How-To
Typography
(pt. 1)

How-To

Typography and Issues with Type
(Part One)

Why Good Typography Matters

I’ve been delighted with the amount of interest the topic of two spaces after punctuation is generating! It seems some people never heard of this before (understandable), some people don’t see that it makes any difference, and some people agree that this is a typesetting no-no a careful and caring user will avoid. See “Why One Space after Punctuation?” below for more on that specific topic.

To understand why this matters, when this matters, and for whom this matters we have to step back and take a look at the art, science, and craft of typography. Though the beginnings of typography go back to 1454 and the Gutenberg Bible, the development of conventions for letterforms and how they are placed on paper to communicate words and ideas goes back much farther.

Type designers and typesetters have generally striven to produce visually pleasing pages that make the words comfortable and inviting to read. During this 500+–year history of the printed word, many experiments have been tried and abandoned because they worked against the goal of legible and attractive pages. Therefore, when we talk about “rules” for typesetting, we’re not talking about something arbitrarily set up to make things more difficult for us but the distilled wisdom of real-world experience.

It used to be that the world of type was a tightly guarded domain you entered only after a long apprenticeship. The equipment was expensive and difficult to use. “Paying your dues” didn’t mean you could be counted on to produce great type; there have always been plenty of ugly pages produced by careless or time-pressed printers. But at least you would be aware that there was a standard to be met.

The advent of the Mac, Windows, and scaleable typeface technology (PostScript, TrueType) has, for the first time, opened the world of type to the masses. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we now have the opportunity to produce attractive documents more easily, quickly, and for less cost than ever before. On the other, never before have we seen so much truly horrible type produced by people who don’t know what they are doing.

Most of us moving from DOS word processing to Windows have the excuse that no one ever told us there was anything to know. You can’t do it right if you don’t even know there is a “right.” But the ignorance excuse works only until you’ve had the opportunity to learn what’s right and wrong. You are now having the opportunity!<g>

Does It Matter, and to Whom?

If you’re using “real” type, such as Times Roman, Arial, Garamond, Caslon, or Futura, YES, IT DOES. It matters in the same way as using correct grammar and correct spelling does. If what you write has misspellings and grammatical mistakes, it says (rightly or wrongly) you are either ignorant or careless. If the type you set ignores the basic rules of typography, it also says you are either ignorant or careless. And if you are using proportional, non-typewriter typefaces, you are setting type, whether or not you’ve thought of it that way.

Now, we could get into a philosophical discussion of whether spelling, grammar, or good typesetting really makes any difference. You can have grammar and spelling mistakes all over your page and most people (unfortunately) won’t notice. But I feel proper spelling, correct grammar, and good typesetting are signs of respect for the language, for readers, and for myself – I don’t want to turn out shoddy work.

If you’re NOT using real type, you don’t need to be concerned about typesetting. “Dot matrix,” Courier, and many of the typefaces built into printers with names like Sans Serif, Roman, and Prestige Elite are actually typewriter faces, not typefaces. Even if you use proportional spacing with them, they are not proportional typefaces. So do as you have been doing with no guilt. Typesetting rules apply to people using type, not typewriters or computers as supercharged typewriters.

If you have to conform to styles set by an editor, boss, or company style sheet, do it. Sometimes there are good reasons for these; sometimes it’s just a case of the blind leading the blind. No matter – we have to function in a world not of our choosing.

Now on to the rest of us. You might say “it looks the same to me.” Need I point out that there is such a thing as a practiced eye? You often don’t consciously notice things until you become aware of what to look for and you compare good examples with bad examples. There is also the “I don’t know art but I know what I like” syndrome. And some people are “type deaf,” just as some are musically “tone deaf.” My point is that your own opinions aren’t relevant to the issue. If you thought “between he and I” sounded better than “between him and me,” would you ignore correct grammar in your written communications?

