each font file contains information that
defines the shapes of the letters, plus spacing, Kerning (page 43), opentype
features, and so on. There’s one font file for each style in the family. (A style
means one visual variant, like roman, italic, bold, etc.)
• Why use professional fonts?
• The best professional fonts are better than any system font or free font—and in
ways that everyone, even those who think they don’t have an eye for
typography, can appreciate. Though you can’t have the world’s best
typographers lay out your documents, you can incorporate their work into
your documents with a font.
• But they cost money, right?
• Right. But as a writing tool, they’re a great value. You can get a top-quality
professional-font family for under $200. These fonts will improve the
appearance of every document you create. And unlike most tech purchases,
they don’t break, they don’t go obsolete in three years, and they don’t need to
be upgraded monthly (if ever). Best of all, you can put them to work without
learning anything new. What other hardware or software can you say that
about?
• Really, the hardest thing about using professional fonts is choosing from the
thousands available. But once you narrow them down—by practical
requirements, by cost, by personal taste—you’ll have a reasonably small set to
choose from.
• How do i pick a font?

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 • Since this is an introduction to the world of professional fonts, on the next
pages, I’ve taken some fonts that you’re likely familiar with—namely, common
System Fonts (page 56)—and chosen some professional fonts that would make
good alternatives.
• Also keep in mind that nearly every font you see in a book, newspaper, or
magazine can be licensed for your own use. To figure out the name of the font
you’re looking at, see identifying fonts in the appendix.
• How do i buy fonts?
• Fonts are sold online. You can buy fonts either direct from the Websites (page
123) of font designers or from retailers who sell fonts from many designers.
There’s not much difference in price, which is in the range of $20 to 50 per
style. After you pay, you download the fonts and install them. For Body Text
(page 38), the core styles you will want are roman, italic, bold, bold italic, and
roman Small Caps (page 30).

• About font names

• Font names are confusing, even for professional typographers. Certain font
names (e.g., Myriad, Minion) are trademarked, so their names are distinct. But
names of long-dead typographers (e.g., Baskerville, Garamond, Caslon) are not
protected, and their names get included in many font names whether the
association is apt or not. These names connote nothing about the quality of
the font or how it appears on the page. For instance, Stempel Garamond and
ITC Garamond are as similar as Bart Simpson and Lisa Simpson. To further
complicate the picture, some fonts with trademarked names (e.g., Helvetica,
Palatino) have been revised and released under slightly different names (e.g.,
Helvetica Neue, Palatino Nova).
• How to use fonts
• Once installed, new fonts show up in your font menu along with the usual
System Fonts (page 56). Use them the same way.
• Respect your license
• Fonts are software. Like most software, fonts are offered under a license. Fonts
are usually licensed per user. The most common way font licenses are violated
is when someone buys a single-user license and then shares it with others in
the organization. Please—be a good typographic citizen. Buy the number of
licenses you need and follow the license terms.
• Disclosure
• I have no financial stake in any of the fonts shown here, except the ones I
designed—equity, century supra, valkyrie, concourse, triplicate, and advocate.

• Most professional fonts are delivered in the OpenType format (.otf extension).
Some are offered in the older TrueType format (.ttf). OpenType and TrueType files
can be used on either Windows or Mac OS, so the technological distinctions are
largely moot. One notable exception: Microsoft Office on Windows, for various

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 historical reasons, still does better with TrueType fonts. So if you’re getting a
professional font to use with Office, be sure to get the TrueType versions.
• What’s the difference between a font and a typeface? I’ll tell you, then you can
forget about it. Historically, typeface referred to the overall family (e.g., Baskerville)
and font referred to a specific instance of the family (e.g., 10-point Baskerville Bold
Italic). This distinction made sense in the letterpress age, when each font
corresponded to a drawer of metal type. But, as lexicographer Bryan Garner has
pointed out, “[t]echnology has changed the meaning of this term … font most often
denotes a whole family of styles that can be printed at almost any size.” (Garner’s
Modern English Usage, 4th ed., p. 399.) Internet pedants may carp, but it’s fine to use
font to mean both the family and a specific style. I do.

Mixing Fonts
• Less is more.
• Enthusiasm for fonts often leads to enthusiasm for multiple fonts, and then the
question: “How do I get better at mixing fonts in a document?”
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• Mixing fonts is like mixing patterned shirts and ties—there aren’t immutable rules.
Some people have a knack for it; some don’t.
• Keep these principles in mind:
• Mixing fonts is never a requirement—it’s an option. You can get plenty of
mileage out of one font using variations based on point size, Bold or Italic
(page 28), Small Caps (page 30), and so on.
• The rule of diminishing returns applies. Most documents can tolerate a second
font. Few can tolerate a third. Almost none can tolerate four or more. (If you’re
making a presentation, consider all your slides to be part of one document.)
• You can mix any two fonts that are identifiably different. If you’ve heard that
you can only mix a serif font with a sans serif font, it’s not true. On the
contrary, much like mixing colors, lower contrast between fonts can be more
effective than higher contrast. Look at any American newspaper—typically, the
Body Text (page 38) and the headlines are both in serif fonts, but
different ones.

• Font mixing is most successful when each font has a consistent role in the
document. In a research paper, try one font for Body Text (page 38) and one
font for Headings (page 47). Or try one font for things in the center of the
document (Body Text (page 38) and Headings (page 47)) and one font for things
at the edges (line numbers, footer, and other miscellany). Or in bulleted and
numbered lists, try one font for the bullet or number and one font for the text
of the list item—a technique I use throughout this book.
• It rarely works to have multiple fonts in a single paragraph. Better to restrict
yourself to one font per paragraph, and change fonts only at paragraph breaks.
• Though I’m typically reluctant to endorse rote methods, this one works
reliably: combine fonts by the same font designer. For instance, pairings of
atlas and lyon (both designed by Kai Bernau), alright sans and harriet (by
Jackson Cavanaugh) or concourse and equity (by me).

Bad Fonts
• Just don’t use.
• I needn’t mention the font that rhymes with Atomic Fans—public opinion has
already ratified it as the archetypal example of a bad font.
• Yet among bad fonts, that one doesn’t tend to annoy skilled typographers. At least
it’s honest about what it is. And inept typographers will always be attracted to
inept fonts.
• No, the truly bad fonts are the ones that lure inexperienced typographers with false
virtues, and then become entrenched as hallmarks of amateurish typography.

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• Papyrus is just such a poseur. Papyrus is meant to look historic and hand-drawn,
but it is neither. It’s an alphabet from the early ’80s wearing a week’s stubble.
Skip it.
• Bookman and Bodoni are probably better described as skunked fonts, because we
can imagine a time when they were used well. But that time is long gone. Bookman
evokes the Ford administration. If fonts were clothing, this would be the corduroy
suit. As for Bodoni, its high-contrast design is flashy and attractive, but annoying
to read after three words.
• Copperplate is a novelty design that’s overstayed its welcome by forty or fifty years.
It remains popular on the signage and menus of businesses that want to signal
“we’re classy and expensive, in a retro way”. Trust me—it’s not working.
• Script faces have improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, as type designers
have used opentype features to better effect. Therefore, in comparison, the script
fonts from the beginning of the digital age—like the dozen or so bundled with
Microsoft Office—can’t help but look clunky and cheap. (Brush Script, originally
designed in 1942, is shown above.)

Page 87 of 136
Free Fonts
• Some good options, choose wisely.
• Hundreds of free fonts have arrived in recent years. Not just “free” as in “already
installed on your computer” (aka System Fonts (page 56)). But rather, released
under an open license, most often the OFL, which permits you to do almost
anything you want with them. Most importantly, you can redistribute copies
for free.
• At times I’ve been labeled a free-font curmudgeon. My beef with free fonts is not
that they’re useless. On the contrary, fonts without proprietary licensing
restrictions fill a need, most of all as a complement to open-source software. For
instance, I couldn’t have redesigned the documentation for Racket(https://
docs.racket-lang.org/), an open-source programming language, without free fonts,
because we had to ship them with the software.
• Instead, my complaint about free fonts has centered on a simpler issue: in terms of
design and craftsmanship, most free fonts are garbage(https://
practicaltypography.com/why-google-fonts-arent-really-open-source.html). Sure,
that’s true of many professional fonts too. But early on, certain free-font
proponents pushed the argument that somehow, quantity mattered more than
quality(http://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/1827/#Comment_1827).

