GradwellTypography2

We all (most) read. It is by far, the best way we communicate and has evolved over millennium and

the printed word established for more than six centuries.

In that case, why are some things easier to read than others? We read type. Type has to be ‘typeset’, made into words, into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, stories and maybe even books. The personal computer has brought non-experts into contact with the typesetter's arcane terminology – here some of it is explained. (This is only an introduction... there is far more!)

Font (Fount to be accurate in the UK)

Originally spelt ‘fount’ but ‘font’ is another American corruption. Strictly speaking a ‘font is the content of two cases of metal type , a font of a particular style and size, but with the development of photosetting and the digital age a font has come to mean all sizes of the same characters. Once upon a time a ‘font’ was in the two cases containing metal lead type (pronounced, led, see ‘leading’). The word ‘fount’ originates from the French ‘Fondre’ translation – ‘melting’

Roman and Italic fonts

Originally these were specific characters, designed and drawn as specific calligraphic characters. Again with the advent

of computer programs, ‘italic’ is nothing more than the sloping of the original roman font. These are often referred to as ‘sloped romans’. A typographer will always use an ‘italic’ font because of it’s inherent improved characters drawn and constructed as ‘fit for purpose.’

Typeface

A particular design of lettering – type.

Families

The typeface may come in a group, not just a single font, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Roman, Helvetica Light, Helvetica Italic. This is known as a family. Some typeface families come with many variations of the same typeface including, Extra Light, Book, Medium, Semi Bold, Extra Bold, Black and others over and above those mentioned above, and then variations even upon those! Univers is a typeface that was designed specifically to overcome these complications by numbering families.

Weight

A term increasingly misused. A light typeface has a vertical thickness thinner than a medium letter of the same typeface, which in itself will be thinner than the bold. Light, Roman, Light Italic and Roman Italic are four fonts, but only two weights.

Leading

Leading (it rhymes with 'heading', not 'pleading').

If you have ever tried to read anything where the lines were jammed up tight against each other you will know how difficult and tiring that can be. Leading is simply extra space between lines of type, to help the eye move from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. In the old days a typesetter would insert a thin strip of lead after each line of type.

Leading is measured in points. A 10 pt font, for example, would typically have 2 pts of leading between the lines, and would be known in the trade as '10 on 12'. More leading would be used with larger fonts, so for example a 15 pt font might have 4 pts of leading and be known as '15 on 19'. Type over 18pt was normally set solid, with no leading.

Careful leading adjustments can improve the appearance of a page, and can also be used to create a better fit. Typographic controls on the www are not easy because of the technology involved.

Widows and Orphans

In typesetting, a widow is the last line of a paragraph, or a short line of text, overflowing to the top of the next page.

An orphan is a heading or the first line of a paragraph or verse at the foot of a page. A good typesetter will usually

seek to avoid leaving widows and orphans.

Are You Fully Justified?

Justifying type means adjusting it so that it fills a space evenly, or lines up at one or both side margins.

Left justified means that the lines generally start at the left-hand margin, or at a fixed distance from it, but end at different points at or before the right-hand margin. Strictly speaking, this should be referred to as 'aligned left' or 'ranged left'.

Right justified (or aligned or ranged right) would mean all the lines ending at the right-hand margin, but with a ragged

left-hand edge.

Centred text would mean that the centre of each line coincides with the centre of the page, but both left- and right-hand edges would be ragged. Long text passages that are centre-justified are not very easy to read, so centring is usually best confined to text with short lines and generous amounts of leading. Examples include headings and short passages, also menus, invitations, business cards, flyers and similar material.

Fully justified text is where all lines start at the left-hand margin and end at the right-hand margin. Long used in print, where it could be manually set out by a highly skilled typesetter, this became extremely popular for general and business use in the earlier days of WP documents and web pages, since computers could perform full justification automatically.

Its popularity later declined, however.

Full justification is usually achieved by subtle adjustments to the spaces between words. It probably works best where word breaks are allowed. Although word breaks brings their own problems, full justification without word breaks can result in some lines being very tightly packed while others are excessively spread out.