While the average person doesn’t know anything about type, we certainly know whether something is easy to read (not talking about content here). How often have you stopped reading because the type was too small or too big or too light or too dark, or you just got tired of reading for no discernible reason? Do you notice justified lines in magazines where there are huge spaces between words and other lines where the words are so scrunched you can’t easily distinguish where one ends and another begins? Actually, the human eye is very keen at detecting unevenness and this is distracting and tiring when we’re reading, whether or not we’re aware of it. So the goal of good typesetting is a harmonious page without unsightly gaps between words and letters, where lines are evenly and predictably spaced, where our eye knows where to begin reading and can detect the path through the text without much effort, and where we have “resting places” provided by white space.

You can’t learn this stuff by sleeping on a subliminal tape.<g> I suggest some basic reading:

 For the most basic basics, read The PC is not a typewriter by Robin Williams (she’s not the actor). Or The Mac is not a typewriter, which covers the same stuff. Peachpit Press.

 For a better understanding of type, typefaces, and typesetting, read Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works by Erik Spiekermann and E. M. Ginger. Just don’t take everything as the last word on the subject and don’t emulate the boo-boo in Chapter 5, where the typesetter used yellow type on white paper for the sidebars. Oh dear. Adobe Press.

 The universally acclaimed classic is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Hartley & Marks, publisher. Other classics include Letters of Credit by Walter Tracy and The Form of the Book by Jan Tschichold.

 A recent book geared to people using type on a computer is Digital Type Design Guide by Sean Cavanaugh. This book has a chapter on “The Rules of Digital Typography” that not only lists them but explains why they matter. In addition, the book comes with a CD-ROM that includes 200 useful fonts, for the most part nicely made. At $45 (US) the book is a bargain, if you include the value of the fonts. Hayden Books.

Why you shouldn’t use two spaces after punctuation if you are using real typefaces, such as Times Roman or Arial –

Five hundred years of typographic experience have taught us that pages full of words are easier to read if the text block looks evenly “colored” on the page and if the spaces between letters, between words, and between sentences look consistent. Therefore, typesetting rules say to use ONE SPACE after ALL punctuation, and that includes periods, question marks, exclamation points, and colons.

If you use two spaces after punctuation, you will litter the page with little “holes” and spoil the “color” of the text blocks. This is the best-case scenario, if you are setting text flush left-rag right. If you are setting justified text, two spaces after punctuation will make even more of a mess. With two whole spaces to work with as the computer stretches or compresses the line to fit, chances are overwhelming that after-punctuation spaces will be distractingly uneven.

You think it’s not that noticeable? Well, I can tell every time. If I look at a page and something seems wrong, more often than not there are two spaces after punctuation. And people who do that usually have other typographic faux pas all over the page. This is an error akin to using “it’s” as a possessive pronoun.

If you’re using Courier or “dot matrix” or a printer font called Sans Serif or Roman or Prestige Elite, you are using typewriter type and the rules of typography don’t apply to you. This is true even if you’re having the computer put in “proportional” spacing. And obviously, if you have to follow a style sheet set by an editor or boss, you do it as they want it. The rules of typography apply when you have a choice and if you are using true proportional typefaces, where varying amounts of space between letters are designed into the font. If you don’t want your work to say “clueless and careless,” use one space after punctuation.

If you just can’t retrain your fingers (I know it’s hard), do a search and replace for two spaces when you’re finished with the writing. Find two spaces. Replace With one space. Do it from the beginning to the end of the document at least twice. Good! Now be proud of your work.

Getting Great Type with WordStar for Windows

Life was simpler in the Good Old Days of word processing, when the only type decision facing us was whether to single-space or double-space our sole font, “dot matrix.” Those simple times ended forever when Microsoft Windows came along. Now even humble dot matrix and inkjet printers can produce typeset documents with a professional look that used to require a printing press. Unfortunately, this typographic revolution has caught many of us unawares, and the result is a flood of ugly, badly typeset documents that do not reflect well on their producers.