(Next Page)

Page 88 of 136
• Fortunately, not everyone felt the same way. Across my years raging(Youtube/
watch?v=3L4YrGaR8E4) against this particular machine, organizations that
appreciate the value of good design—and had money to spend—funded the
development of some free fonts that are actually very good:
• Mozilla hired Erik Spiekermann (see foreword) and Ralph Carrois to make fira
sans and fira mono, designs built upon the adamantium endoskeleton(http://
typographica.org/typeface-reviews/fira-sans/) of his longtime bestseller
Meta(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Meta).
• Adobe released a very nice monospaced font called source code pro, designed
by Paul Hunt; and the companion source serif pro, designed by Frank
Grießhammer.
• The Smithsonian commissioned Chester Jenkins(https://www.bspk.xyz/) to
create the excellent cooper hewitt sans serif family.

Page 89 of 136
 • Most recently, IBM’s Mike Abbink worked with Paul van der Laan(https://
www.boldmonday.com/) to make ibm plex, an immense family covering sans,
serif, and mono.
• Since I launched Practical Typography, I’ve been pushing charter, a 1987
Matthew Carter design that holds up beautifully on today’s screens.
• The fonts above are wonderful! And wonderfully free! Whether my
curmudgeonisms have had an impact, I can’t say. But today, if your project requires
free fonts, you have plenty of good options. If you refuse, you have no one to blame
but yourself.
• As for the gazillions of other free fonts—if you’ve got the patience to pan for gold in
a river of crap(https://practicaltypography.com/effluents-influence-
affluence.html#traffic), knock yourself out. But unless your time has no value,
you’ll find it more efficient just to buy a nice professional font.
• I use charter, fira sans, fira mono, and cooper hewitt extensively in Websites (page
123) for Racket, including the documentation, home page, and blog. I’ve used
source serif pro for special events.
• Why haven’t I listed any System Fonts (page 56) above? Careful—they’re not the
same thing. System Fonts (page 56) are only “free” in the sense that you don’t have
to pay extra for them. But they’re not “free” in the deeper sense of having minimal
licensing restrictions. On the contrary, the fonts that come with Windows or
Mac OS are governed by a proprietary license which permits certain uses and
prohibits others.
• “But have you considered my favorite free font, Ludicrous Sans?” If it’s your
favorite, my opinion hardly matters. In any case, I’m not a reviewer of free fonts.
There are far too many, and I care far too little.

Monospaced Fonts
• Don’t use these either.
• The System Fonts (page 56) Courier, Menlo, and Consolas are examples of
monospaced fonts, so named because every character is the same width. When the
characters vary in width, the font is called proportional.

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• The samples above are set at the same point size. But the monospaced font,
triplicate (first and third rows) takes up more horizontal space than the
proportional font, valkyrie (second and fourth rows). The differences are most
noticeable in characters that are narrow in the proportional font (like f i j l r t) and
the punctuation characters.
• Monospaced fonts were invented to suit the mechanical requirements of
typewriters. They were not invented to win beauty contests. Compared to
proportional fonts, monospaced fonts are harder to read. And because they take up
more horizontal space, you’ll always get fewer words per page with a
monospaced font(In 1944, IBM introduced a typewriter that could handle
proportional fonts. But the technology never took off.).
• In standard body text, there are no good reasons to use monospaced fonts. So
don’t. Use proportional fonts.
• Do you need monospaced numerals—typographers call them tabular figures—so
that Columns (page 80) of numbers will line up? This is such a common need that
most proportional fonts include tabular figures by default. See Alternate Figures
(page 64) for how to verify this.
• Do you need to quote software code or HTML in your document? Then use a
monospaced font for one of the reasons software engineers do—software code
includes compressed syntax like (int i=1; i<111; i++) which is more legible when set
in a monospaced font (int i=1; i<111; i++).
• If you really do need a monospaced font, the Courier system font is one of the
worst. See Courier Alternatives (page 91).

Courier Alternatives
• When you must use a monospaced font.
• I’m in an awkward position. As your typography advisor, I’ve counseled you not to
use Monospaced Fonts (page 90).
• But the truth is—I really like them. The golden age of Monospaced Fonts (page 90)
was probably the 1950s, when IBM led the typewriter industry and released a series
of great monospaced designs. One of these was Courier. But the system font
Courier New is a beastly imitation of the original: spindly, lumpy, and just
plain ugly.
• As an antidote, I’ve created triplicate, a monospaced font family influenced by
several typewriter fonts of the ’50s, and optimized for body text. Triplicate has
genuine italic styles (instead of a sloped roman like Courier) and Small Caps (page
30) too.
• pitch and input show there’s still room for design exploration in Monospaced Fonts
(page 90). fira mono is also very nice, and one of the few Free Fonts (page 88) I
recommend without reservation.

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Gills Sans Alternatives
• Not bad, but you can do better.
• I complain about System Fonts (page 56), but I won’t say a bad word about Gill Sans
—it’s overexposed, but its unconventional details give it an enduring charm. Gill
Sans lit the way for other sans serif fonts that combine geometric precision with
looser hand-drawn features, like ideal sans, brandon text, and verlag, which
together prove that being geometric doesn’t mean being dull. (My own geometric
sans serif, concourse, also takes some cues from Gill Sans.)

Page 92 of 136
Cambria Alternatives
• Monotony can be fatal.
• It’s counterintuitive, but a well-designed font can have a lot of subtle variation
between letters and still look consistent on the page. The converse of this principle
is that a font with too much consistency can be numbing to read. Cambria is an
example of this problem. It works well on screen, but on the printed page, it’s a
skull-clutcher. guardian egyptian, elena, and skolar are similar to Cambria but
avoid monotony. So are charter and source serif pro, which are available for free.

Page 93 of 136
Page 94 of 136
Calibri
Alternatives
• Don’t settle for
a default
Microsoft font.
• Like Cambria,
Calibri works
well on screen.
But in print, its
rounded
corners make
Body Text
(page 38) look
soft. If you
need a clean
sans serif font,
you have better
options. My
font concourse,
for instance.
guardian sans
is the
companion to
Guardian
Egyptian (see
Cambria
Alternatives
(page 93)).
They’re named
after the
newspaper that
originally had
them designed.
seravek and
fort are both
sharper than
Calibri—Seravek is similarly narrow, while Fort is wider and more open.
• ff unit is the “grown-up sister” of one of the world’s most popular sans serif fonts,
FF Meta, and the work of foreword author Erik Spiekermann. Erik also designed
fira sans, also a descendant of FF Meta. Though it has fewer styles than FF Unit,
you can’t argue with the price: it’s free.

Page 95 of 136
Minion Alternatives
• Enough already, Adobe customers.
• Dear Pro Designers Who Use Adobe Software:
• You need to stop using Minion. Not because it’s a bad font. I have no complaint
with Minion as a work of type design.
• You need to stop because Minion is not a font choice. It is the absence of a font
choice. For many years, Minion has been bundled with Adobe design software.
It became the default font starting in CS5. And that’s the main reason you use
it. Not because you like it. Rather, because it’s already there.
• As a typographic shortcut, this is worse than the average computer user who
relies on arial or times new roman or calibri. Because unlike the average
computer user, you’re supposed to know about typography and better fonts.
You’re not supposed to rely on the defaults.
• I can’t force you to investigate the wide world of professional fonts. But some
gentle shaming—that I can do.
• Imagine what would happen if your clients, or your employer, decided they could
get their design projects done by relying on defaults. You’d be out of a job, right?
Your work depends on people who care enough to go beyond the defaults and
hire you.
• That’s also true of type designers. They depend on people like you to go beyond
default fonts like Minion. And when you don’t—well, maybe you’re applying an
inconsistent standard. You don’t want defaults to be good enough for your clients,
yet you want them to be good enough for you.
• The four text faces above—they’re the tiniest tip of the font iceberg. But they’re not
Minion. And you’ve got to start somewhere.
• While we’re here, please also stop using the “optical spacing” setting in InDesign.
See Metrics vs. Optical spacing (page 44) for why.

