We live for type. The FontFeed is an inspirational journal of typography tips, recommended fonts, and bits of design from around the web that caught our typographic eye.
Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips
Erik Spiekermann presents at TypoBerlin 2006. Photo by Thorsten Wulff.
With the invention of “desktop publishing”, designers found themselves setting type on their computers for the first time. Until then, they had made type specifications for typesetters and left the job up to the professionals. As a result, you can still see classic inaccuracies in typesetting, even in top-quality printed matter. Here you will find some tips from Erik Spiekermann, designer of FF Meta®, Meta Design founder, co-author of “Stop Stealing Sheep”, and a FontShop founder, which will prevent some of the more obvious blunders.
1. A CAPITAL MISTAKE
NEVER use CAPITAL letters to accentuate words in running copy. They STICK OUT far too much spoiling the LOOK of the column or page. Use italics instead. If you have to set words in capitals, use proper small caps with or without initial capitals.
2. Connections
There are three different ways to connect or separate words: the hyphen -, the en dash –, a little wider than the hyphen, and the em dash —, wider still. The regular hyphen is easily accessible on any Mac or PC keyboard, whereas the en dash needs the combination option-hyphen on the Mac. The em dash is accessed by pressing option-shift-hyphen on the Mac. The use of these dashes depends on house styles and tradition. The em dash with no space around it is traditionally used to separate thoughts—like this one—but I think its length is a distraction in running text. Try using the en dash to separate thoughts – like this one – with a character space on either side. En dashes without space on either side are also used between numbers and compound words as in: the shop is open 10–7, while you can take the New York–Kansas City train or the New York–Baltimore train only 8am–3pm.
3. “ & ”
A dead giveaway for unprofessional “desktop typography” are wrong quotes and apostrophes. Quotes can have different shapes. They generally look like “this”, and can be remembered as beginning and ending quotes by thinking of “66” and “99”. Beginning quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-[; closing quotes, option-shift-]. The apostrophe is simply a raised comma, the shape of a ’9 in most typefaces. It is identical to the closing single quote, while the open single quote looks like a ‘6. Beginning single quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-[; the apostrophe and closing single quote, option-shift-].
4. Figuring It Out
Good text typefaces have “old style”, “text”, or “lowercase” figures – 1234567890 – instead of “lining” ones – 1234567890. Lining figures were originally designed to be used with setting of all capital letters. Lowercase figures blend in better with the text settings, as the figures behave like lowercase letters with ascenders (6 and 8) and descenders (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) and x-height-only characters (1, 2, 0). While they fit in text very nicely, the good looks have one disadvantage: each of the figures have individual widths, meaning they won’t sit directly underneath each other in columns. Their descenders may also clash with ascenders when the columns sit closely on top of one another, as happens quite often in tabular settings. Lining figures are, however, all the same width, making for a somewhat uneven appearance, as the 1 takes up the same space as the 8, but in tables, they are much easier to add up. Some fonts offer “tabular oldstyle figures”, which will allow table setting.
Read more about figure styles.
5. Joining Forces
A ligature is defined as the visual or formal combination of two or three letters into a single character. They consist of letter combinations such as ff, fi, fl, ffi. Ligatures keep letters from overlapping and improve legibility. For example: affluence, configure, deflate, affinity.
6. Not Justified
Avoid flush settings! Most applications create justified text by hideously stretching and squishing words and spaces. Note that it takes many hours of tedious work to typeset justified text that is truly well-proportioned and legible. For this reason, professionals prefer to use ragged-right composition, either with or without hyphenation, depending on how much line-length variation they wish to allow. This gives the text a more harmonious appearance and makes it easier to read, since all wordspaces have the same width.
7. Bite the Bullet
Use bullets or centered points instead of hyphens (-) when you list items. Bullets are part of the standard character set and are located in the following positions:
• option-8 (Mac), ALT+0149 (Windows)
· option-shift-9 (Mac), ALT+0183 (Windows)
By Stephen Coles | link | | 
November 29th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Reader Cheryl Diner writes:
I asked Erik if his style was European:
December 12th, 2007 at 12:17 am
I can’t imagine how awkward it would be to always hit keystrokes for every single contraction. I did it for the word can’t above and it was odd. Why isn’t it the standard for the keyboard buttons and are there ways of programming those characters to show up for the standard quote/apostrophe keys (on a mac)?
December 25th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I *CRINGE* :) whenever I see all-caps used. Italics look so much better.
These are excellent tips though!
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 am
Thanks for the post. Interesting comment on the use of the en dash to separate thoughts. I’ve always liked the look of what he’s suggesting, but I’ve thought the conventional use of the em dash is an unbreakable typography rule.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Onur,
The use of an em dash to separate thoughts is somewhat of an old convention - Robert Bringhurst states that it is remeniscent of “Victorian era” typography, and has since been superseded by the padded en dash.
Personally, I feel that there are no unbreakable rules in any design discipline, and typography is one of them. However, one must know the rules in order to break them.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:20 am
The padded en dash is ugly. The em dash is easier to type and looks better. Bringhurst is wrong; the em dash has not been superseded.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Rick, I too have a fondness for the em dash. However, I also have to give a nod to Mr Bringhurst, in that if you look at books from 100 years ago and books from today you will almost certainly find that use of the em dash has been drastically reduced. That is not to say that it should be! However, I fear that as the em dash is now so unfamiliar to the average reader, its use can be distracting. This goes against the first rule of type, that it should transparently convey the message. In my experience, many clients (and designers) have never heard of an en dash, let alone a padded en, and are utterly confused as to how to use them. They generally are used to seeing hyphens (aaaaagh!) and will generally baulk at a full em dash. Whilst freelancing, I was even told by a so-called “art director” to replace all my en dashes with hyphens “because he liked it like that”. God help typography, and long live the em dash!
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:34 am
Ugh! This is one of my pet peeves when I read copy. The response to that question is entirely correct and I only wish more people would follow that advise. I think the only thing that irritates me more when reading copy is when people use the inches and feet symbols instead of proper quotation marks.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Why doesn’t anyone bring up, or elaborate more, on the single and double prime characters for feet and inches? Are the keyboard straight up and down hash marks becoming defacto correct after all even with the purists?
September 4th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I’m a big fan of the “euro” style of punctuation coming at the end of a complete thought (like this). The space around the dash – at least to me – reads more closely to the pause in speech, but I’m not picky about that.