Using type effectively involves more than picking Times Roman for body text and Arial for headings. The art and craft of typography have evolved over many centuries and have developed conventions aimed at making text pleasing to look at and easy to read. Just as we can’t disregard the rules of spelling and grammar if we want a well-written document, we have to observe typographic rules if we want our work to look typeset rather than typewritten.

Using type well is an artistic skill honed over a lifetime. Fortunately, though, we don’t have to become professional typographers to produce decent-looking documents. Observing a few easy-to-learn typesetting rules will get rid of that amateur look and make our documents more inviting and easier to read – and getting read is why we’re writing in the first place, isn’t it?

Six typographic mistakes appear most commonly and say “careless” or “amateur”:

1. Using two spaces after punctuation;
2. Using ditto marks instead of genuine curly quotes;
3. Using the straight rather than the true apostrophe;
4. Using double hyphens instead of em dashes and single hyphens instead of en dashes;
5. Using underlining instead of italics or boldface;
6. Using poor type spacing.

All of these mistakes are carryovers from what we learned in our high-school typing class. However, as the title of type expert Robin Williams’ useful book says, The PC is not a typewriter. The limited keyboard characters and monospaced Pica or Elite type made these practices necessary when we were using a typewriter. When they are transferred to proportional typefaces with extended characters and a full complement of weights (book, bold) and styles (roman, italic), they detract from the goal of good text typesetting: an evenly colored, evenly spaced word block free of “holes” and gaps that interfere with easy reading. If you are happily giving Courier the boot, a few hours of determined effort to break these old habits will pay great dividends in future time saved. However, WSWin’s search and replace function can remedy any “slips.”

Don’t Touch That Spacebar!

Two spaces after periods, question marks, and exclamation points helped to set off sentences in typewriting, where all letters and punctuation took up the same amount of space. With proportional type, however, two spaces after punctuation litter the page with white “holes” that disrupt the flow of the text. Until you get used to hitting the spacebar once instead of twice after a sentence, place your cursor at the beginning of a document when you are finished writing and use Edit...Replace. Type two spaces in Find What and one space in Replace With and select Replace All. Run this Replace routine at least twice and you should eliminate those unsightly double spaces.

No Dittoheads Here

All proportional typefaces have opening (“) and closing (”) quotation marks designed to harmonize with the letterforms. Unfortunately, many PC users are still using the ditto mark (") on the keyboard. This is an unrelievedly ugly character closely resembling insect tracks. It can be confusing, too, because it doesn’t indicate whether a quotation is beginning or ending. Train yourself to use curly quotes, which are located at Alt+0147 (open quote) and Alt+0148 (close quote) in Windows; hold down Alt and type the four numbers on the numeric keypad, not the upper row. WSWin makes it easier for you with an included macro, DBLQUOTE. You can assign it to any shortcut key you like, and when you hit the shortcut, the macro will type open or close quotes depending on the position of the cursor. You can also record your own macros for open quotes and close quotes and assign them to shortcut keys. Until you break the habit of typing dittoes for quotes, run an Edit...Replace to find stray dittoes before you print.

Be True, Not Straight

Sharing the infamous ditto key is the straight apostrophe ('). Don’t use it! It doesn’t complement the typeface and looks amateurish. The true apostrophe (’) designed for the typeface is located at Alt+0146 in Windows; Alt+0145 is the opening single quote (‘) (the apostrophe is the closing single quote). Again, WSWin helps you out by providing a macro, SGLQUOTE, which you can assign to any shortcut you prefer. Like DBLQUOTE, SGLQUOTE puts in a true apostrophe or single open quote depending on the cursor position. Always search for and replace any straight apostrophes that creep in.

Hold That Hyphen!