Page 96 of 136
Verdana Alternatives
• Don’t use a screen font for print.
• Like Georgia, Verdana was designed for the computer screens of the 1990s, so it’s
great for the Websites (page 123) of the 1990s. For everything else, it’s not so great.
alright sans is known as a humanist sans because it relies on the proportions of
traditional serif fonts. Sweet Sans, on the other hand, shares Verdana’s pleasing
width, and would be a good choice for Résumés (page 118) or Letterhead (page 110).
Likewise breuer, which is slightly condensed, and has more of a geometric feel.
• I designed concourse and hermes maia based on letterpress faces of the early 20th
century.

Page 97 of 136
Georgia Alternatives
• Don’t use a screen font for print.
• One of the most popular foundations for recent text families has been the
historical model known as Scotch, from the mid-19th century. One example is
Georgia, which was designed primarily to work well on computer screens of the
1990s. But 20 years on, its design compromises are becoming obsolete. miller, by
contrast, shares Georgia’s Scotch influence but with more subtlety and detail. (See
System Fonts (page 56) for a closer comparison.) harriet, chronicle, and century

Page 98 of 136
 supra—the last is my design—are also based on the Scotch model but add
contemporary details and flavor.

Century Schoolbook Alternatives

• The “Scotch Roman” style of text face has been consistently popular since the
mid-1800s, and traces its roots to the Edinburgh foundry(http://
typefoundry.blogspot.co.nz/2007/02/scotch-roman.html) of William Miller. The
original font named Century, designed by Linn Boyd Benton in 1894, was derived
from this Scotch model. Since then, the Scotch flavor has lived on in many other
faces, some carrying “Century” in their name, others not. (For instance, the
Georgia(https://practicaltypography.com/georgia-alternatives.html) system font is
also in the Scotch family.)

Page 99 of 136
• I include the Century Schoolbook system font on my list of “generally tolerable”
system fonts. But it’s hardly the nicest Century. Rather, it’s a later spinoff created
by Morris Fuller Benton (Linn’s son) from research about what children found easy
to read—hence the name, that contemplates its intended use. It’s not bad. But the
letterforms are rather loose and broad.
• The Scotch category is full of better options. A few of my favorites are miller
(named after the Edinburgh foundry), harriet, and ingeborg. I’ve also designed my
own take on this style called century supra, which brings together things I like
about a number of Scotch-style faces from the early- to mid-1900s.
• The Computer Modern fonts(http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/computermodern/)
that are part of TeX are based on Scotch Roman, because it’s also been a popular
style for math and scientific typesetting.
• Century Schoolbook is used in the PDF opinions of the United States Supreme
Court, and countless law-school textbooks as well.

Page 100 of 136

Baskerville Alternatives
• They are neutral need not mean dull.

• The Baskerville system font is mediocre: brittle and excessively quaint. It’s a poor
representation of the work of John Baskerville, an 18th-century English printer who
improved typefounding with his innovations in paper, ink, and printing. The best
recreation of Baskerville’s own fonts is baskerville 10. Though ingeborg and
kingfisher don’t directly resemble Baskerville’s type designs, they do share the
crisp and bright look that Baskerville helped popularize.

Palatino Alternatives
• Palatino is the work of Hermann Zapf, a calligrapher by training. Many of his fonts
reflect this influence. But the Palatino system font is a harsh representation of
Zapf’s original design. palatino nova is Zapf’s own reworking of Palatino that
restores its original subtlety.
• Despite the name, iowan old style is also based on Italian Renaissance typography,
though more loosely. The lovely verdigris also draws on these influences.
• I’ve always liked Palatino a lot. But the decades of abuse and misuse have dimmed
the novelty it once had. I designed valkyrie as a hybrid of Aldus(http://
www.rightreading.com/typehead/aldus.htm), a book face that Zapf derived from
Page 101 of 136
 Palatino, and Trump Mediaeval, a text face by Zapf’s contemporary Georg
Trump(http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-26218.html), another fantastic calligrapher-
turned-type designer.
• These alternatives apply equally to Book Antiqua, which was created as a Palatino
clone for Microsoft Windows. Book Antiqua has caused its share of controversy
over the years—Zapf himself considered it an unethical pillaging of his work. But in
recent times, the alleged pillager (Monotype) acquired the alleged pillagee
(Linotype), thereby extinguishing the beef.
• Fans of Palatino or Zapf will enjoy Robert Bringhurst’s excellent book Palatino: The
Natural History of a Typeface(http://www.godine.com/book/palatino/), which catalogs
the many variations of Palatino that Zapf made over 60 years, and gives due credit
to his punchcutter August Rosenberger.

Times New Roman Alternatives

• You can do better.
Page 102 of 136
• Times New Roman gets its name from the Times of London, the British newspaper.
In 1929, the Times hired typographer Stanley Morison of Monotype, a British font
foundry, to create a new text font. Morison led the project and supervised Victor
Lardent, an advertising artist for the Times, who drew the letterforms.
• After Monotype completed Times New Roman, it had to license the design to then-
rival Linotype, because the Times used Linotype’s typesetting machines. (Think of
Monotype and Linotype as the Depression-era Microsoft and Apple.) Since then,
Monotype has sold the font as “Times New Roman” and Linotype has marketed its
version as “Times Roman”.
• Meanwhile, typesetting technology has evolved, but due to its enduring popularity,
Times New Roman has always been one of the first fonts available in each new
format. This, in turn, has only increased its reach. In 1984, Apple licensed Times
Roman for the Macintosh; in 1992, Microsoft licensed Times New Roman for
Windows. This put the font into the hands of millions of new users. The number of
documents set in Times New Roman exploded.
• As a work of design, it’s hard to complain about Times New Roman. It was created
for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts—especially the bold
style. (Newspapers prefer narrow fonts because they fit more text per line.) The
italic is mediocre. But those aren’t fatal flaws. Times New Roman is a workhorse font
that’s been successful for a reason.
• Yet it’s an open question whether its longevity is attributable to its quality or
merely to its ubiquity. Helvetica still inspires enough affection to have been the

Page 103 of 136

 subject of a 2007 documentary feature. Times New Roman, meanwhile, has not
attracted similar acts of homage.
• Why not? Fame has a dark side. When Times New Roman appears in a book,
document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of
least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of
a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a Color (page 31). To look at
Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.
• If you have a choice about using Times New Roman, please stop. Use something
else. See font recommendations for other options.
• Did you make
your Résumés
(page 118) and
Letterhead (page
110) at your local
copy shop? No,
you didn’t,
because you
didn’t want them
to look shoddy
and cheap. If you
cared enough to
avoid the copy
shop, then you
care enough to
avoid Times New
Roman. Times
New Roman
connotes apathy.
You are not
apathetic.
(Stanley
Morison’s 1953 typographic memoir, A Tally of Types. Each chapter is printed in a
different Morison font)
• The origin of the Times New Roman design has always been a bit mysterious.
Stanley Morison was certainly familiar with 16th-century French typographer
Robert Granjon, whose work has been said to be a starting point for Times New
Roman.
• But its more direct ancestor is probably Plantin, another Monotype font, designed
in 1914 by Frank Pierpont. Plantin was also based on Granjon’s work. Seen side by
side, the resemblance is unmistakable: Times New Roman is a taller, brighter
version of Plantin.

