Job:03171 Title:Typography Referenced (Rockport)
Page: 333
320-335 03171.indd 333 9/23/11 2:34 PM
Typography Terminology and Language
Text
Job:03171 Title:Typography Referenced (Rockport)
Page: 333
Flush Left Flush Right Center
A designer’s job will become even
more challenging as the quantity
of information and noise increases
during the twenty-fi rst century. Those
who possess a broad typographic
understanding will best meet the
communicative and creative challenge,
especially during a time when people
know the diff erence between one
font
and another—and which ones read
better or worse with software’s
default 120-percent leading.
A designer’s job will become even
more challenging as the quantity
of information and noise increases
during the twenty-fi rst century. Those
who possess a broad typographic
understanding will best meet the
communicative and creative challenge,
especially during a time when people
know the diff erence between one
font
and another—and which ones read
better or worse with software’s
default 120-percent leading.
A designer’s job will become even
more challenging as the quantity
of information and noise increases
during the twenty-fi rst century. Those
who possess a broad typographic
understanding will best meet the
communicative and creative challenge,
especially during a time when people
know the diff erence between one
font
and another—and which ones read
better or worse with software’s
default 120-percent leading.
Alignment
There are only four basic alignment choices—fl ush left,
fl ush right, justifi ed, and centered—and most people
understand these terms regardless of their profession.
However, good reasons exist for choosing one option
over another, as well as for not mixing the options, all of
which link back to readability (330) and aesthetics.
Flush-left text means a consistent vertical alignment
down the left side of a column such that each new line
of text starts from the same point. This helps improve
readability. Flush-right text aligns at the right side of a
column; this lessens readability for long passages of text,
but can work for shorter paragraphs that range against
the right side of an image or page edge in a layout.
Beware of mixing fl ush-left and fl ush-right alignment in
any given text chain. It never works and will ruin a pro-
fessional layout.
Justifi ed text, which aligns down both sides of a
column, is better suited to text set over wider measures.
To force the words in each line of text to justify, the
word and letter spacing (334) gets adjusted across the
full measure, occasionally introducing awkward spaces
between longer words. It is sometimes possible to man-
ually adjust the spacing to create aesthetically pleasing
typography, but often editing the text results in the
greatest improvement.
Centered text arguably provides the lowest level
of readability, so it is best reserved for short, isolated
paragraphs of text set over a fairly narrow column.
Inappropriate use of centered text in a layout is a good
indicator that a designer is not an experienced typog-
rapher. One of the most common mistakes is mixing
centered headlines with fl ush-left text. On the other
hand, a centered headline works with justifi ed text as
long as headline length and text measure balance well.
Optical alignment
Following from the basic points made above, aligning
text along a vertical edge is not always as straightfor-
ward as it may seem. Certain characters, such as the
uppercase (332) T or W, appear slightly indented when
positioned at the start of a line. The same applies to
punctuation, for example quotation marks. Adjusting
these can achieve perfect optical alignment.
The off ending characters must be “hung,” meaning
repositioned slightly to the left of the point of vertical
alignment (if the text is fl ush left). The degree of
adjustment varies from typeface to typeface and
depends on the point size. The eff ect is less apparent
at smaller point sizes, and the kerning (334) pairs
built into a font deal with the problem in most
circumstances. Page layout applications such as Adobe
InDesign have built in functions such as optical margin
alignment that get applied automatically.
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