Proportional typefaces offer three distinct dashes: the hyphen, used for compound words (like broad-spectrum) and for syllables at ends of lines; the en dash, used for ranges (1900–1999); and the em dash-used where you would put a double hyphen (--) when typing. Using the appropriate dash marks you as typographically savvy and careful about details. The em dash (—) is at Alt+0151 and the en dash (–) is at Alt+0150. WSWin doesn’t include a macro, but you can easily record your keystrokes for the desired dash and assign the macro to a shortcut.

Anything But Underlining!

With just one character style available on a typewriter, we had to underline when we wanted to show emphasis or indicate titles or foreign words. With fonts that provide boldface and italics, however, we have no reason to resort to underlining. Even worse, we should not be redundantly underlining bold and italic type.

Italic type is normally used to show emphasis within text, as well as for foreign words and titles. Boldface is generally used for headings and subheadings. It can be used – cautiously – to emphasize text, but it often makes the words stand out too much and creates black blobs that disturb the even color of the text block. A standard reference work like The Chicago Manual of Style clarifies when to use italics and when to use quotation marks for titles of books, magazines, TV shows, articles, and so forth. Though underlining may be appropriate in a few circumstances, train yourself to go instinctively for italics first, boldface second instead of underlining.

No Wide Open Spaces

Part of what makes a typeface well designed is careful attention to spacing built into the font. All type characters have an invisible bounding box around the letter that determines the distance between letters. Certain combinations of letters, such as Ve, Wo, Ta, VA, and many others, appear to be spaced too far apart unless kerning is applied to the pair. Other combinations may need more space for visual separation. Kerning is an adjustment in the spacing, either negative or positive, between pairs of letters. Good fonts come with a built-in table of kerning pairs that WSWin can apply to your text onscreen and when printed. The Modify Paragraph Style dialogue box (under the Paragraph settings) lets you check Kern Above the point size of your choice. The 12-point default is too big; 6-point or 8-point is better. Always turn on kerning for text if your fonts include kerning pairs. This will help you get text with even-appearing space between all letters. Unfortunately, not all fonts come with kerning pairs built in. If you are buying fonts, foundries like Adobe, Monotype, and Bitstream supply kerning pairs with their fonts.

WSWin offers a Tracking option in the same dialogue box. WSWin tracking adjusts the space between all letters in a font. WSWin will let you use either kerning or tracking, but not both. You should generally avoid tracking except in special circumstances. Tracking is useful if you want to space out a single-line paragraph, such as an address in a letterhead, or if you need to reduce space between letters in a headline. (A text face used at a large headline size will usually have too much space between letters; a display face is likely to be more closely spaced.) What you should never do is change the tracking on a single paragraph of a style to make it fit within a space. The spacing difference will be noticeable enough to make the page visually grating. If you need to make a paragraph fit, edit it or adjust hyphenation. Since WSWin tracking blocks out WSWin kerning, tracked paragraphs will lack the fine adjustments carefully designed into good fonts.

Justified text (with even left and right margins) presents more typesetting pitfalls. In order to make text fit evenly, WSWin has to make adjustments in spacing between words. If you have few words on a line, the adjustments can result in huge gaps or very crowded words. You can tell WSWin how much word-spacing adjustment to allow in the Modify Paragraph Style – Options dialogue box under Word Spacing-Minimum and Maximum. Typographic experts suggest starting with a minimum setting of 80% and a maximum of 133% rather than WSWin’s overly generous defaults; for some fonts you may decide to adjust these settings. Do not put a check by Use Letter Spacing. That will make the situation even worse, as readers’ eyes will have to adjust to spacing differences in each line and each word. If you decide to use justified type, make sure your column is wide enough so WSWin can keep within the word-spacing parameters you set up. When the word spacing is too wide, edit or adjust hyphenation until the spacing looks more even. One of the advantages of flush-left–rag-right justification is that consistent word- and letter- spacing makes for easier reading.

Get in the habit of using tabs rather than hitting the spacebar for paragraph indents and columns of numbers or words. Adding spaces worked fine with typewriter fonts, where letters and spaces took up the same width. With proportional fonts, letters take up varying amounts of space, so only a tab guarantees that all words or numbers begin at the same place.