• Or is it? In 1994, typographer Mike Parker claimed that in the early 1900s—before
Times New Roman or Plantin existed—Boston yacht builder William Starling
Burgess drew samples of a new font and sent them to Monotype’s U.S. affiliate.
Burgess lost interest in the project, but his drawings were never returned. Parker
theorized that years later, Burgess’s drawings were passed along to Morison, who
used them as the basis of Times New Roman.
Page 104 of 136
• Parker’s theory, however, has long been rejected (http://www.fayit.eu/text/
burgess_no_designer/burgess_no_designer.html) by other typography historians
due to lack of evidence. Fair enough. But Parker’s project was animated by a
broader truth: that every font design is the product of new ideas mixed with old
ideas—some acknowledged, some not, some yet to be discovered.
• These days, writers and other font users can choose from numerous alternatives
that share the essential flavor of Times New Roman but avoid its shortcomings,
including plantin, starling, and equity (designed by me). If you’re a diehard fan of
Times New Roman, consider them.
• Stanley Morison had a sense of humor about the criticisms lobbed at Times New
Roman. In his typographic memoir, A Tally of Types, Morison imagined what
William Morris (mentioned in Page Layout (page 75)) might have said about it: “As a
new face it should, by the grace of God and the art of man, have been broad and
open, generous and ample; instead, by the vice of Mammon and the misery of the
machine, it is bigoted and narrow, mean and puritan.”

Helvetica & Arial Alternatives

• They are neutral need not mean dull.
• Criticizing Helvetica is one of the favorite pastimes of typographers: It’s bland. It’s
overused. It’s inapt for most projects. All true.

Page 105 of 136

• Yet they sort of miss the point. It’s like criticizing Star Wars because the visual
effects are unrealistic. Or because the dialogue is wooden. Or because the plot is
pinched from The Hidden Fortress(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_Hidden_Fortress). All true as well. But so what? It’s still Star Wars. And like
Star Wars, Helvetica will be with us for the foreseeable future.
• Should you use Helvetica? Look, I like Helvetica. Though mostly in the rear-view
mirror. Today, we have better options. For Helvetica diehards, there is neue haas
grotesk, a lovely revival of the original Helvetica design. Others can try a font that’s
neutral without being dull, like my own concourse or hermes maia, or the excellent
new atlas.
• And don’t worry—no matter which alternative you choose, Helvetica will still be
with us.
• As I mentioned in System Fonts (page 56), Arial was designed as a clone of
Helvetica. Helvetica has earned its place in typographic history honestly. But Arial,
only by Microsoft imposing it upon us for 20+ years as the main user-interface font
in Windows. That’s the only reason you’ve heard of it. That’s the only reason you
might consider using it. That’s a terrible reason. I try to keep the litmus tests to a
minimum, but this must be one: you cannot create good typography with Arial.
Page 106 of 136
Research Papers
• Bigger margins,
smaller point size,
tighter line spacing.
• Does this look
familiar? A document
with one-inch
margins on all sides,
12-point font, and
double-spaced lines?
These were idiomatic
typewriter habits.
That’s why they
became the basis of
many institutional
document-layout
rules. Nearly 40 years
into the digital-
typesetting era, they
remain with us.
• But have you ever
seen a book,
newspaper, or
magazine that uses
this layout? No. Why
not? Because it’s not
optimally legible. So
why would anyone
use it? Because it suits
the severely limited
capabilities of the
typewriter. So if we
don’t use typewriters
anymore, why does
everyone still use this layout? (Hat tip to SCIgen(http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/)
for the text in this example.)
• My thoughts exactly.
• before
• Page Margins (page 70) too small; line length too wide.
• point size too big.
• line spacing too tall.
• times new roman—snore.

Page 107 of 136

 • Failure to put one space between sentences.
• First-Line Indents (page 17) too deep.
• Justified Text (page 51) without Hyphenation (page 49).
• underlining in Headings (page 47).
• If some authority figure insists that you use this layout, then do so. If not,
then don’t. It’s awful.Fortunately, transplanting this document from the
1890s into the present is simple surgery.
• After
• Page Margins (page 70) larger; line length shorter (about 65 characters per
line).
• Point size smaller.
• Line spacing reduced.
• Better fonts (equity and concourse)
• One space between sentences.
• Hyphenation (page 49) turned on.
• No underlining.

Page 108 of 136

• Another virtue of the revised layout: it fits more text on the page.
• Well, maybe that’s not always a virtue. One likely reason for the tenacity of the
typewriter-style layout is that it produces a consistent number of words per page,
preventing writers from abusing page limits. But in the digital age, the better way
of controlling document length is with word counts. (See point size for more.)
• If you’re working on draft documents with others, you have to be careful about
fonts—if you pick a font your collaborators don’t have, they won’t see the
formatting accurately. This is one of the few situations where System Fonts (page
56) are your best choice. Your collaborators are likely to have them, and these fonts
look good on screen, where much of the collaboration happens. If you like, you can
reformat with a different font at the end.
• If it’s critical that your document appear the same way on your collaborator’s
screen as it does on yours, the only foolproof technique is to share PDF files and
use PDF-based commenting and review tools.
Page 109 of 136
Letterhead
• Divide into foreground and background.
• Not everything on a page is equally important. As I mentioned in Maxims of Page
Layout (page 37), I think of documents as having a foreground, containing the most
important elements, and a background, containing everything else. Typography
communicates this distinction to the reader visually.
• For instance, picture a sheet of letterhead. What’s in the foreground? If you said
“the address block”, then I’m guessing you pictured a blank sheet of letterhead. But
letterhead is never used blank. So more accurately, the foreground contains the
text of the letter. The background contains the address block.
• Yet letterhead often suffers from two problems. First, the address block (the
background) dominates the page, upstaging the text of the letter (the foreground).
Second, the foreground and background don’t relate to each other visually.

Page 110 of 136

• before
• Body Text (page 38) in danger of being crushed by massive address block.
• line length too wide; Page Margins (page 70) too small.
• First-Line Indents (page 17) and Space Between Paragraphs (page 19) needlessly
used together.
• Screen-oriented system font (Verdana) used for a printed document.
• Too much Centered Text (page 27).
• Too much space wasted in top margin.
• Generally pompous and overbaked.
• This letterhead can be improved by making the text of the letter more prominent,
reducing the weight of the address block, and making the overall layout less
disjointed.

Page 111 of 136

• after
• Address block & Body Text (page 38) set in more legible, appropriate fonts
(concourse and equity).
• Body Text (page 38) visually occupies more space than the address block,
reinforcing foreground–background relationship.
• Letter starts at top of page.
• Simpler, cleaner two-column layout.
• No centered text.
• Pomposity eliminated.
• production tips for letterhead
• The finest letterhead comes from letterpress printers, who use old-fashioned
metal type. Every major city supports at least a couple of letterpress printers.
Most of their business comes from wedding invitations and stationery. It’s
more expensive than other methods, but the results are nonpareil.
• Next up are offset printers. (Offset is short for offset lithography, the process used
to make 99% of printed goods.) Offset printers range from high-end
commercial outfits to tiny neighborhood shops. I’d like to assure you that price
and quality correlate, but in this case, they don’t. I’ve worked with
neighborhood shops that have done a great job and with big printers that have
seriously goofed. Ask a colleague to recommend a printer. If the work isn’t
right, ask to have it reprinted.
• Many offset printers offer graphic-design services as a convenience to their
customers, much the same way that bowling alleys rent shoes. These design
services are usually fine unless you want the finished work to contain more
than a modicum of originality or finesse. In that case, hire an independent
graphic designer. (More on that below.) (You don’t need a graphic designer if
you hire a letterpress printer. Letterpress printers are usually limited to the
fonts they have on hand, so they’re in the best position to handle the design
work. But it is possible to convert digital files (including logos) to plates that
can be printed by letterpress)
• What about internet offset printers? (Meaning, Websites (page 123) where you
upload a PDF, which is then printed and shipped back to you in a week or so.)
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of their work. I can recommend
them for jobs where you need a small print run (e.g., less than 500 pieces) but a
custom offset-printing job wouldn’t be economical. (Internet printers are also
good for Résumés (page 118).)
• But internet printers keep their prices low by combining multiple print jobs
into one. This means your paper choices are limited. Also, every print job is
done in process color, which involves four basic ink colors—cyan, magenta,
yellow, black—being combined to simulate other colors. Most commercial full-
color printing is done using process color. But for stationery, it’s usually best to
use spot color, where each color gets its own print run. (See color for more
about the differences.)

