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Typography

Graham Jaunay

Glandore SA 5037
Australia

genealogy@jaunay.com

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Graham Jaunay uses
The Genealogist - for UK census, BMD indexes and more online simply because it contains quality data checked by experts.

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1. Insert only a single space after all words and punctuation. Two spaces after a full stop is in the world of the monospaced typewriter!
   
2. Use the correct form of dash rather than employing a hyphen. The longest dash is called an em. It has a special use in writing and behaves rather like a comma but is used sparingly as emphasis. You will also see 2 ems being used in bibliographies to avoid repetition of an author's name. The middle sized dash is called an en and is used to denote the passage of time or link discrete items. The shortest dash is the hyphen and it is used to break words up when they will not fit on a line or to link words.

   Dash type	Size (traditional)	Macintosh	Windows	Example
   hyphen -	half digit width	hyphen	hyphen	a blue-green hue
   figure dash ‒	digit width	Unicode: 2812		Used within a sequence of digits: 555‒0199
   en –	width of n	opt dash	alt 0 1 5 0	Used in place of the word and or the word to: It took 4 – 6 minutes
   em —	width of m	opt shift dash	alt 0 1 5 1	use in place of a comma for emphasis, instead of a colon or brackets: Three metals are the substituents—iron, lead and copper. Also used to designate interruption: “Get out or else—”
   double em ——	-	-	-	Indicates redaction: It was alleged that J—— had been threatened… Used in bibliographies where author's name is repeated in a list.
   minus −	thinner than an en	Unicode: 8722		16 − 11 = 5

3. Use curly commas and quote marks—a nuisance in html but essential in hard copy, a curly comma is important.
   
4. Curly quotation marks can be presented in html – “ and ” – but are rarely used! On the other hand foot and inch marks are not curly!
   
5. Do not underline text. Another hangover from the typewriter but never seen in books!
6. Use symbols (that is any text not a leter, digit or punctuation) correctly.

1. Ensure the space between lines of text are adequate. Ideally it should be about 120% of the text point size. Thus 12 point text has a 14 point leading. Such space improves the readability of text. Books with few illustrations and other features may require the leading to be as much as 150% of the text point size.
2. Ensure you have adequate margins. Most amateurs err on the side of inadequate margins. Wider margins are visually more attractive and add to the balance of text free space on a page. Do not forget to provide a gutter for facing pages to accommodate the book binding. The thicker the book the broader the inside gutter (the inside margins between facing pages). Remember that the margins for books of less than 80 pages is a differing kettle of fish. Such books (really booklets) are usually saddlestitched—that is constructed by simply folding over the pages—and in this case you need to address the issue of creep. Thicker books are perfect bound—that is made up of small booklets and thus creep is not an issue! The program InDesign accommodates this problem and places the pages in order when you select 2-up Saddle Stitch when printing booklet.
3. Employ optical margins to improve the look of your work. To do this you must have a dedicated typesetting program like InDesign. This option appropriately accommodates punctuation occurring at the beginning and end of a line.
4. Indent paragraphs but just enough to distinguish without overemphasizing and breaking up the overall look of the page. Traditionally the indent should be the length on the letter m (hence the name of the long dash is em). In 12 point typeface this amounts to 1.6mm. The alternative to indenting a paragraph is a double line but never both!
5. Avoid using serif free (sans serif) text. The serifs on text aid reading. Restrict sans serif to headings.
   
6. Restrict the length of text in a line. More than 75 characters and spaces is too long for comfortable reading.
7. Ensure you avoid words breaking inappropriately with hyphens. Just two letters dropped to the next line is inappropriate. A good layout program will allow you the specify hyphen breaks so that you avoid inappropriate hyphenation on line breaks such as e-valuation and simp-ly.
8. If you need to capitalise a word use small caps. Such examples include SCUBA, 54AD, FBI – all best presented as small caps but not here! A small cap is an uppercase letter approximately as tall as a lowercase a. ᴅᴅᴛ spray, 54ᴀᴅ, ꜱᴄᴜʙᴀ tank. (some browsers and email clients will not reproduce small caps.)

There are other issues to address. Many authors are keen to fully justify the text. That is the text is aligned on both left and right. This can cause problems in scholarly works with lengthy words. You can also end up with spacing running down the page within the text like rivers! You may find an overwhelming number of hyphenated words. Frankly I leave my lines ragged on the right as the effort to address this problem can become overwhelming!

Avoid orphans (single words on a line at the top of a page) and widows (first line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page). These are especially important when they occur overleaf rather than on the adjacent page.

•The well-known author…
• The author was well known.

• Book designs basics
• Typophile - a handy downloadable pdf file
• Practical typography - an online booklet on the subject with a good gateway summary
• Creative blog - a listing of technical terms—interesting read but not essential to know