WSWin Doesn’t Know Best

Finally, do not rely on autoleading calculated by WSWin when you set up your paragraph styles. Set up the line spacing (or leading, pronounced ledd-ing) yourself to fit the characteristics of the font. Fonts like Adobe Garamond or Perpetua have a small x-height (height of lower-case characters without ascenders or descenders) in relation to the height of capital letters. Thus, a setting of 10-point type on 12-point line spacing will appear very open – often too open. Perpetua looks better at 11 on 12. A font with a tall x-height, like Lucida Bright or even Arial, will look crowded at 10 on 12. You might set it at 9 on 12 or 10 on 13 or even 14. For good-looking pages, determine line spacing based on the appearance of the font and the length of your lines. Long lines require more line spacing to help guide the eye back to the beginning of the next line. Short lines need less line spacing.

Following these basic rules – using one space after punctuation, using curly quotes and true apostrophes, using em and en dashes where appropriate, using italics or boldface instead of underlining, and paying careful attention to spacing – will not make you a typography expert, but you will take your work out of the careless and clueless category. What your text says is important. Isn’t it worth a setting that enhances it?

Getting Legible Type

The topic of how to use type to get pages that are easy on the eyes and non-tiring to read gets us into areas that require your own aesthetic judgment. I’ll try to make the distinctions between what is “generally accepted” and general practice and what is controversial and so is pretty much left to your (informed) preference.

First, on the question of how many characters should appear on a line:

The suggested number of characters considered “ideal” for a given line length is usually stated as 1 to 2 times the length of the typeset alphabet, or 39 to 65 characters. Or we might think in terms of 8 to 14 words on a line. Measurements of eye movements have shown that people can generally read text about 12 to 15 picas wide (2 to 2 inches) in one eye span before their eyes have to move to read the next batch. If the line of text is wider than 4 to 5 inches, the reader will often have to move the head slightly in order to take in all the words. Obviously, moving your head a bit every time you read a line will tire you out sooner than being able to read the whole line without moving your head. Therefore, the “ideal” length for a line is often given as 4 to 5 inches, and this is about what you get in nice books with wide margins. The desire to save money on paper results in tiny margins in some books, and while we can manage, most of us wouldn’t consider them to be great examples of book design. If the width of the page paper is such that a line of text type would be longer than 4 or 5 inches, we probably do readers a favor if we set the text in two columns.

With any given length of column, the 1 to 2 times the alphabet “rule” helps us decide on the point size of type to use. Here we get into tricky territory, though. Typefaces are not at all standard in x-height (height of the lower case letters without ascenders and descenders) or in general character width. More condensed faces have narrower characters, and thus will set with more characters per inch. When you are trying to decide what point size of a particular typeface to use, you might set a few lines at 10 point, 11 point, 12 point, and count the words or the characters in the line at each size. Then make a judgment about how it looks and go with that point size. Some typefaces are better than others for narrow columns, but those same faces may be poor choices for wider columns. Condensed faces get tiring to read and give the reader a “squished” feeling.

Serif, Sans, Justified, Rag Right

>> I read a report by someone in the Royal Navy that looked at technical documents and training manuals. The conclusions, as far as I remember, were basically as follows:

Where complex, long material is presented a serifed font should be used; Ragged right edges help the readers maintain their position within the text; narrow columns reduce the scanning that the eye has to do & thus also help the readers maintain their position within the text, therefore double columns may be preferable; typeface should not be too heavy, nor the page too white as the high contrast makes focusing & hence concentration difficult. Sans Serif fonts should only be used for headings or short, non-complex texts. <<

Here I think the Royal Navy person is being much too dogmatic. The conventional wisdom is that serifed fonts are more suitable for long text. The thinking is that the serifs help to lead the eye from one character to the next, help to make the baseline firmer, and add more distinguishing features to characters, thus making them more legible. However, studies of legibility and readability in various countries seem to show that people read most easily whatever they are used to reading. If most of the text you read is set in serif faces, you’ll find serif type easier to read. If most of the text you read is set in sans serif faces, you’ll find sans faces easier to read. This is assuming we’re talking about a legible sans – not all of them are. Gill Sans and Franklin Gothic are just two of the sans serif faces that are quite easy to read page after page.