Rivers

Working with type is a skilled operation and one thing a skilled typographer will attempt to avoid are ‘rivers’.

These are the white spaces between words that cascade down a page creating white ‘rivers’.

Kerning and Letter Spacing

Kerning is concerned with adjusting the spacing between letters (see ligatures). Kerning can be used to achieve a

better fit between slanted or overhanging letters. kerning is used to improve legibility.

It is sometimes desirable to pad out a line very subtly, by adding a very thin 'hair space' between letters. This also improves the appearance of a line – perhaps a heading – that is all in capitals. Conversely, there are occasions when

it might be good to reduce very slightly the space between letters, perhaps to avoid a word break at the end of the line.

Tracking and Letter spacing

Originally the mechanical constraints of leaded type restricted the spaces between letters to the way they had been designed. Only with extra effort could spacing be added between letters (see kerning above). Lettre spacing or tracking should not be confused with kerning. Tracking is a computer programme that allows an overall increase or decrease

in the spacing of letters across a line, or more than a line to make it fit better.

Ligatures

Ligatures are pairs of letters (or, very occasionally, three letters) that are joined together. One example that can be displayed here is: Æ

Mind Your Ms and Ns (Em’s and En’s)

Now we are getting technical! For those of us who can remember, typesetting rooms were noisy places. Hearing the specification on an ‘em’ or an ‘en’ could be troublesome. Therefore a ‘em’ space was called a ‘mutton’ and an ‘en’ space called a nut... a bit like Golf, Echo Tango, Indigo Tango.

A pica is a fixed-width space (one-sixth of an inch) irrespective of the font being used, the width of other spaces will vary according to the font. An em space, or an em dash (which is a dash of the same width as an em space, and is sometimes called an em rule) is based on the width of the capital M in the font being used.

The em space, or simply the em, can be used as a unit of measure when specifying layout. For example, you could specify that paragraphs are to be indented two ems.

Dashes and hyphens

The em dash can be used as punctuation. Some matters of punctuation are the subject of endless (and sometimes heated!) debate,... for example

One common usage is to replace commas or parentheses (brackets) either side of a phrase, as in, for example:

This is how—if you like—you could use a pair of em dashes.

The em dash could also be used instead of an ellipsis (...) to indicate something unfinished:

She exclaimed, 'What the— !'

The en space and the en dash are nominally half the width of an em. When used parenthetically the en dash,

unlike the em dash, usually has a space either side of it:

The en dash can also be used, without flanking spaces, to replace the word 'to' in expressions such as:

There were about 20–25 people there.

or

I caught the Manchester–London flight.

Hyphens

Those little dashes – most people do not know the difference and when to use hyphens or em and en dashes. See above. Hyphens are used to link or break words. dis-jointed... see the following.

Word Breaks

When a word at the end of a line is too long to fit on that line, either the whole word must be carried over to the next line or the word must be divided between two successive lines, creating a 'word break'. It's best to avoid word breaks whenever possible. But when space is tight, for example, or perhaps when text is set in narrow columns, word breaks might be needed. In such cases, try to avoid having word breaks at the ends of more than two consecutive lines – it doesn't look good.

In English, at least, there are no firm rules which tell you where best to break a word. It's true that there are special dictionaries, used by typesetters but also generally available. These give spellings and word breaks (they don't give the meanings or derivations of the words). But the dictionaries do not agree among themselves. For example, one dictionary might prefer to break a word according to its sound – eg, 'diag-nostic' – while another suggests a break according to etymology – 'dia-gnostic'.

Word processing programs sometimes have their own ideas about where to break words, but should allow you to override their choice. If they work according to an algorithm which says, for instance, that it's OK to break after prefixes such as 'dis-' or 'pre-', you might get some bizarre results eg, 'dis-hcloth', 'pre-aches'), so beware! Some classic howlers to avoid are 'reap-pear', 'leg-end', and 'the-rapist', and there are many more.

What’s the point? Quite simply if you are spending your hard-earned money on communication you want and need people, your target audience to be able to read, comprehend and understand what you are saying. It portrays you in a better light and helps secure customer–client realtionship and your brand.

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