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 • The cheapest option is to make letterhead yourself with your laser printer. If
you think that would be anathema to a typography snob like me, think again.
In fact, I’m not ashamed to admit it—I only use laser-printed letterhead.
• Why? I never mail a letter if an email or PDF will suffice. I use so little
letterhead that it’s never been economical to have it professionally printed. I
imagine that describes an increasing number of self-employed people. So for
them, some tips.
• Laser-printed letterhead often looks flat and cheap. Therefore, you must
overcome the three telltale signs of laser-printed letterhead.
• The typography is terrible. That’s been covered above—take the same care
with your letterhead typography that you would if you were going to spend
$5,000 printing it. In particular, don’t use System Fonts (page 56)—a
telltale sign of corner-cutting. With the money you’re saving on printing,
get something from font recommendations instead.
• It’s printed on basic white printer paper. Splurge on some deluxe paper at
your local specialty-paper store. (I use Crane’s Crest cotton paper. It’s not
cheap.) Get off-white or ivory paper—pure white tends to highlight flaws in
the laser printing. Choose wove paper, which is smooth, rather than laid
paper, which has a varied texture. Laser toner affixes better to a smooth
surface. (More about this in printers and paper.)
• The name and address are printed in black. Compared to black printing ink,
black laser toner has a characteristic luster and is usually closer to dark
gray than black. Heighten the illusion by printing the name and address in
a color—something pale and noncontroversial. Color laser printers also
use process color, so run tests to make sure the color you pick doesn’t have
a gritty dot pattern. Grayish-blue tones often work well.
• Yes, you can hire a designer to make your letterhead. See how to work with
a designer.

Résumés
• Avoid density with a second page.
• As a law student, I went on a few job interviews. At one, the interviewer’s first
comment was “It’s so unusual that I see a résumé without any typos.”
• “Are you serious?” I said.
• “Yes,” she said, “probably 90% of the résumés I get have typos. And that includes
the ones we get from the top schools.”
• I got the job. There were surely better-qualified candidates. But they damaged their
chances with sloppy résumés. The irony is that those people, who most needed to
hear the interviewer’s feedback, weren’t in the room. Because they never got an
interview. (Résumé is the original spelling and still preferred. Resumé is acceptable.
Resume is common but wrong).
• Consider yourself warned.
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• This is a book on typography, not typos. But the point is the same—faced with a
stack of nearly identical résumés and limited time, readers will make judgments
that aren’t based on substance. Whether you think that’s fair is irrelevant. It
happens all the time. (Also review the First & Second Laws of Typography in why
does typography matter.)
• The biggest problem I see with résumés is that they’re uncomfortably dense with
text. I take this to be the influence of the myth that a résumé can only be one page
long. Unless a potential employer demands one page, feel free to make your
résumé longer, if necessary. This will ease your typographic problems. (Students,
this tip doesn’t apply to you. You’re only likely to get one page of attention, so edit
accordingly.)
• Three caveats, however:
• Never assume a reader will get past the first page. Always put the most
important information on page one.
• When I say “longer, if necessary”, remember you’re writing for a potential
employer, not your mom. My résumé fits on two pages. I’ll bet yours can too.
• Students, this advice doesn’t apply to you. You’ve only got one page of
material. Really.

(See Next Page)

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• before
• Page Margins (page 70) too small; line length too big.
• Body Text (page 38) set in a system font (Calibri).
• Headings (page 47) and gray boxes are too large relative to body text.
• Key information—the where and when—is buried.
• Ugly bulleted lists.
• Print a two-page résumé with two sheets of paper, even if you have a duplex
printer. You don’t want a potential employer to overlook the second page because
it’s printed on the back of the first

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• after
• Page Margins (page 70) bigger; line length smaller.
• Calibri replaced with equity and concourse.
• Headings (page 47) no longer dominate the page.
• Names of schools and employers are easily noticed.
• Gentler list bullets.
• Nonessential information moved to second page.
• Keep in mind that one way a résumé illustrates your virtues is by drawing
connections between you—whom the reader knows nothing about—and various
schools and employers, which the reader may have heard of. The implied syllogism
goes like this: Boxer Bedley & Ball is an elite employer. This person worked at Boxer

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 Bedley & Ball. Therefore, this person is an elite-quality candidate. Don’t make your
reader struggle to dig out the names of those schools and employers—make sure
they’re immediately visible.
• In this revision, the visual emphasis has shifted from the Headings (page 47)—who
cares about résumé Headings (page 47)?—to the substance. This also makes the
résumé more skimmable, which is always a good thing.
• production tips for printed résumés
• I treat a résumé as a special kind of letterhead. Review those production tips.
• Past that, resist the urge to buy paper specially marketed for résumés—the
kinds that come in odd colors (e.g., green, pink, gray) or textures (e.g.,
parchment, marble, linen). High-quality business-letterhead paper from the
stationery store works best. Anything more elaborate looks overbaked.
• Increasingly, employers and recruiters are asking for résumés in PDF format.
In PDF, good typography survives; good paper is irrelevant. (For that reason,
make sure you know how to make a pdf.)
• Résumé is the original spelling and still preferred. Resumé is acceptable. Resume is
common but wrong. How do you type the é character? See common Accented
Characters (page 10).
• Nothing beats having another person—or even better, more than one—edit your
résumé. But insist that each reviewer propose at least three edits, so they don’t
return with the chipper-but-useless “Looks great to me!”
• If you’re applying for a design job, it’s entirely fair that you be judged in part by the
typography of your résumé. While this seems self-evident, I still see an astonishing
number of design résumés set in System Fonts (page 56). Confidential to all of you:
enough already.

Business Cards
• Shrink and simplify.
• Business cards have to fit a lot of information in a small area. But they often try to
do too much.
• For instance, the card layout below is fairly common. I call it the baseball-diamond
layout: information is pushed out to the corners in the misguided belief that the
shape of the card should dictate the shape of the typography. As I mentioned in
Maxims of Page Layout (page 37), this technique tends to produce mediocre results.

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• before
• Goofy fonts (page 60) used for all text.
• bad font (Copperplate) used for other text.
• point size of name too large.
• No Letterspacing (page 42) in caps.
• Too much information, pushed out to corners.
• The guiding principles with business cards are the same as with Letterhead (page
110). Remove anything nonessential. Don’t worry about the text being small—
there’s not very much of it. Build the layout from the text outward. The white space
will take care of itself. If you work from the edges of the card inward, you’re more
likely to end up with a baseball diamond.
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• After
• equity used for all text, rather than Goofy Sans and Ugly Script.
• Point size more reasonable and consistent.
• Letterspacing (page 42) added to small caps.
• Text layout simplified.
• Pomposity eliminated.
• production tips for business cards
• See the notes under letterhead for general tips about getting stationery items
designed and printed.
• In addition, carefully consider the paper stock for your business cards. More
than other printed items, business cards provide a tactile experience, much
like shaking someone’s hand. A business card should feel great between your
fingers. I’ve gotten too many that felt like valet-parking receipts.
• For that reason, I can’t endorse laser-printed business cards. Those sheets of
perforated cards designed for laser printing are miserably thin, and the
resulting business cards are flimsy and sad. Forget it. Get them professionally
printed, either locally or through an internet printer. (Professional printing
also lets you use smaller point sizes that won’t cause temporary blindness.)
• Color (page 31) can be a nice touch on business cards, but it has to be
understated. The louder the Color (page 31), the less of it you can use, and vice
versa.

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 • Creative types, I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm for subverting
paradigms. But I can’t endorse stunt cards either—for instance, those that are
printed on sheet metal, or that are oversized, or that list you as “evil
supergenius”. (Three of many I’ve received.) Keep it simple.