You can’t go wrong using a legible serif face for long text, but again, not all serif typefaces make for easy reading. Souvenir, for example, can be hugely annoying as the pages go on. I despise Bookman because I find it ugly, but it is legible. Times Roman is too condensed for a wide-measure column, so I wouldn’t use that for a book. Yet it is probably the most popular typeface in the world because it is resident in all PostScript and LaserJet printers and comes with Windows, too.

Ragged right versus justified text is also a controversial question. Most books and magazines use justified type so that is what a lot of us are used to reading, but studies of people’s reading ease have shown that people have no trouble reading either rag right or justified type. Here are the problems with each:

 Rag right type always maintains even spacing between words, and since even spacing is a known factor for easy and comfortable readability, that in itself may give an edge to ragged right alignment. But to the contrary, an extreme rag on the right margin can be distracting and detract from readability. It is actually difficult to get a nice rag with software’s present level of typographic competency. You need to look at the line endings and adjust hyphenation (maybe all through the paragraph) to get a nice rag.

 Justified type will inevitably have uneven spacing between words because there is no other way to justify type except by adding or subtracting small amounts of space between words (for all practical purposes, not between letters, though, which is considered a typographic no-no). Justified type that is well set will give the appearance of having even word spacing, however. Software does most of the work on this. Unfortunately, the default justification spacing allowances that come with most DTP and word processing software are ridiculously out of line. I think WSWin’s are 50% of the normal word space minimum all the way to 200% of normal word spacing maximum(!!!). This means WSWin will adjust word spacing within these parameters when it tries to justify a line. You should change these justification defaults to 80% minimum and 133% maximum. (These settings appear on the Modify Paragraph Style-Options dialogue screens.) While the 80-133% new defaults won’t be right for every typeface, they are a good place to start. When you are setting a justified paragraph, you need to look for bad word spaces regardless of what the software is doing. You’ll find some lines where the word spacing is so bad that you can hardly tell one word from another. Other lines will have few words and great yawning gaps. All of these have to be fixed manually, either by adjusting hyphenation or by editing. Advanced DTP software like PageMaker can show you the lines that are too loose or tight, where the word spacing doesn’t conform to the parameters you set. You can then go in and adjust those. WSWin can’t show you the badly spaced lines automatically, which means you have to be aware of the word spacing as you’re proofing your pages, mark the too-tight or too-loose lines, and fix them.

Line Length

>> narrow columns reduce the scanning that the eye has to do & thus also help the readers maintain their position within the text <<

I already talked about line width in relation to eye span and ease of reading. I do think that maintaining your position within the text has more to do with leading (line height or line spacing) than anything else. You need enough white space between lines to lead your eye from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. Typefaces with tall x-heights (Arial, for example) need more leading than typefaces with small x-heights (Adobe Garamond, for example). A long line with more characters than the guideline allows can be much more readable if you add more leading than you normally would. That white space will guide your eye right along. However, too much leading makes the page sort of fall apart and one line gets disjointed from the next. So once again, you do have to use good aesthetic judgment here, and you train your eye by looking at well-set pages and noticing what makes them good and then applying those principles to your own work.

Type Color

>> typeface should not be too heavy, nor the page too white as the high contrast makes focusing & hence concentration difficult. <<

Most book typefaces are fairly light-appearing on the page and I think it is true that a very dark-appearing block of text is tiring to read. But the opposite is true, too. If there’s not enough contrast between type and paper, the page is difficult to read. So you select a typeface with the paper to be used for final output in mind. This is more of a concern for printing-press printing than laser printing, I think.

