Rules of thumb for making readable, attractive pages - Desktop Publishing - column

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1991 by Steve Morgenstern

When I set out to write a column offering a few rules of thumb for choosing and using type, I started wondering where the phrase came from in the first place. it turns out there are two schools of thought: One is based on the fact that a man's thumb is about one inch across, making it a handy tool for approximate measurement. The other hearkens back to the days when a brewmaster would check whether fermentation was proceeding properly by dipping his thumb into a batch of beer to gauge its temperature. I suppose the first derivation is more likely to be accurate, but the image of a thumb soaked in suds is closer to my purpose here. Like the brewer's art, publication design is rooted in hundreds of years of practice and tradition. Yet even with all that history and accumulated knowledge, we still don't have a "design thermometer" with precise degree markings to guide our typographic decisions. Instead, like the brewmaster, we rely on rules of thumb to get us within range of success, then submit our creation to a personal taste test to judge its ultimate success or failure. Use a comfortable line length. Type set in overly narrow columns is tiresome to read-your eye has to jump back and forth every few words. It tends to look pretty hideous, too, with an overabundance of hyphenated words and inappropriate spaces.

What I see more often in desktop-publishing projects, though, are lines that seem to go on forever. Getting through these wide-load columns of text is like asking your eyes to run a marathon-you're likely to stumble as you near the end of each line, lose your place in mid-paragraph, and just give up.

There is no hard-and-fast optimal line length, since the type size and design must be taken into account. However, there is a good rule of thumb: Most text faces work best when set with 55 to 60 characters (9 to 10 words) per line. Generally, set sans serif type in narrower columns than serif type.

Another common rule of thumb for setting the line length is to type out one and a half lowercase alphabets (a-z plus a-m) in a given typeface, measure the printed width, and take that as your standard. This method is more appropriate for multiple-column layout than for a book or other single-column designs.

Minimize use of ALL CAPS. When all you had was a typewriter, hitting Shift Lock and banging away in all capitals was one of the few ways you could call attention to an important piece of text. With desktop publishing there are better devices, including larger type sizes and boldface or italic type. All-capital type, with all the letters the same height, tends to look squared off and blocky. That makes it both unattractive and hard to read, especially in extended settings. All caps are okay for short headlines, but even then I'd also try a bold typeface set in upper- and lowercase.

Never underline. Here's another ho dove from typewriter days. Underlining looks amateurish in a desktop-published piece. There just isn't any elegant position for an underline-if it fits close to the bottom of the letters it can touch or cut through the descenders (the tails of the g, q, y, and so on). If the underline is low enough to clear the descenders, it's too far away from the word it's underscoring and hovers perilously close to the line below. You can achieve the same kind of emphasis using italics.

Avoid long italic settings. Italics are often very attractive letterforms, with more swash and movement than the straight up-and-down version of a typeface. However, the way italics lean forward makes them hard to read in extended passages. The longer your text, the more you should look toward a serif italic, such as Palatino, which holds together over several lines better than a sans serif face like Helvetica.

Italics are terrific for adding diversity to a layout when used in moderation, though. You'll often see italicized captions for illustrations, photographs, and charts. Introductory material is often set in italics-the editor's opening blurb before chapters in an anthology, for example.

Limit your type. The easiest way to achieve type harmony is to limit the number of typefaces you employ in each project. The rule of thumb says no more than two. I say, Start out by using just one typeface.

Sound boring? It doesn't have to be, since most typefaces give you bold and italic styles to play with in a choice of sizes. I especially like working with typefaces that offer more than a single bold weight. ITC Clearface, for example, comes in regular and regular italic, bold and bold italic, heavy and heavy italic, black and black italic (see figure). I can stick with Clearface for an entire newsletter, with chunky, dark headlines, a second bold weight in a smaller size for secondary heads, a highly legible text face that fits plenty of characters per column inch, a handsome bold for text subheads, and an italic for captions.

Use contrasting type. Wait a minute-I just said you should strive for type harmony. Doesn't contrast contradict that?

Not at all. I have a harmonious marriage-my wife and I are roughly the same type of person. But we also have contrasting personalities, abilities, and interests-that's what keeps things lively. And the same principle holds in typography.