Grids Of Numbers
• Vertical alignment is the key.
• With grids of numbers, the typographic logic must follow the numerical logic. If it
doesn’t, your typography is likely to confuse or mislead your readers about the
meaning of the numbers.
• not all numbers are alike
• If you remember everything from sixth-grade math class, you can skip this
section. If not, then don’t.
• Numbers work differently from words. A word is a sequence of characters. The
whole sequence has meaning, but the individual characters do not. This isn’t
so with numbers. A digit in a number has independent meaning based on its
position relative to the decimal point (which may be implied). That’s how we
can tell that the digits in .49 represent a number that’s smaller than 49. Also
unlike words, different types of numbers have different rules about how they
can be combined and compared.
• Numbers that are associated with a unit are called quantities. The meaning of
a quantity depends on the unit. For instance, if I asked which is bigger—5 or 10
—you’d give one answer. But if I asked which is bigger—5 feet or 10 inches—
you’d give a different answer. But quantities can be compared only if the units
are commensurable. So if I asked which is bigger—5 feet or 10 square inches—
the question would be unanswerable. One represents length; the other, area.
(Even though it has a special symbol, a percentage is not a quantity. It’s just an
alternate way of writing a decimal multiplier.)
• Not all numbers are quantities, of course. Ordinal numbers denote position in a
series, like college rankings. ordinals can be compared relatively—8 precedes
#10. But even though 8 is 20% less than 10, a ranking of #8 cannot be said to be
“20% better” than #10. Ordinals don’t work that way.
• Nominal numbers are arbitrary identifiers like zip codes or phone numbers.
Nominal numbers can’t be compared or combined arithmetically, but they may
still have an interior structural logic. For instance, if we’re told that 3235551212
and 3235551 represent phone numbers, we still know they’re different, because
phone numbers build from right to left.
• and here the typography restarts
• Your goal when typesetting grids of numbers is to make sure the typography
reflects the underlying meaning of the number. To do this, there is one golden
rule: in any column, digits with the same meaning must be vertically aligned
with each other. This means that you shouldn’t merely select everything and

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 apply the same formatting to everything. Different kinds of numbers need
different typography.
• Important caveat: the figures in your font will only line up with each other if
they’re tabular figures. For more about these, see Alternate Figures (page 64).

• before
• Numbers improperly aligned.
• Garish Color (page 31) scheme.
• table cell margins too small.
• Needlessly thick rules and borders.
• line spacing uneven.
• Inapt system font (Calibri).
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• after
• Invoice numbers (nominal numbers) aligned right.
• Net-worth values (quantities) have currency symbols, commas, and cents. Then
they are aligned right, so cents and dollars line up. If a quantity is between 0
and 1, add a leading zero for clarity.
• Weights aligned with decimal tabs (see tabs and tab stops) so full pounds and
fractional pounds line up.
• Zip codes are aligned left, so five- and nine-digit zip codes line up properly.
(Phone numbers would need to be aligned right.)
• Unnecessary colors and borders removed.
• Line spacing even.
• Better font (concourse).
• As for the column labels, format those after you take care of the numbers.
Sometimes you might need to make an inconsistent formatting choice to make
them look right. For instance, in the revised example, the label “Weight” is
centered, even though the numbers underneath are not. Did you notice? No.
Readers won’t either.
• “If you padded out the dollar quantities to make them line up, why not do the same
to the weights?” Tempting, but don’t. Unlike amounts of money, physical quantities
communicate not only magnitude but also precision. Therefore, the measurement
98.000 pounds is not the same as 98 pounds. The extra zeroes denote precision to
a thousandth of a pound, which the second measurement does not claim (e.g., it
might actually be 98.27 pounds).
• In a number less than 10,000, putting a comma after the thousands digit is
generally a matter of style. For instance, both $6736 and $6,736 are fine. But if those
numbers are in a column (as in the example above ), the comma becomes
mandatory. Without it, $6736 won’t quite line up with $16,736.
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• I’ll leave the choice of lining vs. oldstyle figures to you (see Alternate Figures (page
64)). In a grid, however, I prefer the look of lining figures, because of their vertical
consistency.

Websites
• We’ve seen how typewriter habits have retained a peculiar influence on the
typography of today’s documents (e.g., Research Papers (page 107)). These habits
arose from the mechanical limitations of the typewriter. When the typewriter
disappeared, so did the limitations. But the habits remained. Detached from their
original justification, they’ve become pointless obstructions.
• At times, the web has likewise suffered. For instance, the web-design habits of the
mid-’90s influenced the 21st-century web much longer than they should have.
Those habits also arose from the technological limitations of a previous era. In
2013, I catalogued five that had remained prevalent:
• Tiny point sizes for Body Text (page 38).
• Huge point sizes for Headings (page 47).
• Reliance on a small handful of System Fonts (page 56), like arial, georgia, and
verdana.
• Page edges crammed with inscrutable wads of navigational links.
• Layouts built with large blocks of Color (page 31).
• We must set these habits aside, I implored. Though even then, I thought it
would amount to yelling at clouds. The cargo cult was entrenched.
• good enough to criticize
• But website designers, credit is due. You’ve raised your game. At the time, I
said “Go to any major website with this checklist. You’ll count at least four.”
That’s no longer true. These habits are fully in retreat. I won’t assume it had
anything to do with my gentle shaming. Maybe everyone just realized it was
time. “It’s not you, tiny point sizes—it’s me.”
• In particular, after spending decades as a font-free zone, it’s been cheering to
see system fonts largely disappear from the web. True, many of the
replacements are questionable Free Fonts (page 88), especially Google
Fonts(https://practicaltypography.com/why-google-fonts-arent-really-open-
source.html). But it’s a process, right? Certainly, I see a lot more charter than I
used to—that, I’ll take credit for.
• why has the tide risen?
• For a long time, web design kept itself in a state of neither here nor there. Like
the poor worker of proverb, it was easiest to blame lack of progress on the
tools. If you asked a web designer “why aren’t we doing better with web
typography?” you were likely to hear either “we can’t, because such-and-such
won’t work in the old browsers” or “we can’t, until such-and-such works in the

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 new browsers”. These excuses kept web design in a bubble, conveniently
impervious to criticism.
• But these excuses have gone stale, for three reasons:
• Browser makers have adopted a faster tempo of major updates (mostly
chasing Google Chrome, currently the dominant web browser). This policy
has driven out older versions faster, making backward compatibility less of
a hobble.
• With typography, every major browser is now capable of producing
sophisticated layouts. I’ll go one step further: I predict we’ll no longer see
major innovations in browser layout technology. What we’ve got today is
likely as good as it gets.
• HTML/CSS template systems like Bootstrap(https://getbootstrap.com/)
have smoothed over the complexities of making polished typographic
layouts, in principle freeing designers to think about design rather than
fiddly technical details.
• the new cargo cult
• I say “in principle” because, as often happens(http://typo.la/rtde) with
advances in design technology, designers have not in fact used template
systems to broaden the web’s design horizons. On the contrary, template
systems have simply accelerated the adoption of a new cargo cult of design
habits. Sure, page by page, the web looks better than it did 5 or 10 years ago.
But at the cost of becoming more homogeneous. We swapped ugly for boring.
• Trends rise and fall in all areas of design, of course. Web designers, however,
have traditionally been more susceptible to looking laterally for ideas &
inspiration, because it’s so easy to do. For instance, remember all the sites that
put a video background(https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/fullsize-video-
background-websites/) on their home page? Gone a year later. Or when
everyone used the 960 grid system(https://960.gs/)? Also gone. Or today, all the
sites with a “hamburger” button atop a full-bleed stock photo? (Doubtless an
homage to Apple(https://www.apple.com/).) Template systems package these
trends(https://startbootstrap.com/template-overviews/crea) into freely
downloadable themes, accelerating the lurch from one cargo cult to the next.
(“You cannot bore people into buying your product.”—David Ogilvy (https://
www.goodreads.com/book/show/641601.Ogilvy_on_Advertising))
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Page 125 of 136
• fill what is empty
• Against that backdrop, my typographic advice for websites is more a principle
than a prescription.
• To convince you to abandon the typewriter habits in printed documents, I’m
able to cite a persuasive body of evidence: namely, the professional habits of
the books, newspapers, and magazines we read daily. After 500 years of
typographic practice, not every wheel needs to be reinvented.
• The web, however, has no equivalent tradition. We can’t fill this gap merely by
holding the web to print traditions. That would be limiting and illogical. But
it’s equally illogical to refuse to compare the web to any benchmark on the
grounds that it’s sui generis (because it’s not—the web is primarily a
typographic medium), or that it’s new technology (because it’s not—the web is
25 years old), or that it’s still evolving (because that’s true of every technology,
including print).
• Browser layout technology has probably reached its peak. But that means web
design is just getting started. So let’s not ride this cargo cult into the sunset.
Instead, let’s infuse the web with visual ideas from elsewhere. Books.
Posters. Art. Software. Other designed objects. Of this era. Of earlier eras. It’s
all fair game. If you like stealing the ideas of others, great! Steal from better
sources. (That’s the secret to whatever success I have, certainly.) Anything but
another hamburger button.