Sans for Headings?

>> Sans Serif fonts should only be used for headings or short, non-complex texts. <<

I can’t agree with this, for reasons I already stated. A better distinction is that between text faces and display faces. When a typeface is designed, the type designer has a use in mind. If the text is intended for books or large amounts of text, it will be designed with a text size in mind – something between 9 and 14 points. If the text is intended for headlines, ads, or posters and such, it will be designed with sizes like 24 point and above in mind. Text faces can’t simply be enlarged to 60 point and used successfully for display. They often become spindly or horsey at that size, the counters or serifs get out of proportion, and the letter spacing is likely to be wrong. Similarly, display faces can’t just be reduced to 11 point and used for text. This is the “fallacy” of scaleable type. The fact that with TrueType and Type 1 fonts we CAN do this technically has deluded some of use into thinking that it’s fine for us to do this. Not so! In the old days of metal type, type designers designed fonts at discreet sizes and made design adjustments required to maintain the integrity of the face at larger and smaller sizes. Digital type contains a set of mathematical instructions for drawing a character and does not make adjustments for size differences. There are technologies on the horizon (and partially here, with Multiple Master typefaces from Adobe and others) that will enable scaled typefaces to have adjustments based on size.

I’ve heard that the custom of using a serif for text and a sans for headlines is a recent innovation that has become widespread since desktop publishing became possible. The main reason for using different kinds of faces is to set up a contrast. A sans will inherently contrast with a serif. Two sans faces on the same page may conflict with each other and look wrong to just about anyone. Likewise with two serif faces on the same page. And sans text with serif heads is a bit odd looking to most of us, though a skilled person can pull it off. However, you can also set up a contrast within the same type family, if it offers enough weights. For example, I set a book with Adobe Caslon text and Adobe Caslon Bold headings. It worked fine and at least I got away from the “serif text, sans head” cliché.

That’s always a problem in typography. Yesterday’s exciting innovation becomes today’s cliché. You want some pizzazz, some style, in your page design – even conservative design – because you don’t want your stuff to look like everyone else’s. But you don’t want everything to look like Wired magazine either (which is becoming its own cliché, anyway).

Why One Space after Punctuation?

First, why one space and not two? The goal of good typesetting is a page of type that looks evenly colored and evenly spaced. Long experience has shown that evenly colored, evenly spaced type is easier and less tiring to read. If you use two spaces after punctuation, you will have your page littered with little “holes,” thus messing up the even color. If your type is justified, the inevitable variations in word spacing that result from justifying type will become even more prominent. Moreover, using two spaces after punctuation increases the probability that your type will have unsightly “rivers” running through it. So there actually are reasons behind this rule.

This is not a laissez-faire area of typesetting, as I’ll attempt to demonstrate in what follows. I realize some will remain unconvinced. My grandfather was a stubborn man. When he thought he was right, you could drag out every encyclopedia and reference book in the library and show him the opposite. He wouldn’t budge. He was right, they were wrong, and no expert, no authority could convince him to change his mind. So I realize some people will read this and continue to think they are right, it doesn’t matter, it looks better to them. But just so you know I’m not making this up, some citations:

I’ll start with graphic designer, educator, and author Robin Williams, who goes farthest of the bunch in taking the gloves off. She also directly addresses the reasoning given by those who ignore the one-space rule.