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Specimen of Rudolf Koch’s Kabel font, 1928.
Beauty commands attention

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• As usual, don’t take my word for it. The esteemed Museum of Modern Art in New
York has a vast design collection(https://www.moma.org/collection/) that includes
fonts and video games. How many websites have they collected? Zero. How about
the Cooper Hewitt(https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/)? Also zero. Likewise, flip
through any design annual, like Communication Arts(https://www.commarts.com/
gallery). You’ll occasionally find a website recognized. But mostly other things.
• “Whatever, dude—I don’t care about being in museums or winning awards.” Fair
enough. But the question lingers: does the web really hold its own against other
design disciplines? Does it have a culture of design excellence? Or is it just a culture
of disposable design? Design as afterthought? Design of least resistance?
• This is a question of more import than just snooty scorekeeping. Because we can
disagree about what design excellence means on the web. In fact, we should
disagree, because that’s what stimulates experimentation and discovery. Doing it
wrong is a prerequisite to doing it right.
• The corollary is that if we refuse to experiment, we’ll never discover anything new.
As web designers, we now have all the tools we need to make wonderful things.
The flip side is that we’re officially out of excuses. If web design remains boring, we
can’t blame browsers. We can’t blame Google. We can’t blame Bootstrap. We can’t
blame 4G mobile connections. We can only blame ourselves.

Why Does Typography Matter?

• It conserves reader attention.
• Typography matters because it helps conserve the most valuable resource you have
as a writer—reader attention.
• Attention is the reader’s gift to you. That gift is precious. And finite. And should
you fail to be a respectful steward of that gift—most commonly, by boring or
exasperating your reader—it will be promptly revoked.
• Once a reader revokes the gift of attention, you don’t have a reader anymore. Then
you become a writer only in the narrowest sense of the word. Yes, you put words on
some pages. But if your reader has disappeared, what was the point? How is your
writing more valuable than a random string of characters? Like the proverbial tree
falling in the woods, no one’s there to notice the difference.
• Unfortunately, many professional writers adopt a high-risk model of reader
attention. Instead of treating reader attention as a precious commodity, they treat
it as an unlimited resource. “I’ll take as much attention as I need, and if I want
more, I’ll take that too.”
• What could be more presumptuous? Or dangerous?
• Writing as if you have unlimited reader attention is presumptuous, because
readers are not doing you a personal favor. In most cases, reading your writing
is not their hobby. It’s their job. Which likely involves paying attention to lots
of other writing too. I’ll even go one better: I believe that most readers are
looking for reasons to stop reading. Not because they’re malicious or aloof.
They’re just being rational. Readers have other demands on their time. Why
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 would they pay more attention than they must? Readers are always looking for
the exit.
• Writing as if you have unlimited reader attention is also dangerous, because
running out of reader attention is fatal to your writing. The goal of most
professional writing is persuasion, and attention is a prerequisite for
persuasion. Once the reader’s attention expires, you have no chance to
persuade. You’re just giving a monologue in an empty theater. (By the way,
when you’re reading, do you prefer writers who take forever to get to the point,
or concise communicators? You can’t expect to get more attention as a writer
than you’d give as a reader.)
• If you believe reader attention is a valuable resource, then tools that help you
conserve that resource are likewise valuable. Typography is one of those tools.
• Good typography can help your reader devote less attention to the mechanics
of reading and more attention to your message. Conversely, bad typography
can distract your reader and undermine your message.
• I’m not suggesting that the quality of your typography is more important than
the quality of your writing. It’s not. But typography can make good writing
even better.
• Consider a job interview. (Or, if you prefer, its social equivalent—a first date.)
By the day of the interview, you’ll have spent a lot of time practicing answers to
likely questions. But do you show up to the interview in a swimsuit and flip-
flops? No, of course not. You wear clothing appropriate for the workplace. And
when you talk to the interviewer, do you slouch in your chair and mumble
toward your shoes? No, of course not. You speak clearly and confidently.
•You
do
these
things

because
you appreciate, as we all do, that nonverbal communication counts. Others
draw inferences about us not just based on what we say, but how we say it.
• It’s the same on the printed page. The substance matters, but if that’s all that
mattered, then everything could be set in 12-point times new roman. And that
would be the equivalent of mumbling toward your shoes. Just as good speaking
skills matter during a job interview, good typography matters in a written
document.
• “But I don’t have visual skills. I don’t know anything about graphic design.”
That’s like saying you can’t dress properly for a job interview because you don’t
know anything about fashion design.

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• It’s easy to learn the skills to produce good typography. Beyond that, you need
only the ability to form opinions about typography. And everyone who reads—
even kids—can do this.
• Unconvinced? Try this. Imagine you’re a director of human resources. Below
are two Résumés (page 113) that you’ve received for a job opening at your
company. Being a busy person, you only have two seconds to decide who gets
the last interview slot. Who do you pick?
• Typography matters. The only question is whether you, as a writer, are going to
neglect it.

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What is good typography?
• It reinforces the meaning of the text.
• Almost all texts communicate a set of points (The petition should be denied for three
reasons). Sometimes a text also needs to instruct the reader (Add lines 7 through 21
and enter the total here). Other texts offer warnings or admonitions (You must be
48 inches tall to ride; Speed limit 75). In every case, good typography supports and
reinforces the message. Good typography makes the text more effective.
• Three subsidiary propositions flow from this:
• Good typography is measured by how well it reinforces the meaning of the
text, not by some abstract scale of merit. Typographic choices that work for
one text won’t necessarily work for another. Corollary: good typographers
don’t rely on rote solutions. One size never fits all.
• For a given text, many typographic solutions would work equally well.
Typography is not an algebra problem with one correct answer.
• Your ability to produce good typography depends on how well you understand
the goals of your text, not on taste or visual training. Corollary: if you
misunderstand the goals of your text, good typography becomes purely a
matter of luck.
• Pause to consider proposition #3. Typography is visual, so it’s easy to conclude
that it’s primarily an artistic or aesthetic pursuit. Not so. Typography is
primarily utilitarian.
• Therefore, good typography is measured on a utilitarian yardstick. Typography
that is aesthetically pleasant, but that doesn’t reinforce the meaning of the
text, is a failure. Typography that reinforces the meaning of the text, even if
aesthetically unpleasant, is a success.
• Does that mean that effective typography can be ugly? Sure. Sometimes ugly is
better than pretty.
• Look at the highway signs again.