 From Adobe Magazine, July/August 1995, in “Thirteen telltale signs” by Robin Williams (not the actor), the author of The Mac is not a typewriter, The PC is not a typewriter, and The Non-Designer’s Design Book:

**********[begin quotation]

4. Two spaces after punctuation
   I know, I know – if you are still typing two spaces after periods it’s probably not because you don’t know any better, but because you firmly believe it looks better that way. If all the work you create is for yourself only, go ahead and continue to type two spaces. But you would be doing your clients a disservice to set their type that way, because by now most people have become visually astute enough to notice the unsightly gaps created by the double space. Standard professional typographic practice is one space; standard typewriter practice is two spaces. Publications typed with two spaces have an unprofessional appearance, whether you agree with it or not, and will cause your work to be ridiculed (open any book on your shelf – the only books you’ll see double spaces in were desktop published). The high-quality type you’re using, with its proportional widths and kerning pairs that tuck the letters so close together, does not need two spaces to separate sentences.

##########[end quotation]

Whew! Robin said it, not I! And you thought I was being rough on you!<g>

 Next, from the venerable Roger C. Parker, in Looking Good in Print, Ch. 6, “Twenty-five Common design Pitfalls”:

**********[begin quotation]

EXCESSIVE SPACING AFTER PUNCTUATION
   Avoid placing two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence.

   Two spaces following periods are needed for typewritten text. But in desktop-published type, the extra space creates unsightly “holes” between sentences, which is especially noticeable in justified text...In long documents with paragraphs containing several sentences, you may be surprised at the difference this can make.

##########[end quotation]

 From Digital Type Design Guide by Sean Cavanaugh, Ch. 7, “The Rules of Digital Typography"”:

   [First, an explanation from Sean]
   “I hate the word ‘rules.’ It conveys a degree of authoritarianism that really annoys me. Perhaps ‘guidelines’ would be a better word, but there are some things in typography that you really ought not-a do, and some other things you really oughta do...The goal of these ‘rules’ is to create good-looking documents that bespeak the professionalism and attention to detail that went into creating them...Perhaps it isn’t fair to judge ideas (and the presenter of those ideas) by the presentation, but life isn’t fair and this is just one of those things we have to accept.”

**********[begin quotation]

1. Insert only a single space after all punctuation.
   ...Since the advent of the printing press in the 15th century, typesetters have never inserted two spaces after punctuation. As far as I can tell, the practice of inserting two spaces between sentences originated with high school typing teachers. It sure didn’t originate in the world of typography...When preparing text for printing, regardless of the font, use only one space after all punctuation. There are no exceptions to this.

##########[end quotation]

 From Before & After: How to design cool stuff, the most acclaimed how-to publication for desktop designers, Vol. 1, No. 2, “How to set a perfect paragraph of type”:

[Introductory statement]
   “It’s ironic that the better your type is, the less it’s noticed (because everyone’s busy reading!), but beautiful type is high art and it’s worth setting right. Here are the rules.”

**********[begin quotation]

2. Single space after all punctuation
   In office typing, two spaces are used after periods and colons. When typesetting, however, only one space is used. There are no exceptions to this rule.

##########[end quotation]

I did go to my bookshelves and checked about twenty hardcover books with some claim to being professionally typeset. These included fiction, serious works of scholarship, reference books, coffee table books, an encyclopedia, a couple of cookbooks. Without exception, all these books had one space, not two, after punctuation. I checked Newsweek. One space, not two. I checked Nutrition Action Health Letter, which is exceptionally well done from the graphic-design standpoint. One space, not two. The only places I saw two spaces after punctuation were some newsletters I get that I know are produced by amateurs. You’d better believe those two spaces stand out!

Sure – “I may not know art but I know what I like.” But might I suggest that personal tastes do not necessarily constitute an informed aesthetic judgment? Is there such a thing as a trained ear or a practiced eye or an educated palate? Would the New York Times or the New Yorker hire me as a critic if I had no background or training in the field but I sure had opinions? Should I expect readers to take my opinions seriously? Are the Poker-Playing Dogs, the Crying Clown, the Wide-Eyed Waif aesthetically equal to Picasso’s Guernica or Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Jug? Is the latest Harlequin Romance just as good as The Brothers Karamazov? Some will say “yes.” You’re entitled to your opinion, but I can’t help thinking of my grandfather again.

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