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• The script font used on the second sign could be called “prettier” than the
standard highway-signage font. But a highway sign has a special purpose: it’s
meant to be read quickly, from long distances, at odd angles, and under variable
lighting and weather. The highway-signage font stays legible under all these
conditions. It’s good typography because it supports the sign’s message.
• The script font may be prettier, but in this context, it’s bad typography because it’s
not suited to the task. Conversely, the highway-signage font would look terrible on
a wedding invitation, where the script font would be appropriate. (For these
reasons, highway-signage fonts have been the subject of rigorous legibility testing.)
• A Related Example:

• Here, the same font is used in all three versions of this sign. But the first two signs
fail to deliver the message—the speed limit is 75—because the typography
undermines the text. The most important element is the number 75. Also
important is the caption speed limit. Only the third version gets the balance right.
It’s the only example of good typography among the three.
• Use this principle to test the quality of your own typographic work. The advantage
of a utilitarian benchmark over an aesthetic one is that it doesn’t require aesthetic
judgment. Trust me—if you’re just starting out in typography, you’ll produce some
ugly work. Don’t worry. If it’s ugly and effective, you’re making progress.
• A popular but flawed line of reasoning holds that the best typography is “invisible”.
This idea dates back at least to Beatrice Warde’s 1932 essay “The Crystal Goblet”,
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 and has enjoyed a recent vogue among designers eager to sound trendy. I dissent—
see drowning the crystal goblet.
• “Can’t legibility be resolved by research?” Research can help if the design context is
specific enough to permit testable propositions. But in general, legibility is largely a
matter of acclimation, not empirics—as proof, consider the huge range of writing
systems that human civilizations have successfully used. (For more on the role of
legibility research, see are two spaces better than one.)

Printers and paper

• As I mentioned in the introduction, it really doesn’t matter what word-processing
or page-layout program or web browser you use—all of them are capable of
producing good typography.
• But if you’re making printed documents, your printer and paper can make a big
difference in the final result. As your eye for typography gets better, you’ll start to
notice that not all printers are alike.
• inkjet printer or laser printer? (I am not a compensated endorser of any
products mentioned here. These recommendations reflect my experiences.
Yours may vary)
• Laser. Inkjet printers used to be the cheaper and lower-quality alternative to
laser printers. Inkjets are a lot better than they were 20 years ago, but they still
can’t equal the crisp edges of laser printing.
• Why? Inkjet printers work by spraying small droplets of liquid ink onto the
paper, which start out wet and then dry in the air. The wet droplets spread
slightly as they’re absorbed into the paper. That’s a desirable effect for
photographs, because it helps blend adjacent colors, and it’s why inkjets are
preferred for photo printing. It’s not desirable for text, because it makes edges
less distinct. And as the text gets smaller, the problem becomes more
pronounced.
• Laser printers, on the other hand, deposit particles of dry toner onto the paper
and then fuse the toner to the paper with heat. This creates a sharper edge on
the printed page, making laser printers better suited for printing text.
• Over the years, laser printers have also gotten a lot cheaper. So there’s no
reason to use an inkjet printer.
• postscript or not?
• Before a printer can render a page, the layout on the screen has to be
converted into an intermediate format using a page-description language. If you
ever wondered what a printer driver does, that’s what.
• PostScript is a proprietary page-description language owned by Adobe. In the
’80s, most laser printers were built on PostScript, in much the same way that
most computers today are built on Windows. As laser-printing hardware
became cheaper to manufacture, printer makers sought alternatives to
PostScript with lower licensing fees. (PDF is built on a subset of the PostScript

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 language. PDF was a proprietary Adobe format until 2008, when it became an
open standard.)
• Today, most printers don’t use licensed PostScript. The main alternative is
PostScript emulation, which approximates PostScript using non-Adobe
technology. Other page-description languages exist—the most common one is
PCL, owned by HP and found mostly in their printers.
• Why should you care?
• First, different page-description languages—and different emulations of a
page-description language—will render a given document slightly differently.
In my experience, those differences are often most noticeable in the quality of
printed text, and that quality can vary widely.
• Second, no printer can ever be better than its driver software. Garbage in,
garbage out. Even if a printer has excellent technical specifications—great
resolution and print speed—it can be hobbled by a bad driver. And if it turns
out your printer has bad driver software, there’s not much you can do except
buy a different printer.
• Among page-description languages, PostScript is still the gold standard. It
dominates professional publishing. Therefore, if you want the best printed
output, consider a printer that uses true licensed PostScript (not emulated
PostScript).
• If you’re considering a printer that uses PostScript emulation, scrutinize its
output before you buy. Get samples of black text at various sizes. Ignore the
ritzy color photo that most printers use as their automatic test page. That
photo may be pretty, but it won’t tell you anything about how the printer
performs with text-heavy documents. (Online printer reviewers claim to
evaluate text quality, but their standards are lax, and their judgments
subjective.)
• photocopy or print?
• A photocopier used to be an indispensable tool for a writer. But today’s
photocopiers are just laser printers with a camera attached. And as office laser
printers have gotten faster, the photocopier has become less essential.
• For text documents, copies made direct from the laser printer will always look
better than photocopies. The cost per page will also be somewhat higher.
• For image-intensive documents—for instance, scanned images—the
photocopier will always be faster. (Printer resolution (usually rated in DPI, or
dots per inch) can be a misleading metric. Printer hardware can only output a
fixed number of dots in a square inch (for instance, 600 × 600). But printer
makers will often claim “effective” resolutions of 2400 × 600 or more, usually
the result of puffery and dubious math. Caveat emptor.)

• color or monochrome?
• If I could have only one laser printer, it would be a color laser printer. But I
have two—one color, one monochrome—so I know that the monochrome
performance of a color laser printer is not as good as a dedicated monochrome
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 printer in the same price range. This makes sense—a color laser printer is
really four laser printers sharing a single paper path.
• If you truly never print color, there’s no need for a color laser printer.
• Though I have dissuaded you from using color for text in documents, it’s fine
to use color images as illustrations or exhibits.
• Beware—makers of color laser printers soft-pedal the costs of color output,
usually with optimistic assumptions about how many pages a color toner
cartridge will produce. Always check the cost of replacement toner cartridges
before buying a color printer, and remember that every sheet of color output
depletes four cartridges simultaneously.
• Also beware of entry-level color laser printers. While fine for occasional use,
they are easily overwhelmed by large image files (for instance, photographs).
Writers who rely on cheap color printers usually find this out at an
inopportune moment, like 20 minutes before a deadline.
• duplex or simplex?
• A duplex printer can print on both sides of a sheet of paper; a simplex printer
only prints on one side.
• If you care at all about the environmental impact of printing, get a duplex
printer. A duplexing unit is often available as an accessory for simplex printers.
You don’t have to print fewer pages. You’ll just be printing them on half the
number of sheets of paper. What’s not to like?
• One caveat: if you switch to duplex printing, you may need to get paper that’s
more opaque, so the printing on one side doesn’t show through to the other.
• paper
• As noted above, laser printers work by depositing dry toner onto paper and
fusing it onto the paper using heated metal rollers. Paper has a naturally
uneven surface. The more uneven the surface, the less well the toner adheres
to the paper when it goes through the rollers. (Think about sticking a stamp on
an envelope vs. sticking it on a brick.)
• For best results, use the smoothest paper you can find. Choose paper
designated “laser” over paper designated “copy” or “inkjet”—these varieties
tend to be less smooth. I use Hammermill Laser Print because it’s smooth,
opaque, and very bright. (Among papers, brightness measures how well the
paper reflects white light.)
• If you go shopping for nicer paper at the stationery store (e.g., to use as
Letterhead (page 110)), choose wove paper, which is smooth, rather than laid
paper, which has a ribbed texture. Toner affixes better to wove paper.

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Block Quotations
• Formatting block quotations isn’t hard. Reduce the point size and line spacing
slightly. Indent the text block between half an inch and a full inch on the left side,
and optionally the same on the right. Or on the web, about 2–5 ems. As with First-
Line Indents (page 17), make the side indents large enough to be noticed, but not so
large that the line length is too short. Don’t put quotation marks at the ends.
They’re redundant.
• Block quotations are sometimes unavoidable. It may be that accuracy demands
extensive quoting.
• But as a means of textual emphasis, block quotations sometimes become, like all
caps, a form of self-defeating typography. Writers often dump text into a block
quotation because they want to signal “This source is really important, so I’ve
quoted a lot of it!”
• Instead, the actual signal a reader often gets is “Here’s something long and dull
from another source whose meaning and relevance you’ll have to figure out for
yourself because I can’t be bothered to summarize it!”
• The reader’s next thought is usually “Great—I can skip this.” So if you want readers
to pay attention to quoted material, edit it carefully and integrate it into the text.
Don’t just shovel it into a block quotation.

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